On Fri, 4 Jan 2008, Nathan Vack wrote:

> OK, Code4Libbers, here's a question for y'all:
>
> I've taken a new job at a brain imaging lab on campus. The details
> are still to be defined (they haven't had anyone in this position
> before), but the problems they're trying to solve are things like
> "Our researchers need to do a bunch of junk in Unix to process their
> data; that's hard for them" and "Researchers are generating all kinds
> of versions of data and it's filling the disk and five years later no
> one knows which copies were used in this publication."
>
> In short, I'll be helping researchers collect, catalog, analyze, and
> archive study data. It's not a 'library' position, but the more I
> think about it, the more it seems like a place the libraries could
> excel. Most labs can't afford someone to do this kind of work... but
> from the grad students I've talked to, the need is HUGE.
>
> So, my question: Are research libraries out there doing this kind of
> work? If not, do you have plans to start? Is Code4Lib still a good
> place for me to hang out?

I've never worked in a library -- I work for a group that among other
things, manages some science data archives, and it working on building
federated search systems of other data within their discipline (but it's
all heterogeneous, as each data set was collected to answer a different
research question)

As for are other libraries looking at the issues?  Yes, but they could do
more.  News of a report from ARL on 'e-Science' has been going around on
some of the other library mailing lists I'm on (PAMNET (Physics, Astronomy
& Math group of SLA); sigsti-l (Science & Technical Information SIG of
ASIS&T), CNI-ANNOUNCE (Coalition for Networked Information), etc) See
below for the link to the report.

Personally, I've been trying to get people in the library community
interested in the problem for more than a year now ... my proposed session
at ASIS&T got struck down (on some of the issues the science community
have been dealing with, and what we're done to solve them).

I did find some other folks interested at this year's ASIS&T on my
attempts to build a FRBR-like model for scientific data ... I need to get
my act together and submit abstracts for ASIS&T and CODATA, as they're
both due this month.

I don't have the current modifications in a good form to distribute right
now, but here's a link to a poster I presented at the "Science Archives in
the 21st Century" last spring:

        http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nost/conf/archive21st/presentations/posters/p11-hourcle.pdf

... scientific data was also the theme of this year's Digital Curation
Conference, although I didn't get to attend, as it overlapped the AGU
meeting, and I was presenting an informatics poster there:

        http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/dcc-2007/
        http://www.agu.org/focus_group/essi/index.html

Scientific data was also mentioned as something that the library community
needs to consider at the NISO insitutional repository workshop last month:

        http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/ir07/agenda.html


... so, I think more and more people are becoming aware of the issue, and
there's definately a need for it, and some research libraries are
working on the issues, but most aren't currently.  I don't even know how
much our local library does on the issue ... they asked me to give a talk
for the librarians, so they understand the issues I have to deal with.  It
might've come from a presentation that I gave for the LOC's Federal
Library and Information Center Committee:

        http://vso1.nascom.nasa.gov/vso/misc/FLICC_ScienceData.ppt

(I think I still need to update it, so there's a mention that there's more
info in the notes field)


As for is this a good place to hang out?  Sure, I do -- most of the
problems are similar, and you can take ideas that come from one field and
see how you can apply it to yours.

-----
Joe Hourcle
Principal Software Engineer
Solar Data Analysis Center
Goddard Space Flight Center



________________________________________
From: CNI-ANNOUNCE -- News from the Coalition [mailto:[log in to unmask]]  On Behalf Of Clifford Lynch
Sent: Monday, December 31, 2007 6:10 PM
To: CNI-ANNOUNCE -- News from the Coalition
Subject: [CNI-ANNOUNCE] Library Support for E-Science Report from ARL

The Association of Research Libraries (one of CNI's sponsor
organizations)? has just made available the report of its task force on
library support for E-science, titled "Agenda for Developing E-Science in
Research LIbraries". The report is at

http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/ARL_EScience_final.pdf


and you can find additional background on the task force and ARL's
E-science work on pages linked from

http://www.arl.org/rtl/escience/index.shtml

I think that this report represents an important milestone in the movement
by the research library community to address the opportunities and
challenges raised by the emergence of e-science.

Disclosure: I served as a member of the task force.


Clifford Lynch
Director, CNI