LIBRARIES THE FUTURE FOR DATA MANAGEMENT?

A colleague drew my attention today to the service being offered by the MIT Libraries, namely, to help MIT faculty and researchers manage and publish their data – see http://libraries.mit.edu/guides/subjects/data-management/index.html. I did wonder for a moment whether this was a case of the old data/information conundrum but no, they really do mean data, and they’re not talking in terms merely of research papers.

Interestingly, MIT Libraries don’t claim to provide all the necessary resources, but to describe them, giving links to established national data repositories, for example - an approach that would fit nicely with the umbrella solution described in the UKRDS interim report (accessible from http://www.ukrds/ac.uk).

I’d be interested to know how many of the UK’s university libraries are offering resources for managing research data throughout their lifecycle – or even how many have plans to offer that service. Or is everyone awaiting the outcomes from the UKRDS study before making a commitment?