Venturing Beyond our Silos: Results from a Survey of Canadian Data Repository Administrators

The academic library community has a long history of collaboration demonstrated by the global adoption of common standards in our work. Despite the widespread use of the same standards and platforms, too few examples exist of academic libraries navigating beyond silos to shared infrastructure and services. As the scope of academic libraries grows to support research data as part of the scholarly resources that we steward, is it possible to develop shared research data management (RDM) services and infrastructures collaboratively? Six years have passed since a recommendation was made by [country’s] national research library association to establish a national data repository that would provide a robust, scalable, and affordable shared service. Building a national repository together would harness available but limited and distributed expertise in RDM, and encourage the collective creation and reuse of materials supporting training, user support, and outreach. Since 2019, [Data Repository] began formally offering the service nationally, governed in partnership with regional academic library consortia, which now supports over 70 [Country] institutions, each managing a locally-branded collection and providing local support to researchers.

Has this push for greater equity been realized by [Data Repository] and what are the experiences of its institutional administrators? This presentation reports the results of a community-led survey of [Country] [Data Repository]’s administrators, focusing on their individual perspectives on challenges, barriers, and needs of the emerging community. Overall, the results of the survey highlight a unique effort to build equitable data sharing infrastructure that is national in scope and reflective of community needs. Understanding both the infrastructure demands and the needs for support from our community provides insights on how to plan future programs and software development initiatives. Learning from our experiences and our community can benefit other national and international large-scale repository initiatives in charting the future of data.