Mainstreaming Data: Challenges to Libraries

Libraries are increasingly aware that their role includes providing access to data in electronic form. Determining the level of service and acquiring the skills needed to provide effective access are key to integrating data services with success in any organization, as is having the administrative support to do so. The proliferation of electronic media, formats, hardware, and software requires new knowledge bases. Libraries that do not take a leadership role will forfeit a pivotal position in assisting patrons with accessing the wealth of information available in electronic form. For the past several years, U.S. academic libraries have been anticipating the inevitable--the receipt of large amounts of 1990 census data in electronic form. Statements of why libraries should be involved in providing access to computer-readable census data are not new, as this quote from Rowe and Ryan (1974) illustrates: Why not just store the tapes at the computer and let the computer people handle them? By doing this, the library would be abdicating its role as an information center. It would deny users the opportunity of locating information at the place we have trained them to look for it, the library.[1] What is new for the 1990s is the complication of a greater variety of electronic format, software, hardware, and network decisions to consider. The growth of involvement by academic libraries in the realm of computer-readable data, while slow in coming, has been incremental. Many of the libraries that formerly eschewed responsibility for providing services to computer-readable data are now facing the issues surrounding data files. The infusion of CD-ROMs containing numeric data in libraries as part of the U.S. Federal Depository Library Program has assisted in placing a sense of urgency among those receiving them. The time has come for more libraries to consider mainstreaming data services, while keeping in mind that there is a wealth of experience from which to draw in the data library and archive community that is already well established across the United States and Canada.[2] WHAT CONSTITUTES DATA, AND HOW ARE THEY USED? "Words, Pictures, Numbers, and Sounds: Priorities for the 1990s" was the theme of the International Association of Social Science Information Services and Technology's (IASSIST) 1990 annual meeting and illustrates the breadth of data usage for research and teaching.[3] Data in electronic form can include public opinion surveys, hospital-admission records, digital cartographic data, literary works, digital storage of sound bites, video footage, photographs, and much more. Computer-readable data are used routinely in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Libraries cannot afford to neglect them, but rather need to understand how data are created and how they are used in order to respond to new service demands. Social Data Computer-readable social data are a proliferating body of information and research sources, derived from the surveys, censuses, and administrative records of a multitude of commercial research groups, government agencies, academic institutions, and private research agencies. The amount of numeric data produced and available for secondary data analysis has dramatically increased and is distributed in a variety of computer-readable formats. Quantitative analysis of data is one of the essential methodological approaches used in a variety of social sciences and related disciplines, including anthropology, business, economics, education, geography, health-care fields, history, political science, psychology, and sociology. The scope of data available for secondary analysis has also grown tremendously. Common categories of data include economic, political, and social attitudes and behavior patterns; social indicators and quality of life; business and commerce; population and housing; education; employment; aging and life cycle; crime and criminal justice; and health care and health facilities. …