Teaching data literacy in academic libraries

Academic libraries are considered to be a repository for knowledge, teaching and research supporting tools. As research is changing, expanding and transforming, libraries must adapt in their research support methods, and keep widening the availability of ressources and expertise. In recent years, data have become a more visible part of research, thus academic libraries must add data literacy to their research support portfolio and start offering ressources for researchers to learn about data management and its benefits. The EU funded project DaLiCo (Data Literacy in Context) is dedicated to increase the visibility, quality and usage of existing data literacy activities at a university level. The project aims at establishing collaborations between academic partners (departments, library, external partners) to convey data literacy competencies and contribute to the cultural change toward stronger data managing skills and openness. The research data lifecycle (plan-collect-analyse-preserve-share-reuse) provides numerous intervention points where research support agents, librarians can play a large part in the discovery, understanding, and curation of research data. Libraries can (1) provide access to data information (data availability, data sharing, data preservation, etc.), (2) offer services on research data management, and (3) support data science by providing access to training and instructional materials to help improve the knowledge and skill base surrounding data. Connecting to data driven research and related data literacy education, DaLiCo develops a Train the Trainer program to enhance data literacy and skills education among researchers. The primary aim of the program is to build a modular teaching framework which provides methodological and content support for involved stakeholders (researchers, teachers, librarians) for transferring knowledge on data science. This program can also be integrated into the teaching and support toolbox of libraries. Librarians’ expertise in data management and knowledge transfer can serve as the foundation for the training of the next generations of data scientists. The presentation at the BOBCATSSS 2022 will showcase the DaLiCo Train the Trainer program and demonstrate how such program can be included in academic libraries’ research support portfolio