The Role of Astronomy Librarians in FAIR Bibliography Curation and Metric Analyses

Nearly all major astronomy observatories maintain telescope and staff bibliographies. Bibliographies are one of many tools used by observatory management to evaluate their organizations’ research productivity. In most cases observatory libraries play a crucial role in the data collection and metric analyses that drive critical decisions related to benchmarking, funding, mission evaluation, hiring, talent retention, and promotion. It is incumbent on the observatory’s leadership, instrument scientists, and bibliographers together to ask the right questions in order to understand what they’re trying to measure, whether it is possible and fair to assess, and the association between output and impact.

Over time, astronomy librarians have not only enhanced their bibliography databases and set new parameters and guidelines to ensure equity, such as the FAIR principles and a push for open access publishing; they have also collaborated with fellow librarians, archive scientists, astronomers, and publishers around the globe to exchange best practices and to understand how astronomy as a science is changing.

In this presentation, we will provide an overview of the ESO and Hubble bibliographies. We will inspect what constitutes impact, and how institutional and individual staff metrics can be assessed to capture the full range of contributions to the advancement of science during all career stages and over the lifetime of an observatory and its data archive.