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