Comparison of data and informatics responsibilities and job titles between academic stem and medical librarians

Discussions abound regarding current and future roles of academic science and medical librarians. As changes in scientific approaches, technology, scholarly communication, and funding mechanisms occur, libraries supporting scientific areas must be equipped to handle the various needs of these researchers. The purpose of this study was to examine how academic STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and medical libraries are responding to these changes, specifically in the areas of data and informatics support. An examination of job descriptions between 2005 and 2014 showed an increase over time in the number of advertisements with responsibilities in data or informatics. Our study suggests STEM and medical librarians are responsible for many different data-intensive areas, mostly in data management or curation, although librarians filling many of these positions also had traditional librarianship responsibilities, such as general reference or collection development. The hybrid nature of these positions was also reflected in the job titles, of which nearly half did not indicate that the position had significant data or informatics-related responsibilities.