NEWS AND ANALYSIS


Delegates at LIBER 2013 ponder data


DATA WILL PLAY KEY ROLE IN LIBRARIES


Friedel Grant reports back from the LIBER 2013 conference where data publishing and crowd sourcing were major themes


‘T


he library is a place in which learning and research happens, and in which knowledge orders are created,’ said Peter Strohschneider, chairman of the German Council of Science and Humanities, in his keynote speech at LIBER’s 42nd annual conference in Munich, Germany. ‘The library lies at the very heart of the academic experience. A university without a library is more or less unthinkable.’ However, Geoffrey Boulton, an academic at


the University of Edinburgh, UK, pointed out in his talk that he and his students no longer use libraries as a place of research. ‘Why don’t I go there anymore? The reason simply is that there has been a revolution in the way the processes of science are done. The revolution is technologically driven and it’s probably faster than the revolution by which Gutenberg destroyed the business model of the late medieval monastery. The question is whether it is destroying the business model of research libraries as we now see them.’


6 Research Information AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2013 libraries


To respond to this change, Boulton urged to


talk directly with researchers


about their needs and find innovative ways of supporting them. ‘We need a new breed of informatics trained data scientists as the new librarians of the post-Gutenburg world,’ he said. The future of libraries was repeatedly explored over the three days of the conference


‘There has been a revolution in the way the processes of science


are done’ Geoffrey Boulton


– particularly in relation to the vast quantities of data currently being created and the library’s role in helping researchers to manage and sift through that data. With two new scholarly articles being published every minute, Jan Velterop asserted that structures such as nano-publications


would become an essential tool for researchers to identify relevant material. This would, in turn, require libraries and publishers to adjust to a new world where the scientific journal was valued more as a source of raw material, in which researchers could look for knowledge patterns, than something to read. Liz Lyon, director of the United Kingdom Office for Library and Information Networking, also spoke about how libraries need to move away from print-based traditions to regarding themselves as data publishers, with relevant services and data-savvy staff.


In light of the current data deluge, and plans by the European Commission to harness this deluge through the implementation of e-infrastructures for data-driven science under Horizon 2020, Carlos Morais Pires, from the European Commission’s DG Connect, also issued a call to action to libraries to engage in the data infrastructure and bring their own unique, and now much needed competencies, to bear in bringing meaning to, and spreading the word about, data-driven science.


@researchinfo www.researchinformation.info


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