Journal Article: “Piloting the Purchase of Research Data Sets as Collections: Navigating the Unknowns” (Preprint)
The following research article (preprint) is posted on the “portal: Libraries and the Academy” website.
Title
Piloting the Purchase of Research Data Sets as Collections: Navigating the Unknowns (Preprint)
Authors
Anita K. Foster
The Ohio State University
Amanda K. Rinehart
The Ohio State University
Gene R. Springs
The Ohio State University
Source
“portal: Libraries and the Academy”
Scheduled to appear in Vol. 19, No. 2 (2019)
Abstract
In fiscal year 2017, The Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus piloted the purchase of research data sets to explore how to integrate this format into the standard workflows of the collections strategist and electronic resources officer. The pilot project had few restrictions except that one-time money must be used and purchases must be available to the entire campus community. This pilot enabled the libraries to purchase several large-scale data sets while exploring issues around licensing, technical deployment, support, and assessment in an organization without a data librarian. This article details the pilot process and outlines the resulting considerations for future purchases of data sets.
Direct to Full Text Article (14 pages; PDF)
Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, News, Reports

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.