Piloting the Purchase of Research Data Sets as Collections: Navigating the Unknowns

In fiscal year 2017, The Ohio State University Libraries in Columbus piloted the purchase of research data sets to explore how to integrate this format into the standard workflows of the collections strategist and electronic resources officer. The pilot project had few restrictions except that one-time money must be used and purchases must be available to the entire campus community. This pilot enabled the libraries to purchase several large-scale data sets while exploring issues around licensing, technical deployment, support, and assessment in an organization without a data librarian. This article details the pilot process and outlines the resulting considerations for future purchases of data sets.Publisher allows immediate open acces