Describing Data Repositories

With the rise of eScience, subject liaisons must become familiar with disciplinary data repositories to better serve their clientele. Research data can often be deposited in one or more repositories. For researchers who are not well informed or work in fields that have yet to develop a data repository existing lists such as DataBib, Registry of Research Data Repositories or OpenDOAR provide a combined list of up to 2000 data repositories but little information about each one. Subject liaisons at the University of Connecticut Libraries can help researchers find appropriate data repositories for data submission and discovery. However, with such a large listing, how do subject liaisons evaluate repositories in their disciplines? To support our subject liaisons better evaluate data repositories and to give them more confidence to help their faculty in eScience, we created the “Describe Your Data Repository” survey