Data Services
Service Plan
The mission of Michigan State University Library Data Services is to make numeric data resources available to students, faculty and staff to support curricular, research, and general information needs. Data Services will assist in the identification and retrieval of numeric data sets. Data Services strives to act as an information resource regarding data activities across the MSU campus.
Data Services is a part of the Government Documents library. Other units within the library that will be working closely with Data Services include the Map Library and the Business Library.
Data Set Identification: The primary goal of the Data Services librarian is to help MSU faculty, staff and students determine content and format of locally available data files and also those files available off campus.
Instructional Support and Quantitative Literacy: The Data Services librarian supports the development of quantitative literacy through instruction and resource availability. In-class instruction on data resources are available upon request.
See also Library Instruction, Quantitative Literacy.
Data Set Acquisitions: The Data Services librarian will acquire data sets available from consortium memberships (e.g. ICPSR), other on campus resources, and those that are freely available (e.g. government produced data). Other data sets will be pursued contingent upon funding. Efforts will be made to maintain an archival copy of acquired data sets. Data Services will catalog paper Codebooks and make other electronic codebooks and data sets known through the library's online catalog or its Electronic Resources web pages.
Custom Data Set Use: The Data Services librarian will, if time, resources and licenses permit, assist in the subsetting of large data sets.
Data Set Analysis: The Data Services librarian does not provide statistical analysis or consultation. There are other units on campus available for statistical consulting.
See Can the Data Center help me analyze data?