The Expert Library: Emergent Needs in Academic and Special Libraries

John B Howard (UCD)LAI CDG Information skills for the future

When does the ‘future’ actually get here?

• RISM Project Librarian (1983)• Objectives:

– Descriptive bibliography (metadata)– Musical data (encoded musical incipits)– Tools for identifying and improving understanding of historical repertories– Dissemination

• Skills required:– Subject skills (musical, paleographical, linguistic)– Musical data representation, music information retrieval– Computational (IBM VM/CMS System 370/390, IBM JCL, IBM/Waterloo

SCRIPT + IBM GML, PL1 Subset G, PL11, SPIRES, Z39.2; HPUX, C, perl, SPIRES, PostScript, TCP/IP, gopher, HTTP, Z39.50)

assumptions

• The future arrived a long time ago• Academic research libraries will continue to evolve in the

direction of centres of expertise in data, information & knowledge management

• Academic library expertise profiles should reflect the overall characteristics of the host organisation

• Libraries are increasingly be differentiated by their expert services and the profile of the host organisation

• Libraries are ideally situated to facilitate connections among the informatics of many disciplines

• The biggest barriers to progress are social expectations

technical library skills

• Resource description: standard frameworks

• Subject analysis & topical heading assignments

• Classification• Indexing• Resource management• LMS management• Reporting

• Resource description: many other frameworks

• Assignment of vocabularies from pertinent knowledge domains

• Linked Data, Ontologies• Metadata analysis• Systems and relationship

management

other core skills

• Frameworks for information representation: database formats, database & metadata schemas; XML & JSON for representing metadata

• Frameworks for representation of textual information• Differentiating visual, archival, bibliographic,

cartographic & other information types• Theoretical knowledge: thesaurus & ontology creation &

representation; indexing• Data types, data semantics, data characteristics• Understanding the scholarly communications landscape

applications of skills

• Literacies:– Digital mapping & GIS

concepts– Data visualisation– Basic quantitative

analytics– Ethical use of information

• Competencies:– Compliance– Certifications

• Data skills– Data representation– Data semantics– Data storage– Data capture– Data evaluation– Data dissemination– Data normalisation,

cleaning– Data integration

examples of emergent roles

• Metadata Analyst• Quantitative Data Analyst• Informatics Scientist• Bioinformatics Scientist• Biostatistician• Computational Biologist• Medical Imaging Specialist• Geographic Information Services

Librarian• Digital repository

developer/manager• Digital Projects Librarian• Web applications developer

• Maker Librarian• Visualisation Librarian• Scholarly Communications

Librarian• Data Curator• Digital Preservation

Librarian• Data Scientist• Web integration specialist• Subject liaison -> Embedded

librarian