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Top 10 Informationist Moments of 2012

27 Dec
Closing the Whiteboard on 2012

Closing the Whiteboard on 2012

I’ve only been at this informationist work for a few months, thus a true “Top 10” list is a bit of a stretch for my New Year’s post, but a few really terrific things HAVE happened, thus I figured coming up with some list warranted at least a college try. Here goes:

#10. An Invitation to the Party

I was invited to attend a retirement party for the project administrator of the research study I’m working on. What makes this special is that the invitation came before I officially became a part of the research team and while I wasn’t able to make it, it let me know that I was included in the group, by the group, before I ever even became part of the group. Inclusion, both physically and cognitively, is an important part of success in this arena.

#9. A Weekly Schedule

It took a little while, but eventually I was able to carve out some semblance of a regular weekly schedule that included the hours I’m committed to working as an informationist on the study. It’s not perfect yet, but we’re headed in the right direction. I imagine that balancing time and tasks between being in and out of the Library will remain a key focus in 2013.

#8. Office Space

Going along with a weekly schedule, securing a physical place outside of the Library to work on the project was also a coup. I was lucky in that the research team has other consultant-type people as members, thus having a research staff office was both known to be important and already existent. I’ve found that if/when I go into the Library on the days that I’ve scheduled myself to work on things related to the project, I too easily get pulled into other things. Staying away is important!

#7. Impromptu Conversations on Sidewalks

Being able to bring up my role as an informationist to researchers that I already know on campus is both easy and productive. I’ve had several conversations with individuals in the process of writing grants and as they tell me about their ideas, because I know them personally, it’s easy to say, “Have you thought about including an informationist on your team and/or in the proposal?” What I’ve also discovered is a lot of overlap between the researchers that I know. Part of this is expected (you do a lot of work in one department or division, and you tend to know many people who naturally work together), but it’s the unexpected connections that have been the biggest thrill. They’re also the ones with the greatest potential to build further collaborations. Cross-discipline research is really important in translational science and an informationist is very well suited to help build the bridges between the people and research currently happening in different areas.

#6. The Bucket List

During about the third or fourth weekly team meeting that I attended, I confessed that I was completely confused by the word “eligible”. It seemed to me that women were eligible for the study several different times. In other words, there were different levels of eligibility. I said, “I’m lost. Who is eligible for what, when?” In voicing what might appear like a weakness (after all, I was brought on board as the “expert” in communication), I hit on something that everyone was struggling with! Too many times, people were using the same word to describe different things. It was confusing not just me, but others as well. The result was my first tangible item to the team – a very simple list of what we would all agree to call each “bucket” of subjects. Producing something (an actual THING, in this case a list of words) was the first step to make me feel like I was a contributing member of the team.

#5. Presentation Proposal with a PI

It was a 2012 highlight that one of the principal investigators on the study agreed to submit a presentation proposal with me to the New England Chapter of ACRL’s next annual meeting. I hope it will be a 2013 highlight that we are chosen to present on our work together as informationist and researcher. The more that we can get researchers themselves to talk about the importance of embedded librarians and/or informationists in their work, the further we will advance in this area of our profession. I’m convinced of this.

#4. Informationist Invasion 2012

If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog, you know that in early November, informationists representing each of the NIH-funded awards gathered in Worcester, MA to share with science and medical librarians from New England about their new roles. “Embedded with the Scientists: Librarians’ Roles in the Research Process” was a big success! Personally, I was really happy to have the chance to meet my colleagues from around the country; to share ideas, talk about issues and roadblocks and how we might overcome them, to plan ways to support one another in our work, and to make new professional friends. Pursuing new directions is a lot easier with the support of colleagues.

