When Data Met Librarians: A Canadian Data Story

Academic data professionals, data librarianship and data services emerged as a specialized area in the 1970s in response to the emergence of government and other data sources being made available for research as Machine Readable Data Files (MRDF). The data required equipment to be read and people with specialized skills to provide access to these files. Early on, Archives, Social Science Data Centres, and Libraries were chosen to house both the data and staff, but through time, libraries are where this has mostly ended up residing.

Our research project focuses on the evolution of data professionals in the Canadian academic community and how this cohort grew in response to the need to support data access for researchers, faculty and students. We will share highlights of the materials we sought out, the challenges encountered along the way, and how navigating those challenges led to an inherently iterative research process, with moments of serendipity helping to fill gaps in the timeline.

Alexandra Cooper, Siobhan Hanratty and Elizabeth Hill are data professionals who have supported the Statistics Canada Data Liberation Initiative (DLI) at their institutions since 2003, 2001 and 1998 respectively, and have held leadership roles within the DLI Professional Development Committee since 2018, 2009 and 2010.