RESOURCE: Making It Easier to Find Datasets

Natasha Noy, Research Scientist at Google, announced the launch of Google’s Dataset Search. The tool is intended to enable researchers to find millions of datasets through online repositories, including those published by local and national governments from around the world. In order to ensure consistent and wide accessibility to datasets, Google has developed “guidelines for dataset providers to describe their data in a way that Google (and other search engines) can better understand the content of their pages.”

Aaron Tay (Singapore Management University) has written a blog post that summarizes initial reactions to the announcement from a librarian’s perspective, noting concerns about the proprietary enclosure of dataset discovery. He concludes, “There has been recent talk about the need for open infrastructure on top of open data and open access and clearly the same holds for dataset search tools.”

dh+lib Review readers may also be interested in the similarities between the Dataset Search and Google Scholar, perhaps finding opportunities for including the tool in their discussions of data and information literacy with students and researchers.