#3. I Lost My Old Job

It’s nice to know that people care about you. When the announcement that my Library was (still is!) accepting applications for my current position as the Head of Research and Scholarly Communication Services, I got more than a few phone calls and emails from friends and colleagues. “Is everything okay?!” “Where are you going?” “What happened?” For once, I was happy to say that I’d lost my job. Even before we received the supplemental grant award, the management team of my Library saw that charging a librarian with the task(s) of becoming embedded in research teams was a direction we both wanted and needed to go. Receiving the grant only further solidified this commitment and my Director began to work the budget as she was able to move me into this new position, thus freeing me from the responsibilities of the former. To be successful in this area, we need such commitment. In today’s environment, creating new positions requires structuring budgets and workloads in ways we might not have thought before, but unless a Library is willing to do this, the work of the informationist, if it proves valuable, will ultimately be consumed by research departments or Information Technology, and the library profession will find itself missing out on a very relevant path.

#2. Supplemental Grant Award

It kind of goes without saying that there likely is no “Top 10 Informationist Moments of 2012” without the awarding of the NIH Supplemental Grant for the R01 study that I’m now a part of. It was not the beginning of the embedded librarian/informationist idea and/or role by any means, but as noted above, it solidified our movement forward into this new direction. My Director and the PIs stated, while we prepared the grant application, that we would pursue the project regardless of whether or not we got funded. This showed the level of commitment to it. But the fact that we DID get funding, opened doors that otherwise might have taken a bit longer to unlock. By offering these awards, the National Library of Medicine, through NIH, demonstrated that the role of the informationist in biomedical research is one worth supporting and examining to determine its longterm value. Sometimes professions need this kind of support to make big changes.

#1. Guest Lecture Invitation

You might think that #2 would be #1, and I admit that I went back-and-forth on deciding what moment I’m giving top billing to. What I ultimately decided is that moment #1 happened only yesterday, squeaking in just under the wire! I got an email yesterday morning from a researcher I’ve worked with in the past in a different capacity. She told me that she’s teaching a class this coming semester on Team Science. To avoid misquoting, I’ll share the text of the email:

“I’m teaching a class called Team Science in the Spring, the focus of which is to help students (in the MSCI program) to understand the importance of teams in science, how to build their research teams, and how to effectively function in teams.  You have talked a lot about how many researchers and docs don’t understand the role of the informationist in their work, so I wondered if you might be interested in coming as a guest some time and talking about the role of the informationist on an academic team?”

Perhaps you can see why this invitation wins out in the “Big Moments of 2012” contest. Here is a pretty prominent researcher on my campus who gets it – or at least is willing to give me a shot to convince her, as well as a classroom of future researchers, of the important role librarians and/or informationists can play on research teams. Here is an opportunity to make my case that we are, in fact, part of the team. We’re not just a supporting cast on the sidelines.

Of course, I took her up on the offer right away. Stay tuned for a post in early March telling how it all goes.

So, while it’s only been a short few months in Informationist-landia, I feel confident saying that it’s been filled with more than a few memorable moments. In short, I’ve learned a great deal about the importance of building relationships, of harnessing the possibilities of existing relationships, of finding and exuding confidence, of setting boundaries and limits, of setting priorities, of finding balance, of speaking up, and of accepting change. And perhaps most importantly, I’ve learned the importance of articulating what I can do, what I can’t (or won’t) do, and what I’m capable of learning to do. Above all else, I believe being able to state these things clearly to a researcher is the way to open the door to their world, but it takes some work to be able to do that. Do the work.

In his book, Steal Like an Artist, Austin Kleon writes, “Ironically, really good work often appears to be effortless. People will say, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ They won’t see the years of toil and sweat that went into it.” To step into a new area professionally requires work. You need to take the time to read and explore and emulate and try and eventually find your own way; a way that is ultimately a blending of who you are and what you can do. This is the “you” that succeeds. This is what I learned, maybe more clearly than anything else, in 2012. I learned it in this new role as an informationist and I learned it in life. As I close the calendar on this year, I can’t complain much about that.

[Looking for a New Year’s book for yourself? Pick up a copy of Kleon’s book. You can read it over a cup of coffee on a Saturday (or a snowy) morning and you’ll come away with 10 pretty good tips (or more) for being creative in your work and in your life.]

