Data competencies for liaison librarians: A scoping review

This retrospective scoping review explores the data-related competencies required by liaison and subject librarians to effectively support academic researchers. Despite the growing demand for research data assistance, many librarians lack formal training (Tenopir et al., 2014) or confidence (Cox et al., 2012) in this area, often relying on self-taught skills. The objective of this review was to map data-related competencies over a ten-year period (2012-2022) with particular attention given to the skill sets that liaisons or non-data librarians may need to develop or hone. Overall, the findings indicate a surprisingly stable list of skills over this period. This review finds that to support research data services on campus, librarians must rely on traditional skills including reference/consulting, teaching/training and collaboration/engagement as well as data-specific competencies, including metadata creation, data preparation for repositories, data preservation, data management plan (DMP) creation, and programming/data analysis. These competencies are essential for librarians to assist researchers with data queries. The study highlights the need for structured training and suggests which competencies to prioritize. The findings aim to guide the development of self-training resources and cross-training initiatives to better equip librarians in supporting data-rich research.