Research support services are growing areas of importance in academic libraries and are part of the libraries' larger goal to provide wider support for research-related services. Ithaka's "Library Survey 2010" indicated that research support services, along with teaching facilitation, are the two growth areas projected by library directors. In addition, the LITA 2012 National Forum (http://www.ala.org/lita/conferences/forum/2012) focused on library development of data services, in part to meet this growing area. Although support of these services looks good on paper, the process of both developing new data services and using them to support research services can be difficult. In addition, these types of services represent new work in the field of Web librarianship as well as new opportunities for collaboration. In this paper, the author explores background studies that define the boundaries of library research support and touch on specific examples of these types of services. He considers three areas in which libraries are currently engaging in research support services.