Koltay, Tibor. Research data management and data literacies. Kidlington, UK: Chandos Publishing, 2022. xii, 184 p. ISBN 978-0-12-824475-3. £60.95. (Chandos Information Professional Series).
The author of this book is Tibor Koltay, a professor at Eszterházy Károly University, in the Institute of Learning Technologies, Hungary. He has been writing extensively in the areas of his interest, such as information literacy, academic librarianship, scholarly communicatio, and the issues of the library and information profession and education. The same Chandos Publishing has produced his earlier book Research 2.0 and the future information literacy in 2015. It is obvious that the author has been monitoring the newest developments in all the areas of his interest. This last book can be considered a vast review of literature and studies (including Koltay's own publications) in all of the previous areas with a focus on data management that has affected all of them.
The title of the book broadly reflects the two concerns addressed in the book: data management and information (or data) literacies. However, in the first two chapters the author looks into more general theoretical issues. The first explores the eternally interesting difference between data, information and other related concepts, while the second looks into what is known at present about the vast realm of open science and what changes it has brought to scholarly communication, publication, research and how data, big data or data management fit into this big issue and affects it in return.
In the next two chapters the author does his best to reveal the complexities of data governance and research data management. Looking into the concept of data quality, the author examins its interpretation by different actors, attributes, relation to different kind and size of data, processes involved in ensuring proper quality for various users (chapter 3). Further, the attention is shifted to research data and their management for various purposes, such as curation or service provision (chapter 4).
Though the issues of literacies crop up in the previous chapters occasionally, the last two chapters are fully devoted to the concept of data literacy and its relation to a vast number of other literacies (information, media, visual, digital, computer, statistic, etc.) in chapter 5, however, the main attention is given to information and data literacies. The sixth chapter presents the literature about the place of academic librarians and information professionals within this dynamic development stage and discusses what competence these professionals should acquire to be able to meet the challenges and perform changes or entirely new functions. Almost half of this chapter deals with their competences for teaching information and data literacies and pedagogical approaches in this area, but the importance of collaboration with other professionals on data management and support is also given significant attention. Interesting case studies and approaches are presented in this chapter that can serve as examples for academic librarians.
The overall structure of the book is quite clear. The work undertaken in presenting the newest literature on a very wide scale and from different disciplines as well as professional areas is impressive. One can barely find any significant study published between 2010-2020 missing. Of course, there are some earlier ones illustrating the development, but the author obviously was aiming to present the front of research in the addressed areas. However, sheer bulk of introduced material and concepts is in places overwhelming for a reader. For example, the attempt to present, define and explain all possible literacies ever addressed in publications, confuses the reader, especially, as the author tries to maintain equal attitude to all of them. Thus, it is not quite clear how statistical literacy is different from research competence, or why the visual literacy is presented separately from all others.
I am always confused by the discussion of the fundamental concepts such as information, data, text, documents, etc. as being on the same level of abstraction as if data and texts would not contain information. Why not speak of some of them as information forms, treat others as channels or formats and keep information apart from knowledge and wisdom. To my relief, at least in the ultimate sequence, Tibor Koltay does just this and does not try to compare information and knowledge, though discusses all possible terms and concepts at length in the first chapter.
The author introduces some pedagogical elements into the text, such as conclusions (or rather summaries) after the chapters, figures and tables helpful for appropriating the main ideas from the text, and further readings feature after the references, but the book cannot be used as a textbook without a strong guidance by the teacher as it may be too overwhelming for the students. On the other hand, it may be useful for information professionals curious in the recent developments that will affect or already are affecting their work and everyday professional life.
Reference
Koltay, T. (2015). Research 2.0 and the future information literacy. Chandos Publishing.
Ona Norvaišaitė
Vilnius University
April, 2022
How to cite this review
Norvaišaitė, O. (2022). Review of: Koltay, Tibor. Koltay, Tibor. Research data management and data literacies. Kidlington, UK: Chandos Publishing, 2022. Information Research, 27(2), review no. R738 [Retrieved from http://www.informationr.net/ir/reviews/revs738.html]
Information Research is published four times a year by the University of Borås, Allégatan 1, 501 90 Borås, Sweden.