Library life day two

Yesterday I neglected to include a link to what the Library Day in the Life Project is all about:

The Library Day in the Life Project is coordinated by Bobbi Newman of Librarian by Day. Twice a year librarians, library staff and library students from all over the globe share a day (or week) in their life through blog posts, photos, video and Twitter updates.

This site includes links to all the other people involved in the project:

http://twapperkeeper.com/hashtag/libday7
http://www.netvibes.com/librarianbyday#Round_6_Library_Day_in_the_Life_Project

I started the day conducting a data interview with one of our researchers in computer security.
This involved discussing several datasets the research centre holds that could possibly be shared with other researchers outside the centre. One dataset I heard about is what they call “honeypot” data that reveal patterns in security attacks. It was fascinating and I came away just a little bit worried about how secure any of us are online. Going by the laws of probability, despite our best efforts some malware will get through and do damage.

The data interview is one of the key roles of a research data librarian. The idea of the data interview is to gather as much information as possible about a research project and associated research dataset or data collection. This information (in our case) then gets written up and described and added to Research Data Australia (RDA) Australia's research data portal. The metadata schema used to described data in RDA is RIF-CS.

There are several elements to this work: one is using the skills a research or faculty librarian would have whereby you learn to understand the client’s research area. Another is having a sound understanding of research data and how that may differ across disciplines. Another is more a cataloguing/metadata librarian role whereby you use a defined metadata schema to describe the data.

I have been working on some research data training and seminars which I will talk about tomorrow…

Coasting is not an option

I'm reading Jonathan Raban's wonderful travel book "Coasting", which is about Raban's voyage sailing solo around the British Isles in the 1980s. Early on in the book Raban goes off on a diversion about the various meanings of the word "coasting" and says he was hauled over the coals at school for "coasting". His school report said he was not using his talents, not exerting himself, and was just sailing along.

Then I came across Michael Stephens' heretical thoughts on transforming library science education, set out recently in some of his slides posted on Stephens' Tame the Web blog. The slides are from a presentation at the Future of Academic Libraries Symposium.

One of the slides struck a chord with me. It was entitled : "coasting is not an option".

I think Raban's school teacher and Michael Stephens are making the same point and it's a familiar point, made by many: use your talents, make the most of your opportunities, step out of you comfort zone and take a few risks. Libraries are changing so fast that we can't afford to coast.

If you want to be inspired by a group of librarians who are NOT coasting read some of the posts on the SLA Future Ready 365 blog 2011 http://futureready365.sla.org/