Managing Through Crisis: Supervising Data Librarians In Uncertain Times

The only thing harder than being a data librarian is managing data librarians. These go-getters often possess the perfect balance of technical and social expertise, which makes them efficient at their jobs but also makes them difficult to recruit and retain. This is coupled with the constant demand for services, often without an increase in capacity and staffing. The past year has been particularly demanding, especially for department managers and their employees based in the United States, where academic institutions face growing fiscal challenges.

Bringing together a roundtable of US-based supervisors and managers, this session will provide a forum for discussing strategies used over the past year and those we can use to navigate as we move into the future. We also aim to incorporate voices from diverse perspectives through audience participation techniques. We will discuss approaches for 1) navigating the changing federal landscape, especially related to data; 2) coping in the face of those changes; and 3) mentoring data librarians facing a future of uncertainty and AI. Rather than dwelling on the chaos, we plan to chart a path forward that projects continuity and maintains our teams as both professionals and human beings.