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The Potential to Have Potential

19 Dec

A quick keyword search of the word “potential” in the books collection at Amazon yields 35,937 results including such bestsellers as:

  • Boundless Potential: Transform Your Brain, Unleash Your Talents, Reinvent Your Work in Midlife and Beyond by Mark S. Walton
  • The Soul of Leadership: Unlocking Your Potential for Greatness by Deepak Chopra
  • The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential by John C. Maxwell
  • Achieve Your Full Potential: 1800 Inspirational Quotes that will Change Your Life by Change Your Life Publishing
  • Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential by Joel Osteen

Be it business, education, health and diet, parenting or investing, we are at no loss for advice on how to be our very best; how to reach our full potential.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines potential as “existing in possibility: capable of development into actuality.” Potential is the promise of everything that we could do or be or become.

In 1998, the Indianapolis Colts of the National Football League used their first pick in the draft to select Peyton Manning. The San Diego Chargers chose second, selecting Ryan Leaf. Prior to this draft, there was a great deal of discussion and analysis ad nauseum regarding the professional potential of these two young men. In my opinion, it’s probably the best example one can offer to show that potential is just that – potential. It is not without significance, but alone, it really proves little of nothing in terms of what a person will become. Even the most casual of football follower likely knows that Manning is a future first ballot Hall of Famer. Ryan Leaf, last I heard (early in the summer) was, sadly, off to jail. Again.

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Bubble Rock, Mount Desert Island, Maine. Credit: dgrice

When I studied the concept of energy transfer in exercise physiology (probably physics, too), I learned about potential energy. It’s often described using the example of a boulder resting on the edge of a cliff or water at the top of a hill, before it goes over a waterfall (McArdle, Katch, and Katch, Essentials of Exercise Physiology, Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins, 2006). The boulder and the water have to fall, in order for any transfer of energy (potential to kinetic) to occur. If someone cements the boulder in place or builds a dam above the waterfall, the energy will remain potential. Nothing but potential.

As I slogged my way through David Haynes’, Metadata for Information Management and Retrieval yesterday (Note: The use of the word “slogged” is a reflection upon the reader more so than the author of the text.), I underlined several passages that refer to the library profession’s attention to metadata, the debate(s) over the differences between creating metadata and cataloging resources, and the emerging place of metadata in the curriculum and syllabi of courses within information science degree programs. Haynes’ book was published in 2004. The debate, he writes, began in the 1990s. When I read this last statement, I wrote in the margins, “And it continues today.”

Talk about potential. In fact, talking about our potential seems to be exactly what we’ve been doing in this area for 20+ years. Talking. However, inroads made in educational programs and an entire new field, information science, have risen from the discussions, and the more traditional skills of librarians are now being augmented with ones that prepare them to work as informaticists, informationists, and/or metadata librarians. Small cracks in the dam are appearing, as we start to really tap into the potential once trapped upstream.

With an old year ending and a new one about to be upon us, it seems appropriate to both think and write about potential. I walked into work this morning in front of a few med students on their way to an exam. They were jokingly (I took it as a good sign) quizzing one another on different aspects of diabetes that they’d been studying. The beginning of a new semester always marks a time of great potential – things to learn, assignments to be done, projects to complete. The end marks the time when we can measure how well one lived up to his/her potential. When you look back on the previous months, did you learn everything you’d hoped? Did you make the best use of all of your time? Can you now, at the end of the class, clearly explain to another person what the subject is all about? Did you reach your full potential or do you look back with regrets?

The end of a calendar year is the same. We make all kinds of New Year’s resolutions, often based upon things that we wished we’d accomplished the year before. This striving to be better is what drives the self-help industry. So many people so deeply desire to reach a higher height. We want to be more fit, lose some weight, remember people’s names. We want a promotion or a raise, a better job, something that makes us feel like we’re making the most out of our days and our talents. We have so much potential.

We have so much potential.

Do you ever wonder why there are so many folks ready and willing to tell/sell you how to reach your potential? Is it, perhaps, because we so seldom fall off the cliff? Is it maybe that we like the dams that we’ve built to hold us in place?

