Abstract
Academic libraries need to store, preserve, and manage scholars' intellectual output, hence the importance of research data management in academic libraries. This chapter focuses on research data management in academic libraries, and it aims at examining the concept of research data, which is referred to as the evidence used to inform or support research conclusions, while data management, on the other hand involves planning for and creating data, organizing, structuring, and documenting data, backing up and storing data, and preparing data for analysis to share with others or to preserve for the long-term.
TopResearch Data
Rice (2009) defined research data as data collected, observed or created for the purposes of analysing to produce original research results. While, according to Kennan & Markauskaite (2015), data may not necessarily be used for research alone since the data include administrative records, log files of learning management systems and web portals and other behavioural traces used in learning analytics and traces of individual lives available from social media. The authors went further to state that research data, just like data sources, are heterogeneous because of the many forms depending on origins, research problem addressed and the discipline of the researcher, and that in the life and physical sciences. Researchers gather and produce data mostly through observations, experiments and computer modelling whilst in the social sciences researchers gather and produce data from interviews, surveys and questionnaires, and observations.
Generally, research data can be referred to as the proof used to enlighten or back up research conclusions. According to Van Berchum & Grootveld (2017), the tangible forms research data materials may take are; facts, observations, interviews, recordings, measurements, experiments, simulations, and software; numerical, descriptive and visual; raw, cleaned up and processed. From the above definition, it is obvious that it combines type, form and research phase from the perspective that all manifestations of research data need to be actively managed to achieve high-quality data that have the potential to be reused.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Data Curation: It is the management of data from its originality to the point it becomes out-dated and useless.
Information: Information is a message or facts received or obtained about something.
Data Stewardship: It is the efforts taken by information providers in protecting the integrity and quality of data in order to ensure its usability by the researchers.
Librarian: A librarian is a person that studies library in higher institution and works professionally in a library.
Organization: It is an action of putting something or people together for a particular purpose and in achieving an aim.
Process: It is an action happening or series of events perform to achieve a particular results.
Policies: It is a method or systematic principles that guides decision making and achieving rational outcomes.
Researcher: A researcher is a person who carries out information discovering or search for knowledge that will be used in solving problems.
Access: It is a process of retrieving or obtaining an information or data.
Preservation: It is the act of keeping something valuable safe from damage and in good condition for present and future use.
Prospects: It is a possibility of events that will happen in the future, whether outcome will be positive or negative.