tion and research isn’t likely to slow down. She expects big changes every five years: “You can see why people think ‘oh god, not again’. That’s why we have to try harder to show them why it will work for them. It’s not about us pushing what we want. It’s about going to the researchers and asking ‘what do you need?’ But it’s hard to do and takes a lot of manpower and time. “We changed open access repositories at Nottingham four years ago and we were still trying to get people to use it instead of the system that they had learnt 10 years before. They struggled to see why it was better. But it joins up much more easily with other technology and there’s way more that we can do with it. But if we can’t visualise that for them, then they aren’t going to learn it. “And there will be more of these chal- lenges. I don’t think it’ll ever change. What we currently call digital transfor- mation seems like a discreet project, but digital transformation in the wider sense never changes, we keep going.” But in the same way that the problem will persist, she thinks the solution will too. “It can get really annoying. I even find it annoying when I’m on the other side. There needs to be a need. If we’re changing software it needs to tap into the needs of both the patrons and staff.”
Visionary
At the Crick Beth hopes to have room to think strategically. “I don’t think I’ll be spending as much of my time on operational work. Partly because it’s not where my skills lie, but mainly because I would rather be looking at the big picture. Much of it, like collection management and OA is fairly well established so, while there’s a lot of work to be done, people know what they are doing. But we’re looking at new services within open research, initially supporting data sharing and archiving to promote research integrity. It will involve a lot of talking to researchers and other support teams and finding out what is needed.” But where there are gaps, she will be leading with a vision. “It sounds way too grand but I’m what the HR courses refer to as a ‘visionary leader’. I lead from a vision, a goal, an end point. I don’t really know how to do it any other way. I’m confused if I talk to a leader and I ask ‘but where are we going?’ and they can’t really picture that for me. I like to say ‘look this is the dream’ and then ask the staff with the knowledge and expertise to work with me to get there. I think that’s what leaders are for. “It’s the same thing as trying to get people to use new technology. You say there might be a bit of pain to get there, but you paint this glowing image of the future that makes it worthwhile.”
January-February 2023
Interior of the The Francis Crick Institute. Profession
“The profession has been a lot more than I thought it was going to be,” Beth says, “I left research and thought I’d be sitting in a library answering questions. That’s not what I’ve done at all. I still do research. I have a paper coming out on research support and I’m writing a book on EDI initiatives in libraries. So, I’m still very ideas-driven, and libraries give people space to do that if they want to.” However, she believes her fellow librar- ians can sometimes have an unnecessary lack of confidence when it comes to Research Data Management as opposed to Open Access: “Librarians are quite happy with Open Access because it is books and journal articles – the written word. But with open data, they often feel they don’t really understand the data. I don’t think that matters. All they need to think about is that there’s an output which contains information and knowledge, that can be described using metadata, and we want to get it out there and make it discover- able. I don’t understand the content of every journal article I help make openly available.
“Mostly when people are doing data management it is not split up by subject. As a history librarian you can dig into all the history resources and learn about them, but a data librarian often has to support someone from history, then 15 minutes later you’re supporting some- one from engineering or biology. I don’t think extensive experience with data is necessary, although a general knowledge is needed, that’s the bit that scares people though.
“They think they need to understand all of the data and I don’t think they do. In the same way I can’t read a histori- an’s journal article and know if there’s something wrong in it, for most data I can’t look at it either and say ‘oh that’s wrong’. They don’t need to be able to write a program or understand the data from an MRI. As librarians what we can do is talk to researchers and find out about their data and their research, and then think about how other researchers might find the research, or what they might be searching for and translate that into best practice in managing and sharing data.” IP
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