Book Review: The Data Librarian’s Handbook by Robin Rice and John Southall | LSE Review of Books

"This book is an overdue examination of that new, exotic addition to the librarian menagerie: the Data Librarian. Academic libraries and librarians have long had a role in managing access to data resources, and indeed LSE Library is this year celebrating the twentieth anniversary of its Data Library, a dedicated service for the provision of data for learning and research. However the increasing need for libraries to support activities around Research Data Management (RDM) has led to the creation of dedicated Data Librarian roles. It is this emergent profession that Robin Rice and John Southall’s The Data Librarian’s Handbook reflects upon and seeks to guide.

Now, you might be thinking that such a book is likely to be dry, technical and possibly slightly boring. I was worried about this too, but no such thoughts arose as I read it – it is well written, being both accessible for any general reader who might be interested and sufficiently sophisticated in its breadth of coverage and detail to provide insight for those professionally invested in the issues discussed. It helps that each chapter ends with a useful set of summary bullet points, as well as reflective questions for a couple of its target audiences: namely, students studying to become information professionals and early-career librarians who may be tasked with involvement in data-related services. There is also a set of interesting case studies from Data Librarian practitioners that provide local colour (full disclosure: one of these comes from LSE Library’s very own Data Librarian, Laurence Horton)."