Can Consortial Reference Partners Answer Your Local Users’ Library Questions?

The purpose of this article is to explore location-based questions as a weakness of virtual reference consortia and discuss how to mitigate related issues. Content analysis of how both local and non-local academic librarians responded to location-based questions provides insight into considerations academic libraries must make when participating in a virtual reference consortia. Unobtrusive testing analyzed the local knowledge assumption that non-local librarians have difficulty answering questions about libraries beyond their own. The results from these two methods indicate academic librarians have some difficulties providing responses to library location-based questions and a discussion on overcoming this weakness is included

The Potential and Possibilities for Utilizing Geographic Information Systems to Inform School Library as Place

Teacher librarians often consider their students and the internal school environment in planning programs and services but ignore the larger community from which learners originate. The purpose of this study was to provide a review of the ongoing discussions related to the school library in the community context and provide implications for utilizing geographic information systems (GIS) to inform the idea of the “school library as place.” This preliminary exploration, a thematic literature review, indicated multiple possibilities for implementing GIS in school libraries that may enable teacher librarians to better facilitate students’ development of a sense of place, support their learning needs, and ensure that the community is reflected in the library collection and programs

How FAIR is MARC?: FAIR Data Principles applied to a bibliographic data standard

FAIR Data Principles provide a framework for considering how best to make data available in a way that is 1) findable, 2) accessible, 3) interoperable, and 4) reusable. Designed to be simple to understand and machine-actionable, FAIR principles support data use and reuse. This conceptual paper investigates the application of FAIR principles to bibliographic data through an examination of the current standard for encoding library records, MARC. To this end, this paper begins by describing the FAIR principles. It then looks to understand the MARC standard and applies the FAIR principles to the data affordances provided by the MARC encoding itself. In doing so, it probes the question of the extent to which MARC, as a standard, is FAIR. Ultimately, MARC is historically designed for machine-readability, not machine-actionability; although it is well suited to the description of bibliographic materials and is widely used, it does not adhere fully to any of the four FAIR principles. Even so, this examination suggests that FAIR principles could be useful in assessing specific MARC record datasets, particularly as bibliographic data is more widely shared and reused

A new decade of uses for geographic information systems (GIS) as a tool to research, measure and analyze library services

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore library research that uses geographic information systems (GIS) as a tool to evaluate library services and resources to ascertain current trends and establish future directions for this growing research area. Design/Methodology/Approach: The study searched full text for geographic information systems in two databases: Library and Information Science Source (LISS) and Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA), replicating the method used in a prior literature review. The titles and abstracts of the search results were analyzed to gather only the research that used GIS as a tool to measure and analyze library services. Findings: This study found growth in the last decade for library research using GIS. There remain two ways the tool is primarily used: to analyze service areas and to manage facilities and collections. Practical Implications: The findings are relevant for library and information science researchers and practitioners because they summarize a specific area of research that has grown and changed and that still has potential to be used more widely. Using GIS in practice and research could benefit all library users and nonusers because spatial analysis facilitates more precise and informed delivery of services and resources. Originality/Value: The paper provides future directions for use of GIS in library research and attempts to define subdivisions within this research area to clarify the area for researchers and practitioners

Measuring FAIR Principles to Inform Fitness for Use

For open science to flourish, data and any related digital outputs should be discoverable and re-usable by a variety of potential consumers. The recent FAIR Data Principles produced by the Future of Research Communication and e-Scholarship (FORCE11) collective provide a compilation of considerations for making data findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable. The principles serve as guideposts to ‘good’ data management and stewardship for data and/or metadata. On a conceptual level, the principles codify best practices that managers and stewards would find agreement with, exist in other data quality metrics, and already implement. This paper reports on a secondary purpose of the principles: to inform assessment of data’s FAIR-ness or, put another way, data’s fitness for use. Assessment of FAIR-ness likely requires more stratification across data types and among various consumer communities, as how data are found, accessed, interoperated, and re-used differs depending on types and purposes. This paper’s purpose is to present a method for qualitatively measuring the FAIR Data Principles through operationalizing findability, accessibility, interoperability, and re- usability from a re-user’s perspective. The findings may inform assessments that could also be used to develop situationally-relevant fitness for use frameworks

The Data Life Aquatic

   This paper assesses data consumers’ perspectives on the interoperable and re-usable aspects of the FAIR Data Principles. Taking a domain-specific informatics approach, ten oceanographers were asked to think of a recent search for data and describe their process of discovery, evaluation, and use. The interview schedule, derived from the FAIR Data Principles, included questions about the interoperability and re-usability of data. Through this critical incident technique, findings on data interoperability and re-usability give data curators valuable insights into how real-world users access, evaluate, and use data. Results from this study show that oceanographers utilize tools that make re-use simple, with interoperability seamless within the systems used. The processes employed by oceanographers present a good baseline for other domains adopting the FAIR Data Principles.&nbsp

Data Services Librarians’ Responsibilities and Perspectives on Research Data Management

This study of data services librarians is part of a series of studies examining the current roles and perspectives on Research Data Management (RDM) services in higher education. Reviewing current best practices provides insights into the role-based responsibilities for RDM services that data services librarians perform, as well as ways to improve and create new services to meet the needs of their respective university communities. Objectives: The objectives of this article are to provide the context of research data services through a review of past studies, explain how they informed this qualitative study, and provide the methods and results of the current study. This study provides an in-depth overview of the overall job responsibilities of data services librarians and as well as their perspectives on RDM through job analyses. Methods: Job analysis interviews provide insight and context to the tasks employees do as described in their own words. Interviews with 10 data services librarians recruited from the top 10 public and top 10 private universities according to the 2020 Best National University Rankings in the US News and World Reports were asked 30 questions concerning their overall job tasks and perspectives on RDM. Five public and five private data services librarians were interviewed. The interviews were recorded and transcribed. The transcriptions were analyzed in NVivo using a grounded theory application of open, axial, and selective coding to generate categories and broad themes based on the responses using synonymous meanings. Results: The results presented here provide the typical job tasks of data services librarians that include locating secondary data, reviewing data management plans (DMPs), conducting outreach, collaborating, and offering RDM training. Fewer data services librarians assisted with data curation or manage an institutional repository. Discussion: The results indicate that there may be different types of data services librarians depending on the mix of responsibilities. Academic librarianship will benefit from further delineation of job titles using tasks while planning, advertising, hiring, and evaluating workers in this emerging area. There remain many other explorations needed to understand the challenges and opportunities for data services librarians related to RDM. Conclusions: This article concludes with a proposed matrix of job tasks that indicates different types of data services librarians to inform further study. Future job descriptions, training, and education will all benefit from differentiating between the many associated research data services roles and with increased focus on research data greater specializations will emerge

Data Management Plan Implementation, Assessments, and Evaluations: Implications and Recommendations

Data management plans (DMPs) have become nearly a worldwide requirement for research funding. To meet these new funding agency expectations, information professionals across domains and the world have worked to create resources and services to successfully implement and sometimes assess DMPs. This essay presents a series of case studies from different institutions across the globe to highlight current practices and share recommendations for future work. A summary of various projects related to DMP implementation, assessment, and evaluation in different contexts provides a useful overview of current practices. The essay concludes with recommendations for practical oversight and scoring to improve DMPs’ utility in enabling the sharing of data