Data Competencies for Librarians

This presentation reports on the findings of a retrospective scoping review on data-related skills needed by liaison and subject librarians to effectively support academic researchers. Despite the growing demand for research data assistance, many librarians lack formal training or express confidence in this area, often relying on self-directed learning. The objective of this review was to map data-related competencies over a ten-year period (2012-2022) with particular attention given to identifying the skill sets that liaison librarians or non-data librarians need to develop or hone. Our top findings show that in addition to the traditional librarian competencies, such as reference/consulting, teaching/training and collaboration/engagement, librarians also need to know how to create metadata, how to prepare data for repositories, how to preserve data, how to create data management plans, and how to support programming/data analysis queries. It is our intention to present a prioritized list of the required skills.