Introduction: libraries and data

Libraries have a long-standing tradition in handling data. Back in the 1960s, with the rise of national data centers as custodians of digital social surveys, social science data libraries emerged within university libraries. These pioneering data services aimed to support social scientists in accessing the newly available secondary data sources. In recent years, libraries have also undertaken mass digitization projects, which have resulted in large collections of data that need careful and specialized handling for both dissemination and preservation. Moreover, libraries have adopted a leading role in the research data management space by focusing on primary data and supporting researchers across disciplines to manage them from the moment of creation, providing means to capture, store, document and share their data.

Currently, academic and research libraries have important collections of digital data as well as the expertise to curate them. But should libraries exploit their data in other ways? Can data science methods bring new forms of working with and making available library data? Could this expertise be used to apply analytics to support the organization's decision making?

Against this background of libraries and data, this chapter presents an exploratory data science library unit within a cultural organization: the DataLab of the Library of the Fundación Juan March (FJM). The main objective of the chapter is to present a case study of the inception and development of the structure and services provided by the DataLab and provide a useful example for others interested in exploring the use of data science in libraries.

The chapter starts by setting the context of the FJM and its core activities, which include research and libraries. It goes on to describe the evolution of the DataLab from a social science data library into a data science unit with a focus on data curation and analytics projects. The interdisciplinary nature of the unit will be described together with its concise objectives, the core members of the team and the technical infrastructure setup needed to run a wide range of dissemination, preservation and analytics projects.

In order to show concrete aspects of the DataLab, the chapter will report on a variety of projects and activities undertaken in the last few years.