Business data: issues and challenges from the Canadian perspective

Abstract

This paper explores the issues and challenges that we have faced as Canadian academic business librarians when working with business data. As this is an exploratory study, we hope only to start a discussion among data librarians about some key challenges facing the academic community related to supporting the teaching and research use of business data. Our paper begins with a brief discussion of general data trends, followed by a detailed exploration of business data trends and trends in Canadian business education. We discuss challenges and issues related to working with business data from both the collections and reference service perspectives, including the pros and cons of providing business data services and support within the library environment. We conclude by suggesting some measures that both academic business librarians and data librarians can take to address some of these challenges.