JISC

The librarian’s role is changing from paper to digital and a JISC funded project Disc-UK is helping to tackle the current as well as future challenge of how to share and store data.

In this month’s Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) update magazine in an articlThe article discusses the changing role of librarians and the issues surrounding standardised formats and the legal aspects of enabling the sharing of digital data.e entitled
Data librarianship – a gap in the market Stuart MacDonald from Disc-UK Datashare and Edina National Data Centre, along with Luis Martinez-Uribe, who works at the Oxford e-Research Centre, talk to Elspeth Hyams from Clilip about their roles as ‘accidental’ data librarians.

The article discusses the changing role of librarians, the issues surrounding standardised formats and the legal aspects of enabling the sharing of digital data as well as the opportunities that Disc UK Datashare is looking to deliver for the sector.

With the introduction of the Freedom of Information Act in conjunction with the fast pace of technology, librarians are finding themselves at the centre of how to collect, archive and manage data.

MacDonald and Martinez-Uribe explain their role as data librarians is being driven by ‘supporting research’ and ‘the raw data that is collected by researchers to support a PhD’.

Disc-UK Datashare was launched in March 2007 with two years of funding. The project’s aim is to contribute to new models, workflows and tools for academic data sharing in an environment in which an increased emphasis is being made on stewardship of institutional knowledge assets of all types, new technologies for doing e-Research are being developed and in which new research council policies and the growth of the Open Access and Open Data movement are directly impacting on scholarly communications.

  DISC - UK