Leaving the library, inserting one’s self into a research team, taking the risk to say you’ll do something that you may not be the most expertise in… these are acts of falling. Learning new skills, seeking out new challenges, and redefining our profession release our potential energy. They involve movement and action. They involve change. Perhaps the reason so many people make so much money off of our desires to change is because deep down, we really don’t want to change. And so we don’t. And we buy another book or join another gym.

Carol Dweck, the well-known Stanford psychologist and researcher (and author of a few self-help books), has devoted her career to studying mindsets, particularly fixed versus growth. Libraries, from both inside and out, have been saddled with a fixed mindset. I say “from both inside and out” because it isn’t librarians alone who have a fixed idea of what a library is. In fact, from where I sit (in an academic library), it’s often our patrons who have the more permanent idea of what a library is and what a librarian does. We often say, “They don’t have a clue what we do!” (I’m not going to go into why this might be. Not in this post, anyway.)

In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (How we can learn to fulfill our potential),  Dweck explains why those with a fixed mindset have such a difficult time taking risks. The reason, she states, is because “effort is only for people with deficiencies.” She goes on to say:

When people already know they’re deficient, they have nothing to lose by trying. But if your claim to fame is not having any deficiencies – if you’re considered a genius, a talent, or a natural – then you have a lot to lose. Effort can reduce you. (p. 42)

Truthfully, I don’t know many librarians who believe they are geniuses. I do, however, know a profession that believes it’s greatest value is expertise, particularly expertise in locating, organizing, and providing access to information. But the truth is that this expertise is valued less and less today. In a world of networked knowledge, knowledge itself is redefined. Everyone is an expert. (For more on this, read David Weinberger’s, Too Big to Know.) And so perhaps the biggest challenge we face as librarians and/or informationists is the challenge to put forth the effort; to take the risk that comes with trying.

We probably all know a person for whom we have said or heard, “She has so much potential.” Who knows? Perhaps it’s been said about you. Too often, I’ve noticed, we hear or say that phrase with a tone of regret. “She could have done so much here.” “He could have been so successful.” The “could haves” and “would haves” of life are often tied to untapped potential and untapped potential is often tied to lack of effort and/or the fear of taking a risk. The higher the cliff, the harder the fall.

Libraries and those of us who work in them are filled with potential. It’s my own hope that when I come to next December and I look back on my full year as an informationist, I will see that I’ve fallen down a lot.

(Find out more about Carol Dweck’s work, particularly as it relates to students and learning, at Mindset Works.)

 

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Apples and Oranges

28 Nov

Funny Aside: I was reading some articles on Monday and, while doing so, jotted down the phrase “comparing apples to oranges” in the small notebook that I carry around for just such note-jotting. It was a seed for this week’s post that I wrote there to hopefully germinate into a full-fledged thought. Thus, I found it quite funny yesterday when one of the co-PIs of the project I’m working on said, in a completely different context, “This isn’t comparing apples to oranges. It’s comparing apples to … humus!” Though totally unrelated to anything I’d thought of writing about, I figured it a good sign that I was on to a good title. I’m going with it.

I bought two books on metadata yesterday. Personal books for my personal collection. I’ve borrowed several books on the subject over the past few months as I’ve tried to get a better understanding on the subject of metadata – what it is, how it works, and why it’s important in information systems. I know the answers to these questions in theory, of course, but I lack the nitty gritty. I needed to buy some books so that I could write in them, like most of my old textbooks of the past. Fulfillment of the tasks that I’m given as an informationist isn’t going to happen in theory. This is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak. I need to know how to analyze metadata requirements, select and/or develop necessary schema, create a controlled vocabulary, and ensure that what I come up with, propose, and implement works – more importantly, makes a difference. If it doesn’t do the latter, it’s a pretty hard sell to any researcher, let alone our profession overall, that my being on the team is worthwhile.

