Since the National Science Foundation joined the National Institutes of Health in requiring that grant proposals include a data management plan, academic librarians have been inundated with requests from faculty and campus-based grant consulting offices. Data management is a new service area for many library staff, requiring careful planning and implementation. This guide offers a start-to-finish primer on understanding, building, and maintaining a data management service, showing another way the academic library can be invaluable to researchers. Krier and Strasser of the California Digital Library guide readers through every step of a data management plan by

• Offering convincing arguments to persuade researchers to create a data management plan, with advice on collaborating with researchers
• Laying out all the foundations of starting a service, complete with sample data librarian job descriptions and data management plans
• Providing tips for conducting successful data management interviews
• Leading readers through making decisions about repositories and other infrastructure
• Addressing sensitive questions such as ownership, intellectual property, sharing and access, metadata, and preservation
• This Lita Guide will help academic librarians work with researchers, faculty, and other stakeholders to effectively organise, preserve, and provide access to research data.