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Learning how to wield data ethically and responsibly is a critical skill for data scientists, but one that is often lacking from traditional curriculum. Libraries have a long history of teaching data stewardship and sharing, and, in collaboration with collegiate research support entities, are good candidates to expose students engaging in data science to data ethics. This chapter presents four case studies on how the University of Minnesota Libraries and its partners have deeply integrated ethics into data management instruction. The chapter will highlight ethics for general data management instruction to undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines, human subject data de-identification, qualitative methods and sharing, and biodiversity location data. Together, the case studies show how libraries and their partners are a natural fit to advance the work of data science curricula when it comes to managing data and the myriad ethical considerations that go along with this work.

Purpose Since the 2016 presidential election, hyper-partisanship has become a regular facet of the political landscape with Democrats and Republicans in increasing conflict. The purpose of this paper is to determine if perception of government sources related to trust and credibility has changed since the 2016 election and if the experiences and strategies of librarians who teach or consult about government information has changed in response to this environment. Design/methodology/approach A 24-question survey was distributed to garner qualitative and quantitative responses from librarians who teach or consult about government information in an academic environment. A total of 122 responses were used for analysis. Findings Academic librarians are seeing more concern from patrons about disappearing online government information and wider distrust of government information. Librarians also noticed that the political leanings of students color their perspective around government sources and that librarians also need to keep their political beliefs in check. Respondents emphasized a need for more government literacy and information literacy topics when discussing evaluation of government sources. Research limitations/implications The data collection only included responses from academic librarians. Further research could include in-depth interviews and look at experiences in various library types. Originality/value With the timeliness of this topic, there has not been an in-depth investigation into how the Trump administration has changed user trust and perception of government sources from the librarian’s point of view. This paper continues the conversation about how librarians can address the growing distrust of government information and give us insight into the effects of a turbulent political climate on government sources.

The reproducibility of scientific studies has recently come under increased scrutiny in both the popular and scientific press. Studies from various disciplines (e.g., psychology, health sciences) have revealed failures to reproduce and replicate research. This has led to declarations that science is experiencing a “reproducibility crisis” and that this crisis has negative consequences for science, the public, and public policy. Two of the authors have previously published on reproducibility and the services and expertise librarians and libraries offer that make the library community a key part of supporting reproducible research, and we direct you to these articles for more information on this broader topic.

As data skills are incorporated into academic curriculum and data becomes more widely available and used in everyday life, many librarians find themselves serving as 'accidental' data librarians in their subject areas. Due to this evolving landscape and growing data need, it is increasingly important for librarians to be familiar with data resources and able to answer secondary data reference questions. To learn more about this area of librarianship, this study uses survey responses from librarians who answer data questions to explore the challenges and frustrations that arise from data reference questions and interactions. Our key findings reveal that frustrations are ever present in data reference regardless of how much experience a librarian has, and many frustrations arise due to factors such as patron expectations, subject-specific and data-related jargon, and data formats and accessibility.

Questions about locating hard-to-find data, including international data, historical and time series data, and microdata are on the rise. These questions range across subject areas, including economics, politics, health, business, and agriculture, and in addition to the challenge of merely finding this data, users often lack general data literacy skills when first asking their research questions. In order to learn more about the landscape of secondary data reference and how librarians can better support researchers and users in this area, data-focused librarians at the University of Minnesota developed a survey targeting library staff in the United States that work with data-related questions. This poster summarizes and draws conclusions from the survey, which focused on the types of data questions received and from whom, how librarians tackle these questions, frustrations they experience, and opportunities for increasing expertise in this area of librarianship.