Tag Archives: collaboration

The Art of Collaboration

12 Nov

[The following is my monthly column for the November issue of the UMCCTS newsletter.]

One of the goals of the UMCCTS is to promote and facilitate collaboration across departments and disciplines, thus effectively reducing barriers between the basic and clinical sciences, and ultimately speeding the pathway between the discovery and implementation of new treatments, therapies, and the like that improve health. One means of demonstrating collaboration is through co-authorship. The networks that develop between authors of publications give us a picture of how individuals are connected and where collaborations exist.

Social network analysis is the process of investigating social structures through the use of network and graph theories. It characterizes networked structures in terms of nodes (individual actors, people, or things within the network) and the ties or edges (relationships or interactions) that connect them. (Wikipedia, Social Network Analysis) 

For this month’s column, let’s look at an example of a social network analysis that shows the co-authorship relationships between members of the Division of Health Informatics and Implementation Science in the Department of Quantitative Health Sciences (QHS). QHS is one of the newest departments at UMMS, with several of the senior faculty arriving on campus only about 6 years ago. The research that the Department does in developing innovative methodologies, epidemiological research, outcomes measurement science, and biostatics is integral to the nature of clinical translational research. By examining the co-authorship relationships of members of the Health Informatics group, we get a snapshot of how well these faculty members are connecting with other departments, other disciplines, and even other institutions. In short, we see how and where collaborations have developed and thus how well the UMCCTS goal of building them is being met.

To do this analysis, we first need to identify all of the publications authored by at least one of the Division’s faculty members for the period of time that s/he has been part of the Division, as well as all of the unique co-authors associated with these papers. In doing this, I found 221 publications authored by 716 different individuals. Using Sci2, a toolset developed at Indiana University, I was able to analyze the patterns and create a visualization showing the connections between the co-authors.

Informatics Division CoAuthor Network

One thing that we clearly see is that several faculty members are prominent hubs in the network, meaning they co-author many papers with many people. Drs. Houston and Allison are the most obvious examples here. We can also see that a number of branches grow from the periphery. At the base of each of these is a faculty member from the Division (counterclockwise from upper right, Drs. Cutrona, Hogan, Shimada, Mattocks, and Yu). Finally, we note that even hubs that are less connected to the clustered middle, e.g. Drs. Yu and Pelletier, are still linked, representing the reach of the collaborative network that the Division has formed over the past years.

Tools like Sci2, Scopus, SciVal, and ISI Web of Science provide another way, i.e. a visual demonstration, of the success of our programs and the impact of the translational science being done by the members of the UMCCTS.

Sci2 Team. (2009). Science of Science (Sci2) Tool. Indiana University and SciTech Strategies, https://sci2.cns.iu.edu.

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Librarians: Perfectly Aligned to be Opportunity Makers

10 Nov

Anderson

I subscribe to a couple of TED Talks feeds and thanks to that, I found a link in my email this morning to a talk by Kare Anderson, a columnist for Forbes who writes about how and why people make connections with one another. I took the 10 minutes required to watch the talk and couldn’t have been happier that I did. Not only was it inspiring on a personal level, but also because it was inspiring on a professional level. As Anderson shared a story about how she connected several people that she knew over a shared interest in public art, I couldn’t help but think and see how she’d make a great librarian (if she wasn’t a great journalist already). Bringing people together, connecting them, is what we need to do in our profession today, perhaps more than ever. As I’ve written before, the library long served as a physical place where different people gathered and found connections. If/when you’re working with a patron group who rarely if ever come to the library anymore, they’ve lost that opportunity to connect. We, the librarians who go out and meet them where they are, we bring that connectivity of the library to them. That’s a big part of our job. And as Anderson says, that work is the work of OPPORTUNITY MAKERS.

Near the end of the talk, Anderson lists the traits of opportunity makers:

So here’s what I’m calling for you to do. Remember the three traits of opportunity-makers. Opportunity-makers keep honing their top strength and they become pattern seekers. They get involved in different worlds than their worlds so they’re trusted and they can see those patterns, and they communicate to connect around sweet spots of shared interest.

Can you see where and how librarians fit this mold? I sure can!

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Come Together

18 Jul
Photo by Antonio. Used with permission. https://www.flickr.com/photos/antpaniagua/with/8110355091

Photo by Antonio. Used with permission. https://www.flickr.com/photos/antpaniagua/with/8110355091

What an exciting week it’s been! You know those days or moments when you see a lot of groundwork (hard work) start to pay off; like when you see the first tomato appear on the vine or the first sprig of a pepper plant pop up through the dirt? Well, we had one of those this week. For the past several years, we’ve been talking about and planning and laying the foundation to provide library services around the needs that our patrons have when it comes to working with data. Years, I tell you.

When my colleague, Rebecca, arrived last August to take the reins in this effort, I’d been out pounding the pavement for a good while, building relationships and doing individual data-related projects, and perhaps most importantly, getting a sense of who did what and when and where and how. Rebecca got to work strategizing, writing plans, working with our library’s administration and other higher-ups in the university, while Lisa and I provided experience and the connections needed to pull it all together. We developed a Library Data Services Advisory Group, bringing a few vested parties to the table. We did an extensive environmental scan to find out what the different stakeholders on campus thought the Library’s role might be in this area. We talked to lots of people. We surveyed students. We gained a lot of insight.

Meanwhile, I continued to do my work with the mammography study team, part of which involved helping put together a mini-symposium around data issues in clinical research. We brought together clinicians, members of our Quantitative Health Sciences (QHS) Department, and members of University’s Information Technology Department. We also surveyed colleagues to gauge their interest and needs in this area. 

Sitting in these different groups, working on these different teams, I started to see pretty clearly that multiple things were happening on campus; that there was at last some real thought and energy being put towards addressing some of the needs we have around data. I also started to see that a lot of right hands weren’t aware of what their left hands were doing. And the most exciting part of that (when I got past being frustrated) was this… I knew what both hands were doing! 

A few weeks back, I wrote about that frustrating part, as well as how I see how exciting it can be when we (librarians and thus, the library) are positioned in a way to make things happen. And this past Monday, was one of those exciting moments. We ALL came together; representatives of each of these groups that I’ve been witnessing talk about what to do to address the data needs at UMMS. The librarians, the clinical researchers, the computing services folks, the QHS people… we were all at the same table where we could share with one another what we do, what we know, and how we can help. And we came away with some very real, tangible projects that we can tackle together. It really was one of those times when I felt a sense of accomplishment in this task that’s been nebulous, to say the least.

And… I was also hired by the University of Rhode Island’s Library & Information Studies program to teach the course on Health Sciences Librarianship this fall. (I’m really excited about it!!) Totally unrelated to the previous tale, but the two events made for a pretty great week. I hope you’ve had the same!

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