The Data Library in the University of Florida Libraries

A UNIVERSITY LIBRARY has three major goals: (1) to collect the most significant information resources; (2) to organize these resources; and (3) to service them for faculty, students and a number of “outside” publics. Machine-readable data files (MRDF) are now a growing segment of available information resources. The private sector, the public sector, individuals engaged in research, and many institutions are producing files for historical use, research and decision-making purposes. The academic library can play a major role in archiving and servicing these files. For the culture of print, an international infrastructure of producers, distributors and collectors has long been developed. National systems of inventory and description such as the Library of Congress and OCLC make the professional responsibilities of librarians much easier. For the hundreds of producers and very few collectors of MRDF, there is very little of this infrastructure available. Major federal, state and regional governments are producing time-series data and single surveys of importance in decision-making and research. The private sector is very advanced in these areas. Without a developing network of the creators, collectors and archivists of these data, chaos is inevitable. In the area of data services, the lack of a network or infrastructure has created a number of critical issues. The overriding question concerns what groups shall take the responsibility of archiving and servicing MRDF. This writer believes that the large university library may be one of the appropriate institutions. He retains this opinion even when