Reid Boehm

Reid Boehm, PhD, research data management librarian at University of Houston Libraries, is the 2021 recipient of the Rooks Early Career Librarian Fellowship.

The fellowship endowment was established by former UH Libraries dean Dana Rooks and spouse Charles W. (Mickey) Rooks, PhD and is designated to support a UH librarian in professional development and research opportunities, such as memberships, conference fees, travel costs, research assistance, specialized equipment, and technology.

“Receiving this fellowship is an honor and a wonderful opportunity to expand my research interests with resources and a three-year plan of action while also working to strengthen research data management (RDM) services and better advocate for researchers at UH,” Boehm said. “My hope is to expand this to the greater RDM community in scholarship, leading to some gradual shifts in service practices.”

Boehm’s research addresses gaps between funder data management requirements for research grant projects and the resources available to academic researchers. Often funders and RDM practitioners approach requirements from the scholarly defined ideals presented in the data science and library and information science disciplines. While this is the ultimate aim, Boehm’s focus is on what researchers are experiencing in reality. The goal is to learn more about these gaps pertaining to how the University and other public Research 1 academic institutions work with researchers. With attention to context in service and training, by learning from research partners instead of simply presenting best practices, there is greater potential to increase advocacy and communicate more clearly to funders about these realities.

Boehm holds a PhD in Information Science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville where she studied information equity and methods for evaluating government agency information on complex problems such as Colony Collapse Disorder and Livestock Identification for all citizens. Boehm became interested in data management and curation while working with a NASA data archive and later as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Notre Dame Library. Prior to UH Libraries, Boehm worked as a data management consultant at Johns Hopkins University.