In the great discussion that is the discussion of eScience, i.e. the discussion of libraries and librarians and our role in working with data, we continually stake claim to the fact that information management, organization, and retrieval are our areas of expertise. Implied within this is the idea that since our profession (1) developed complex cataloging systems and has maintained them for lo these many years, and (2) that we oversaw the transition from physical card catalogs to OPACs (online public access catalogs), then we (3) know all about how to make different sources of information and/or data inter-operable. We know how to describe information in such a way to allow easy access, easy retrieval, easy sharing. This is our expertise. In fact, this expectation of expertise is stated quite clearly in Aim 1 of the approved proposal for my position:

Leverage the skills of an embedded informationist to allow the research team to more effectively and efficiently communicate about the data derived from multiple sources.

By applying indexing and metadata expertise, the informationist will develop and implement tools that allow the producers of project data analyses (data analyst and statistician) to understand exactly what the consumers of the analyses (PIs, project director, operation managers) are asking for when they request analyses and to create and format analyses that effectively respond to the requests.

I guess at this point it is only appropriate for me to make a confession: I have never created a metadata schema in my life (though I do think I could right a song about it, considering how those words go together so well; metadatA, schemA). I’ve never created a controlled vocabulary. I have indexed things. I have abstracted things. I’ve created tools to improve the organization and sharing of information. But to claim that I have metadata expertise is a bit of a stretch. I have a thorough understanding of some related areas, but I am far from an expert when it comes to creating and/or managing metadata.

So, did we pull the wool over the researchers’ eyes when we signed off on this aim for the grant? Did we claim something that we thought they wanted to hear to convince them of my place on the team? No, I don’t think so. I think that it’s more appropriate to say that we – as a profession and in this particular incident – co-opted a trendy term, “metadata”, (it sounds so techy-important, after all) and inserted it into our own professional vocabulary to give us a toe-hold into an area where we eventually want to be. Librarians doing literature searching, teaching information literacy, and/or providing citation management are not new services. We’ve been doing these all along, outside of the venue of any research team. We have to bring something new into the team, a skill(s) that demonstrates our presence on the team, as an active and engaged member, is significant and important and vital. This will insure our place there in the future. So we pick a word that no one is really all that clear about and say we’re experts with it. The fact that no one is really all that clear about it in the first place allows us to do this.

The truth I’m seeing though, is that I don’t really need to know metadata, per se, to create the outputs (a data dictionary and data request form) that are required of me in Aim 1. So why am I reading books – even more, spending my own money on books – about metadata? Why do I care? In the introduction to his book, Metadata for Information Management and Retrieval, David Haynes states:

This book is aimed at two principal audiences: the information professionals who want to develop their knowledge and skills in order to manage metadata effectively, and managers who are faced with strategic decisions about adoption of IT applications that use metadata.

The intention of this book is to help specialists and professionals who manage information resources to become easily conversant with this important and rapidly developing area … including … library and information professionals who want to educate themselves about a core area of skills as part of their continuing professional development.

The bigger truth for me is that understanding metadata, really knowing how to develop and apply it, will ultimately allow me to address Aim 2 of the proposal, “Assist investigators in identifying and reporting information technology issues that have arisen in the implementation of the study that may be of use to others.”

The research project I’m working on involved the creation and implementation of a tracking system for collecting a great deal of data that is essential to determining the outcomes of the study. This process took place long before I became a part of the team, but what I’ve learned from questions and observation is that this part of the project took much more time, energy and effort than anyone originally anticipated. Conversations between the research team and the IT people building the system didn’t always go well, not because people didn’t get along or didn’t want to work together, but because they spoke different languages.

ENTER THE INFORMATIONIST! If I can become “easily conversant” in this area, if I can take on the role of interpreter between these two groups, then I will have a truly valuable and unique place on the team. So it behooves me to read and learn and absorb and practice – to become proficient in creating and managing metadata (and other aspects of information systems), because this is the area with the “vacant” sign hanging over it. Further, others on the researcher team are not looking for new roles. Neither are people in IT. Librarians are the ones seeking to redefine themselves. We are the profession looking for new ways to do (sometimes) old and (sometimes) new things. We are the profession not doing things we once did, thus we are the profession with the opportunity to explore some new and different things. The others in this mix are not in the same place we are. In other words, they don’t have this great opportunity that we have right now.

