A Question of Utilization

Today we had the pleasure of hosting Mr. Indra Sarkar in our Science Data Management class. It's perhaps rude of me to use the title Mr., since he holds a PhD in Bioinformatics along with an MLIS, but he could be younger than I am! During his talk—and I'm sure I'm not the only audience member who had these thoughts—I couldn't help but think that we need more "big picture" people like Indra that have a Library Science background. Otherwise, I fear that the talents and skills we are gaining will see little use, especially if only applied within the limited environment of traditional libraries.

I was pleasantly surprised that someone of Indra's expertise emphasized the importance of the macroscope. That is, taking the largest perspective possible, and as he puts it, creating a "global brain" that takes all the inter-related entities into consideration. It's an ingenious way of putting into a simple word what I have been trying to articulate for a while; that this is an interdisciplinary world, and one of the ways forward in this information storm is to bring lots of knowledge systems together to solve problems. As Indra pointed out, the ideal is to reach a point where knowledge systems work so seamlessly together that new perspectives on old problems are spawned, and truly new knowledge is created and shared. A great example regarded hantavirus, where through visually displaying the locus of research being done, Indra was able to point out a gaping hole in what researchers were doing because they weren't looking at the larger picture. All the research and sequencing was being done in the Eastern U.S., and mistakenly applied to the Southwestern U.S., which is not a great idea since the rats responsible for Southwestern hantavirus outbreaks are a different sub-species of rat than the ones found in the East. In just one visual representation, so many concepts and mistakes become strikingly clear.

But of course, constructing and curating (or something as seemingly simple as providing crosswalks among existing knowledge networks) these vast knowledge systems means that the skills of the librarian and data manager are crucial. My worry is that the people who are in these research fields will have no clue that librarians are being trained for these tasks. I had a discussion with my brother, who is in the meteorological field, and he shared my skepticism. In a private firm such as the one where he works, we doubted that someone would actually hire an eScience librarian/consultant, or even be aware that they existed. Of course, this is understandable considering the novelty of the field, but it stresses the need for greater awareness not just in what eScience librarians can do, but also digital and embedded librarians. As Prof. Lankes used to explain, part of the problem is the perception of the term "librarian," which unfortunately means that in the minds of most people we are forever consigned to and associated with brick-and-mortar libraries.

Anyway, Dr. Sarkar's lecture was fascinating, and got me to thinking about how his innovative ideas in eScience could be applied to the fields I'm interested in.