Information Services and Use

This paper provides an overview of the highlights of the 2016 NFAIS Annual Conference, Data Sparks Discovery of Tomorrow’s Global Knowledge, that was held in Philadelphia, PA from February 21–23, 2016. The goal of the conference was to examine how data has risen in importance and is transforming all aspects of research – from funding policies through to reporting, publication, and archiving policies. Data literacy is an essential skill in today’s digital world and even new career paths have emerged – data scientist, data engineer, data librarian, etc. The conference raised both practical and philosophical issues regarding data management, use, and reuse, and provided a glimpse of what information services should look like in the future.

After decades of data scarcity, we are finally arriving in the era of data abundance. Cognitive systems such as IBM’s Watson, a cloud-based cognition service platform, can help us utilize all the data available to make better decisions in business, society, and our personal lives. But even with the help of cognitive assistants, data literacy will be a key new skill for students and professionals, as data transforms industries and occupations, and creates enormous entrepreneurial and startup opportunities. This brief paper highlights some current data-driven innovations.

This paper offers a high-level, non-scientific assessment regarding the impact of research library based data management services, particularly related to predictive data analytics – an area where the corporate sector has arguably made more tangible impact. The fundamental premise rests upon the assertion that research libraries should consider the potential consequences, need for interpretation and degree of control to better allocate and optimize scarce resources for data management. By doing so, it may be possible to support broader goals of data management at scale, identify network effects through linked data and highlight possibilities for partnerships, including with the corporate sector.

In the age of “big data,” scientific researchers are increasingly struggling with how to manage, organize, and make sense of the vast amount of data that often characterizes scientific research in the 21st century. With their expertise in knowledge management, information professionals can be valuable collaborators for research teams facing these challenges. This article discusses just a few of the myriad opportunities for librarians and other information professionals to become involved with research teams and provide valuable support for the management, analysis, and preservation of research data.

This paper presents a brief overview of emerging policies to open up access to research data in the United States. It provides a summary of the drivers behind policy development, outlines some key precedents that serve as a foundation for an emerging research data policy framework, examines the latest policies and suggests a few ways that the academic and research communities can work to ensure that these policies continue to evolve in a direction that actively supports the best interests of the research enterprise.

Sharing research data has the potential to make research more reproducible and efficient. Scientific research is a complex process and it is crucial that at the different stages of this process, researchers handle data in a way that will allow sharing and reuse. In this paper, we present a framework for the different steps involved in managing research data: a hierarchy of research data needs, and describe some of our own ongoing efforts to support these needs.

Creating a good data ecosystem that supports each of these data needs requires collaboration between all parties that are involved in the generation, storage, retrieval and use of data: researchers, librarians, institutions, government offices, funders, and also publishers. We are actively collaborating with many other participants in the research data field, to develop a data ecosystem that enables data to be more useful, and reusable, throughout science and the humanities.

Information is only valuable when it can be found. It is relatively easy to find information that we know exists; you just need to know what you want to find, where to look for it, and how to express yourself. It might require a little effort to find it, but this work is usually rewarded. But, what if you’re looking to acquire new knowledge or want to search for unusual findings? Normally you start with what you know and learn as you go and in the end arrive at some conclusion, but how do you know you have found all relevant information and how do you know how this information is connected to the rest of the information space? The answer up until now is that you don’t, and to get the big picture you would have to aggregate your results manually. Microsoft has studied search behavior and a big part of the daily searches are exploratory in nature, where the users aren’t sure what they want to find and are struggling while trying. The Etsimo Visual Discovery engine offers an alternative, or complement, to lookup searching by providing a transparent and user-driven way to visually navigate the information space, learn as you go, and find relevant information.

Despite the many technological advances that the information industry has witnessed over the past decades, barriers to the full use of information remain. Part of this problem is due to the volume of content and data that is available today. But the information silos created by proprietary system interfaces and the resultant lack of open use of content are far more serious factors inhibiting the full use of information and ultimately the generation of new ideas. This paper will take a look at the current situation and offer some solutions to the current problem.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Library meets the needs of the diverse NIH research community through a range of innovative services, resources, and knowledge. Based upon an understanding of the information industry and the mission and goals of NIH, the NIH Library offers a number of services that exploit data of various types to support assessment and create value. Understanding our users’ engagement with content (e.g., citations, behavioral data, research funding) allows us to provide personal and customized services including bibliometrics, collection assessment, and custom information solutions.

Scholarly journal publishers have concerned themselves for many years with their delivery platforms and their feature sets, but have spent rather less time on considering how their content will be discovered. Traditionally there has been an over-reliance on major search engines and leading professional indexes. For the past ten years we have continually surveyed and studied the landscape of journal article discovery, culminating in a large scale survey ( n = 40 , 443 ) of journal readers in October to December 2015. The survey has revealed important trends in discovery: a reducing reliance on professional search, some increases in the importance of library-intermediated discovery, the continued emergence of professional and social networking sites, and a shift in importance from Google to Google Scholar. In addition, the survey has revealed some important perceptions about the abundance of free versus paid downloads which may influence library budgets in the future.

Scholarly communication is truly global. While in the past, articles based upon scientific research were primarily from the United States and Europe, today countries such as China, South Korea, and Brazil – along with others that were minor contributors a decade or so ago – are becoming major players. Journals of regional importance have emerged that are worthy of consideration. In parallel, a certain level of global competition has also emerged and as a result it has become obvious that some questionable publishing activities such as self-citations and the acceptance of research papers that are shallow in content are now in play. This paper will take a look at the publication activity as noted in Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science over the past decade from a set of ten selected countries.

The library profession has achieved remarkable accomplishments over my nearly-50-year career. Now we are fully into the digital environment. The leadership that is required in the digital era requires a different kind of leadership.

In today’s networked age, managing access to expertise is becoming a strategic issue for innovative companies. The digital economy and Big Data are changing the shape of accessing global expertise. Global competition means that large firms can no longer assume that all the expertise they need is available within their own walls, or even within their own countries. To face this growing challenge, organizations of all sizes need a new generation of tools to identify, understand, compare, recommend, and capitalize on their company’s networks. By combining impactful data with a collaborative workflow, Expernova helps companies to structure their open innovation processes and access the best expertise worldwide so that they may capitalize on a global network.

How do you curate your data today to ensure you can capitalize on it to build a successful information business of tomorrow? Can artificial intelligence support and enhance human intelligence? What activities might help us build information services that are essentially the foundation of artificial intelligence in this information community? Where is the best source of user behavioral data? This paper will attempt to answer these questions and more regarding the status of artificial intelligence today.

The current generation of Operating Systems (OSes) and apps are all about translating the interaction vocabulary to a smaller device and a touch screen. The next generation of OSes that will dominate the next twenty years of computing will be all about translating the apps and the interaction so that it leverages the AI capabilities of the device and that the AI leverages the data of the user. This paper will discuss the paradigm shift in operating systems.