New Report From OCLC Research: “Building RDM Capacity Through Strategic Library Collaboration”

From OCLC Research:

OCLC Research has published the new report Building Research Data Management Capacity: Case Studies in Strategic Library Collaboration, which provides actionable recommendations based on real-world case studies that libraries can apply to make their own collaborations successful and sustainable.

Research data management is an increasingly vital strategic interest for academic libraries, and many collaborate with other libraries to scale resources and meet institutional RDM needs. Library collaboration is a strategic decision that can transform your institution’s RDM capabilities, but successful and sustainable collaboration is not guaranteed and requires careful consideration.

The report shares experiences and insights from the Texas Data Repository, Portage Network, and Data Curation Network to illuminate the challenges, opportunities, and considerations of building RDM service capacity through collaboration.

More About The Report

This report applies the following four strategic frames introduced in the previous OCLC report Library Collaboration as a Strategic Choice to the case studies explored here. Derived from economic concepts, these four strategic frames can help to understand a collaboration’s potential success and sustainability:

Coordination: Consider strategies for coordinating group-scale efforts, mitigating risks, and fostering trust and commitment among partners.

• Costs: Analyze the transaction costs associated with collaboration, from identifying partners to achieving consensus and allocating staff resources.
• Change: Navigate the challenges of change management with insights into path dependency and the costs of switching to collaborative solutions.
• Control: Discover how to address the principal-agent problem, especially in governance arrangements, and establish effective oversight mechanisms.

Direct to the Full Text Report

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