E-Science librarianship refers to a role for librarians in e-Science.
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In 2007, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) e-Science task force issued a report stating that e-Science requires new librarian strategies for research support and significant development of library infrastructure.[1] E-Science can be defined in many ways, but Tony and Jessie Hey say “e-Science is not a new scientific discipline in its own right: e-Science is shorthand for the set of tools and technologies required to support collaborative, networked science.”[2] Neil Rambo, Director of University of Washington Health Sciences Library, writes in his article e-Science and the Biomedical Library, that e-Science is “a new research methodology, fueled by networked capabilities and the practical possibility of gathering and storing vast amounts of data.” [3]
Many areas of science are about to be transformed by the availability of vast amounts of new scientific data that can potentially provide insights at a level of detail never before envisaged. However, this new data dominant era brings new challenges for the scientists and they will need the skills and technologies both of computer scientists and of the library community to manage, search and curate these new data resources. Libraries will not be immune from change in this new world of research.
-Tony and Jessie Hey[2]
Karen Williams identifies roles in the following areas for librarians in the developing world of e-Science.
E-science tends toward inter- and multidisciplinary approaches that depend on computation and computer science. Research libraries have traditionally been discipline focused and, although increasingly technologically sophisticated, do not have systems of the scale or complexity of the e-science environment. E-science is data intensive, but research libraries have not typically been responsible for scientific data. E-science is frequently conducted in a team context, often distributed across multiple institutions and on a global scale. The primary constituency of libraries generally comprises those affiliated with the local institution. Licenses for electronic content are typically restricted to a particular institutional community, and the infrastructure to move institutional licenses into a multi-institutional environment is not well developed. E-science challenges all these traditional paradigms of research library organization and services.
-Neil Rambo[2]
Garritano & Carlson have ventured into outlining the skills of librarians who support the data needs of e-Science and have identified five categories of skill sets that librarians new to this area should expect to adapt or develop when participating on such projects:
• Library and information science expertise
• Subject expertise
• Partnerships and outreach (both internal and external)
• Participating in sponsored research
• Balancing workload [5]
An example of librarians reconfiguring traditional skills to meet the needs of e-Science is Witt & Carlson’s adapting of the traditional reference interview into a “data interview” in order to provide effective e-Science services. This updated interview consists of ten practical queries necessary to understand the provenance and expectations for the preservation of datasets typical of e-Science that also help illustrate some of the educational tools and skills needed by a librarian new to e-Science and what he or she may be looking for when they come to interact with colleagues in a portal environment. What is the story of the data? What form and format are the data in? What is the expected lifespan of the dataset? How could the data be used, reused, and repurposed? How large is the dataset, and what is its rate of growth? Who are the potential audiences for the data? Who owns the data? Does the dataset include any sensitive information? What publications or discoveries have resulted from the data? How should the data be made accessible? [6]
The Lamar Soutter Library at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the Northeast Regional Medical library NN/LM have developed an e-Science web portal for librarians. This portal includes educational resources for specific tools and subject/discipline tutorials and modules to assist librarians new to e-Science.[7] It is available at: http://esciencelibrary.umassmed.edu/escience