Data Instruction: Developing New Roles for Data Librarians

Research data services has been a dynamically evolving area in libraries over the past few years.  New opportunities have emerged for libraries to deliver data related instruction as institutions develop and offer data management services to respond to federally mandated research data management needs of campus communities.  The UC San Diego Library has developed instructional workshops to teach graduate students and researchers basic foundational computational skills that include using data analysis tools, such as R and Python, programming best practices, and how to employ reproducible research methods in data and code management.  The presenters will discuss how the library decided to target data instruction for graduate students, how we developed the workshops, how we developed ourselves to be able to teach these skills and what we learned from our initial feedback from our first year offering them. We will discuss our thoughts about how teaching these workshops is an important way a library can engage with the research enterprise on a campus.  We will discuss our future affiliation with Software Carpentry and how we plan on targeting departments/schools on campus to develop audiences, collaborators and advocates for the programmatic growth of the workshop offerings. In this manner, we hope to engage a discussion with participants on how best a library can help meet the increasing demand for basic scientific computing programming skills across research disciplines and how that can be an opportunity for new librarian roles.