UC Libraries Forum 2021: Leading with Innovation, Stronger through Collaboration

In today’s library settings, there is an increasing focus on data skills and data literacy. In fact, many library job seekers consider data skills a ticket to success, and many believe that data-related competencies are more central than ever for the activities of library workers (this term includes all: library staff, librarians, student workers, etc.)

Library leaders now encourage widespread acquisition of data skills in order to have a corps of data-savvy library workers. But what happens to the data-hesitant library worker in this scenario? While data literacy is seen as a universal good and universally attainable, data-related training often assumes competency levels that are above the “rank beginner” status advertised. This means that for any push towards data-savviness, there are both library workers who resist, whatever the reasons for their hesitation, and library workers who want to engage but have barriers/uncertainty around beginning.

The questions included in this presentation will be: how to engage these library workers with data? Can we? Must we? Should we? An outline of critical data literacy will be followed by suggestions for how to engage “non-data” library workers with data training and activities in the library setting. The issues of how feasible/desirable it is to expect universal data-savviness, and how to empower library workers to choose their own approaches to the issue, both in the workplace and in their career planning, will be addressed. Finally we’ll discuss training approaches and resources. Attendees will leave with ideas for implementing data initiatives in their settings which are inclusive of all levels of data comfort.