Data Services in Academic Libraries Assessing Needs and Promoting Services
Eleanor J. Read · Reference & User Services Quarterly · 2007
Academic libraries play an important role in making numeric collections available to their researchers and providing assistance in identifying and accessing appropriate resources. The University of Tennessee Libraries have been working to strengthen the numeric component of their reference services and have expanded promotion and outreach activities to make this specialized service more visible. In fall 2003, the Data Services Awareness and Use Survey was conducted to learn more about the university's users of research and assess their awareness of the service and the effectiveness of promotional activities. Results of the survey are being used to plan, promote, and provide services. The survey portion of this manuscript was presented, in part, at the International Association for Social Science Information Service and Technology Conference on May 26, 2004 in Madison, Wisconsin. Academic researchers use numeric resources to study a vast array of research questions. Applications range from using summary statistics to describe a population, the economic condition of a country, or the opinions of a group of people, to analyzing sets in order to study relationships between different variables. In the academic environment, libraries may play a pivotal role in providing services and collections to help researchers identify and access appropriate resources. (1) To support these important research activities at the University of Tennessee (UT), the university libraries have, in recent years, committed to expanding reference services and collection development activities to include a numeric component. This service is called Data Services. With any relatively new library service, it is important to promote it and raise awareness among potential users. It is just as important to determine the needs of those users to facilitate planning and provide appropriate services. The Data Services Awareness and Use Survey of 2003 was the libraries' attempt to get feedback from current and potential users about their use of and needs for data, their awareness of Data Services, and the effectiveness of various promotional and outreach activities. This article provides a brief overview of services in academic libraries and discusses how the survey conducted at UT was used to learn more about its users in order to develop new services and outreach programs that meet users' needs. DATA NEEDS A numeric product may be defined as any information resource with considerable numeric content. (2) These sources may be found in a variety of formats, including print, microform, or electronic formats such as CD-ROMs, online databases, and Web sites. The types of may range from aggregated statistical to microdata in large computer files. It should be noted that, while the focus of this article is on numeric data, data subjected to secondary analysis by researchers may also come in digital forms such as cartographic data, text, images, and audio and video files. (3) Numeric may be used to answer a variety of research questions. A common need of students, for example, is to find information in the form of a few quick facts or statistics that can be used in a report or speech. Students may need to put together a sociodemographic profile of a community, find crime rates for several cities over the last ten years, or look at poll results to assess current public opinion on a given topic. The emphasis, in such cases, is usually on reporting or description, rather than manipulation or analysis. (4) Some popular sources of statistical information include the Statistical Abstract of the United States (print and online), the U.S. Census Bureau's American FactFinder, and FedStats (a gateway to statistics from more than one hundred U.S. federal agencies). (5) At the other end of the spectrum are the researchers who wish to analyze to examine relationships, trends, phenomena, or policy implications that were not addressed by the original researchers. …