However, there is a real need for our profession to step up and do this now. There is a good reason to say that we are experts in metadata, even if we aren’t, and it goes back to something I typed earlier, “The fact that no one is really all that clear about it in the first place allows us to do this.” No one yet knows who or what an informationist really is. No one is all that sure what a data specialist or a data librarian does. As we’re not sure what the role is, we’re not sure the qualifications we’re looking for when we’re seeking to fill such a position. This became really clear to me earlier in the week when I saw a couple of advertisements for job openings in this area. See for yourself. Do a quick search of job descriptions and job postings for this field. You’ll quickly find that there exists no one (or two or three or six) name for the job. There is no one entity where these job openings arise (some come from libraries, some from research centers, some from the private sector). And most notably to me, there is no one set of qualifications – not even one degree – that is required to fill the positions. Postings require everything from a BS to a PhD.

It is this last part that really got me to thinking about – made me really aware of – how wide-open this entire field is.  A recent posting for a Data Management Specialist by Johns Hopkins University states that the qualified candidate will have a Masters of Science in Engineering or Library Science. It wasn’t the first time that I’ve seen this particular coupling, but for some reason this time it struck me and I thought… My brother has a graduate degree in engineering. I have one in library science. What in the world did we ever learn in our schooling that’s similar?! What skills do we mutually possess?

Answer: Zippo! Though to be fair, my brother’s degree is in civil engineering, not computer science, the type of engineering degree I presume JHU means.

But this thought led me to spend a bit of time looking at the requirements of these degree programs. I chose a school that offers both degrees – my own alma mater, Syracuse University. SU is a national leader among information schools and they’ve also recently initiated a certificate of advanced studies program in data science, likely the closest we come in librarianship to computer science. I determined, in my non-scientific way, that it was a suitable choice.

In a nutshell, an MS LIS from Syracuse University requires completion of the following core classes:

Introductory Core

  • Intro to the Library & Information Profession
  • Information & Information Environments

Information Resources Core

  • Reference and Information Literacy Services
  • Library Planning, Marketing, and Assessment
  • Information Resources: Organization and Access

Management and Policy Core

  • Management Principles for Info Professionals
  • Survey of Telecommunications & Info Policy

In addition to this, students can choose from a variety of electives, focusing their work in the areas of Information Services and Resources, Information Organization, Retrieval, and Access, or Information Systems Design and Management.

An MS in Engineering, Computer Science from SU requires these course as an introductory core:

  • Structured Programming and Formal Methods
  • Computer Architecture
  • Principles of Operating Systems
  • Design and Analysis of Algorithms

After this, students complete coursework in abstract mathematics, computer organization and programming systems, data structures, programming languages, and software specification, design, and implementation.

In my humble opinion, these two programs are apples and oranges, and the candidates coming out of them are apples and … humus. Or perhaps brothers and sisters.

HOWEVER, please don’t read this as me bemoaning our degree or saying we are much less prepared to work in a computer-heavy, technology-driven world than our engineering counterparts. That’s not what I see when I see a university like Johns Hopkins post a job opening that will accept applications from candidates with such disparate educational backgrounds. To the contrary, I see it is a sign that when it comes to this area of data management and data services that even a university like Johns Hopkins, a world-renowned research institution, doesn’t know what or who the heck it’s looking for to fill the role.

And so I’ll exclaim again, ENTER THE INFORMATIONIST! It’s “make it up as you go along” mode; “learn as you go” mode; it is, to borrow again from Johns Hopkins, “entrepreneurial library programs” mode.

My first supervisor in this profession, the now-retired Jim Comes, was often heard saying, “These are not challenges, these are opportunities.” I find myself hearing Jim’s words in my head a lot lately, a reminder that the challenge of facing a task that I don’t know how to do is actually an opportunity for me to learn something new. And so I’m going to read two books on metadata – in between reading about happiness, because I’m still stuck on that topic, too. 🙂

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