How To Win Friends and Influence Data Administrators: Linking Research Data As A Bridge Building Exercise

Three librarian workers across three different divisions embarked on a journey to determine how their library could use both internal and external data to work toward a more coordinated research impact measurement strategy. Inspired in part by the Realities of Academic Data Sharing (RADS) Initiative, what began as research data management cost analysis grew to become a data dashboard exploring the relationship between library services and faculty research outputs at the University of North Texas (UNT), using the project process itself to strengthen relationships between key campus stakeholders and the University Library.

This project is a joint effort between librarians from three divisions (Collection Management, Digital Libraries, and Public Services) to leverage their roles’ distinct perspectives, access, and campus networks more strategically and collaboratively while working towards each of their respective units’ research service priorities. Lacking a centralized research information management system or even a comprehensive bibliometric metadata strategy, linking library and external data sources to institutional data proved especially challenging, with significant flaws in many campus partners’ metadata. By using the project’s data collection process as an instrument for outreach, this work served not only its primary function of creating a dashboard for the library’s research service analysis, but also as an opportunity to strengthen connections with key campus partners, improve institutional data management practices across research offices, and demonstrate the library’s place in the campus research ecosystem.

In this presentation, a collections data analyst, a repository librarian, and a data services librarian will tell the story of how they wrangled research-related datasets such as OpenAlex, ORCiD, federal grants data, and their own institutional data to create connections not only between datasets but also between people across the library and campus partners across the institution.