Graduate student staffing model for university library Data Science Consulting service: lessons learned and new horizons

The Data Science Consulting Service at North Carolina State University Libraries provides support for the NC State community for requests spanning the entirety of the data science lifecycle. The collaborative consulting efforts of the Libraries and NC State's Data Science Academy leverage graduate student data science consultants, as they help us provide and scale data science service to our campus while providing an important learning opportunity for the students. We have found that it also opens graduate students to new options for future work they may otherwise not have encountered in their disciplinary programs. Our consulting service uses the information obtained from our appointment booking forms and email requests to improve service delivery, plan outreach, and to recruit students with the skills desired by our users. We believe these data-driven insights aids in providing the best service and equips our student workers with the knowledge needed to assist with the wide-ranging requests our service receives. We will share our experiences developing this staffing model, the successes of our program, and how we plan to grow and expand data science support services at NC State.

library

data science consultation

graduate student workers 

Practice and Applications

Symposium on Data Science and Statistics (SDSS) 2024