The Data Librarians Handbook, edited by Robin Rice and John Southall, London, Facet Publishing, 2016, 177 pp., $95.00, ISBN 978-1-78330-1

The Data Librarian’s Handbook aims to introduce the reader to the relatively new field of data librarianship. The authors are both professional data librarians, working in the United Kingdom. Robin Rice is Data Librarian at EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, and John Southall is Data Librarian for the Bodleian Libraries at the University of Oxford. Southall and Rice had two intended audiences in writing the Handbook: library science students and professors on the one hand, and professional data librarians on the other. The authors acknowledge that there have been other books written on the topic of data librarianship, but they believe their book fits an unmet need by providing practical advice for the new data librarian. Because research data management has developed as a profession so recently, most people working in the field have not received formal training in this area, and have had to learn on the job. The authors believe their handbook helps to fill this gap in the literature.