In preparing for the 2016 eDesiderata Forum [24], CRL has consulted various articles and reports to understand the current practices and major challenges in selecting, licensing, and providing access to “big data” eResources in academic environments. The following provide some insights into the circumstances and processes involved in providing scholars access to big data. 

• Cooley, Savannah; Lafia, Sara; Medrano, Antonio; Stephens, Denise; Kuhn, Werner. Spatial Discovery Expert Meeting, Final Report. [25](2015) Center for Spatial Studies University of California Library. 
  Summary of the two-day 2015 expert meeting on “Spatial Discovery”; 24 participants explored the challenges, best practices, and potential strategies associated with the cross-platform discovery of spatial data in the context of modern libraries.
• Kanous, Alex; Brock, Elaine. Contractual Limitations on Data Sharing [26] (2015)  Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), University of Michigan. 
  An in-depth review of exemplar data sharing, data license, non-disclosure, and other forms of agreements under which data are made available for research use.
• Kanous, Alex. Brock, Elaine.  Model Data Sharing Agreement. (2015) Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), University of Michigan. George Alter (Principal Investigator), Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant Number 2012-6-11.  DOI: 10.3886/Model Data Sharing Agreement
  Customizable data sharing model created as part of the "Building Community Engagement for Open Access to Data" project at ICPSR.
• Ruggles, Steven. “Big Microdata for Population Research,” [27] Demography, 51: 287-297 (2013) .
  Describes the expansion of individual-level population data for academic research, including: the original development of microdata by the U.S. Census Bureau; new microdata from international statistical agencies and historical sources; and the emergence of restricted-access microdata.
• Trimble, Leanne; Woods, Cheryl; Berish, Francine; Jakubek, Daniel; and Simpkin, Sarah, Collaborative Approaches to the Management of Geospatial Data Collections in Canadian Academic Libraries: A Historical Case Study [28](2015).Western Libraries Publications. Paper 47. 
  Report on the collaborative efforts and projects of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL) in meeting the evolving requirements for managing geospatial data collections. The OCUL projects have resulted in the creation of new technical infrastructures and strategies for sharing the workload of data management tasks. The paper offers some suggestions for others considering embarking on collaborative geospatial data management projects.
• Capitalizing on Big Data: Toward a Policy Framework for Advancing Digital Scholarship in Canada [29]. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, The Canadian Institutes of Health Research, The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, The Canada Foundation for Innovation (2013).
  Proposal from Canadian research funding agencies for implementing policy changes for data management in response to the growing importance of big data in academic research.

See also posts from Common Knowledge, the CRL blog

Big Data: Uncharted Territory. [30]
October, 2016

“What distinguishes Big Data resources from other scholarly resources, aside from the sheer volume of content involved, is that libraries are a relatively small sector of the market for such information.”  Exploration of common issues and recent accomplishments in providing access to big data resources for scholarly research, with particular attention to population and census data.

Alex Caracuzzo is the Collections and Data Management Librarian at Harvard Business School (HBS) Baker Library. He manages HBS Dataverse, a repository for archiving and sharing a growing number of HBS research datasets. Alex also supports other Research Data Program services as a member of Harvard Business School Knowledge & Library Services, Baker Research Services, and Special Collections teams.

Lara Cleveland is the co-Principal Investigator for IPUMS-International and Project Manager for the Minnesota Population Center’s international population census microdata projects:  IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) and NAPP (The North Atlantic Population Project). As Project Manager, Lara directs a team of professional and graduate student researchers in activities related to data quality, integration, analysis, and documentation. She designs systems to implement new integration methods. She has published in the areas of data quality and confidentiality, and data and geographic integration. For the past two years, she has been active in building and sustaining relationships with country partners and other stakeholders in the areas of data acquisition and dissemination.

Hilary Craiglow is the Director of Vanderbilt University’s Walker Management Library, where she melds the rich tradition of libraries with innovative service delivery. As the Director of Communications for all campus libraries, she helps oversee the public website and research portal, and provides coordination of public relations, media, and print communications. Prior to joining Vanderbilt in 2006, Hilary worked for Questia Media, a digital library service, where she developed search and online marketing strategies.

Cynthia Cronin-Kardon is Business Reference and Resource Development Librarian at the Lippincott Library of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Cynthia manages the selection of resources and materials for Lippincott's electronic and print collections, and has particular expertise with quantitative databases, such as Datastream and Bloomberg. In addition to liaison responsibilities for the Real Estate department, she specializes in international business information, including working with the Lauder Institute to support the research needs of their students. Before becoming a librarian, Cynthia was a City Planner for the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

Barbara Esty is the Senior Information Research Specialist at Harvard Business School’s Baker Library. Barbara works in collaboration with faculty, research associates, and other subject experts in a team environment to support curriculum and course development. Barbara has been at Harvard Business School since 2000.

John Faundeen has worked as the EROS Archivist at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center since 2001. His role involves policy, oversight and guidance for the observational, cartographic, and elevation data created and maintained at EROS. John allocates most of his time to preservation and appraisal functions. The preservation activity includes environmentally managing a 20,000 square foot archive containing 100,000 rolls of analog film and thousands of magnetic tapes. Establishing an off-site archive containing several petabytes of electronic data continues to be a centerpiece of EROS’s data management risk mitigation strategy. He has previously served as the acting USGS Records Officer.

Karen Hogenboom is Associate Professor of Library Administration, Scholarly Commons Librarian and Head of Scholarly Commons at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karen helped establish the university’s Data Purchase Program in 2010 to provide a source of funding for the purchase of datasets requested by students and faculty, and to make this data available to the campus at large for future use.

Amber Leahey is the Data Services Metadata Librarian for Scholars Portal of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL). She supports the Scholars Geoportal, Ontario Data Documentation, Extraction Service and Infrastructure (ODESI), and Dataverse repositories. In working with Scholar’s Geoportal, a GIS data portal/discovery engine run by OCUL, Amber facilitates the storing and linking of large GIS data sets and works to improve the discovery, extraction, and data preview aspects of the site.

Catherine Morse is the subject specialist for U.S. Government Information, Law, and Political Science at the University of Michigan Libraries. Catherine manages the collection budgets for the Stephen S. Clark Library for Maps, Government Information and Data Services at the Hatcher Graduate Library. Since 2001 Catherine has helped researchers discover and access the information they need to do research in the areas of politics, law and government.

Annelise Sklar is the Social Sciences Collection Coordinator at the University of California, San Diego. She is also the liaison/subject specialist for Political Science, Law & Society, Environmental Policy, and International Government Information, providing reference, instruction, and faculty outreach services. Annelise has been at UC San Diego since 2007; prior to that, she was at the University of New Mexico. She is on the Editorial Advisory Board of The Journal of Popular Culture and has served on a variety of ALA Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) and ACRL Law & Political Science Section committees. She spends a great deal of time thinking about how to most simply describe the research process to students, deliver library-funded information sources in a more streamlined way, and acquire resources for user text mining

Julie Sweetkind-Singer is the Head of the Branner Earth Sciences Library and Map Collections at Stanford University. She oversees the geospatial and cartographic resources for Stanford Libraries. She is interested in the long-term preservation of geospatial and scientific data. Julie has been at Stanford since 2000 and prior to that she worked for two private map collectors in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was recently named the chair of the National Geospatial Advisory Committee, a Federal Advisory Committee sponsored by the Department of the Interior.