Text Analysis, Data Requests, and the Academic Library

The ability to comprehend and communicate with text-based data is essential to future success in academics and employment, as evidenced in a recent survey from Bloomberg Research Services which shows that nearly 97% of survey respondents now use data analytics in their companies and 58% consider data and text mining a business analytics tool (https://www.sas.com/content/dam/SAS/bp_de/doc/studie/ba-st-the-current-state-of-business-analytics-2317022.pdf). This has fueled a substantial growth in the field of text analysis, involving the use of technology to analyze un- and semi-structured text data for valuable insights, trends, and patterns.

Text analysis plays a pivotal role in various aspects of daily life, from the auto-suggest feature on your phone to the spam filter in your email and suggestions on streaming services. Recently, there has been significant buzz around text analysis and generative artificial intelligence, emphasizing their potential impact on human society.

In our panel session, we will introduce the concept of text analysis and its importance. Librarians from four diverse higher education institutions, ranging from a large STEM focussed institution to a small liberal arts university, will discuss meeting the many text analysis needs arising on their campuses: integrating text analysis pedagogy across campus, running workshops out of the library, working with faculty to integrate it into class materials, and supporting research on campus. The panelists will also speak to some of the challenges inherent in supporting this work, ranging from budgetary concerns to issues of data management, access, and reproducibility.

With students and faculty from all disciplines adopting text analysis, academic libraries have the opportunity to become primary supporters of this approach.