Assessing a Patron-Driven, Library-Funded Data Purchase Program

The University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign established the Data Purchase Program in 2010 to provide a source of funding for the purchase of datasets which are requested by students and faculty, and make this data available to the campus at large for future use. In this study, the authors interviewed past applicants who submitted proposals to this program to collect their feedback and perspectives on the strengths of this program and the impact that it had on their research, as well as to determine any aspects of the program's design or implementation that need improvements. Interviews revealed that the ease of application and lack of other options for obtaining data made the program appealing, especially to graduate students, but that study participants wished for a more robust program in terms of marketing the specific data purchased by the library and help with data in general. Also, the purchased data had a wide range of impacts on the participants’ research.