Libraries and the management of research data

Perhaps the starting point for any discussion about libraries and research data is to ask whether managing data is actually a job for university libraries. The answer to this question is ‘yes and no’. ‘Yes’, in the sense that data from academic research projects represents an integral part of the global research knowledge base, and so managing it should be a natural extension of the university library's current role in providing access to the published part of that knowledge base. ‘No’, because the scale of the challenge in terms of infrastructure, skills and culture change requires concerted action by a range of stakeholders, and not just university libraries.