Using a bibliographic study to identify faculty candidates for data services

Making connections with faculty can be challenging for librarians developing new data services programs. In order to identify faculty with a variety of data experiences, the author conducted a review of selected recent publications by sixty-two agricultural faculty members at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. As a follow-up, faculty who had publicly shared data beyond that published in an article were contacted directly to request interviews to discuss data sharing. These active, targeted messages have generated more faculty response than the general data services announcements previously broadcast. Bibliographic studies are a known method for librarians, but using this method to identify faculty candidates for data services represents a new application. The advantages and disadvantages of this approach are discussed.