One of my favorite singer songwriters is Lucy Wainwright Roche. Fans of folk music who don’t know Lucy may well know her familiar last names. The daughter of Suzzy Roche and Loudon Wainwright III, she comes honestly to her musical gifts. One of my favorites of her songs is, “Starting Square.” It’s a song about seeing an old love again and taking note of the changes that happen after relationships end. That’s my take, anyway. And it’s summed up in the line,
I can tell you can tell it from there
That I may have been everywhere
But I’m back
Back to the starting square
Enjoy Lucy singing it.
I may not have been everywhere in the first round of informationist work, but as I met with the principal investigator of my latest grant-funded project this week, I did feel like I’m back at square one. This latest project is really very different from the mammography study that I’ve worked on for the past couple of years. This supplemental grant is to provide informationist services to the larger grant entitled, “A Knowledge Environment for Neuroimaging in Child Psychiatry.” Our ultimate goal (and there are more than a few steps to take before we’ll get there) is “to establish best practices and standards around data sharing in the discipline of neuroinformatics so that it becomes possible to generate accurate, easy to obtain quantitative metrics that give credit to the original source of data.” In short, it’s a project that will hopefully deliver a means for researchers to cite their data for both the purpose of data sharing and to make the science reproducible. I’ll work on determining the proper level of identification for neuroimages, the best identifier for the images (is it a DOI?), and the most efficient means of organizing and naming new data sets that are derived from bits and pieces of multiple other data sets.
During our first meeting, the PI showed me a whole bunch of really interesting websites and told me of many interesting projects happening in this area (directly and tangentially). I came back to my desk and promptly created a new folder of bookmarks for this work. So now… I’m back to the starting square. I’ve got a mountain of stuff to read and watch and become familiar with. It’s like the first day of class. The first assignments. And I need a new notebook!
I include a few of the resources below, if you’re interested in the topic and want to play a little catch up, too. Enjoy!
- Force 11: The Future of Research Communications and e-Scholarship
- NIF: The Neuroscience Information Framework
- NITRIC – neuroscience tools and resources
- Everything you ever wanted to know about DOIs
- Maryann Martone, PhD, giving a presentation on the global neuroscience information framework
A Librarian by Any Other Name 
WOW, this sounds like fascinating work! Not the neuroimaging itself, but your role in the knowledge sharing. I’m so glad you are in such a challenging new role!