Data literacy among librarians: a grid to assess the perception of needs and skills

Our poster presents a grid to assess the perception of data literacy needs and skills among scientific library staff. This grid includes a framework of data literacy and pedagogy skills that are necessary to offer a research data management (RDM) training strategy within a higher education institution (HEI).

Confronted with the need to create a synergy between teaching librarians and RDM-specialists at our library, we decided to assess the skills and perception of our teams regarding data literacy. We looked for adequate frameworks such as Podman, 2020 and Dalhouse University, 2018 for data literacy related skills and as well as the ACRL Standards for Proficiencies for Instruction Librarians and Coordinators (2017) for pedagogy skills. We listed all skills blocs and removed duplicates to ensure we had a comprehensive approach. Then, we merged them into a new, refined framework that highlights skills needed to teach data literacy. To gather information regarding perception, we asked the following questions for each skills:

• Do you think the skill is important for the HEI in general or not?
• Do you think the skill should be within the library scope?
• Do you think someone currently masters this skill in the library?
• For each skill, a space for notes is also available

The grid aims to support library management in knowing how their team perceives these sets of skills: are they within the scope of the library? Are these skills present within the competencies of the library staff? In the end, the grid also maps the gaps in the skill set of staff with the library’s perceived mission.