Library resources and the role of librarians in biomedical research -- we definitely need you, but roles are very different from what they used to be

Had a very interesting exchange of ideas today with Paolo Mangiafico from the Duke Library about perceptions on the changing role of the librarian and also how libraries in general could better help biomedical researchers. Now, I don't know about biomedical researchers in general, but the conversation with Paolo definitely helped me make clear to me what I think about the subject, and so I promised I would blog about it. For starters, I believe that the main needs in relation to information resources and services are:

1. Resources and services should be user-driven.  In an age where everything is user-driven, this should be a simple one, but at a close look things are more complicated than they initially seem. First, libraries and librarians are currently undergoing a major infrastructure change in an extraordinarily short period of time: About 10 years ago I used to go to the library every day, and now I haven't visited that building in years. Whenever such a fast change happens, it is common for staff to try to carry along the old infrastructure. Explanations about this vary from "it used to work so well" and "don't throw out the baby with the bathtub water", but the reality is that unless a radical change happens, user needs will not be met. The problem with starting from inside, trying to adapt what exists to a new framework, is that the old framework will drag along and will slow down the implementation of changes that really need to be done. Rather, I would start afresh, creating a new conceptual framework entirely based on observation of what users need, and then from that new framework start bringing in the previous knowledge coupled with new technologies and methods. So, my first thought about this is that a formal user needs evaluation has to start immediately. Where? Well, definitely not at the library, but wherever researchers get their work done: Labs, student dorms, researcher offices and at their homes. 

The underlying idea is to find out exactly how they are using (or not) the currently available information resources, what they wish they had access to, and what gets their work slowed down, even when they don't notice the problem themselves.  I think that this new role of a librarian-anthropologist of science will bring several surprisingly findings and it can definitely change the landscape of what libraries/librarians offer and look like.

2. Training resources should be scalable: This is a tough one to take.  Over their long history, librarians grew used to being the person we ask for help on every information need weto access.  However, times changed, and today I don't want to ask anybody.  I want to find it for myself, if possible within less than three seconds, and then carry on with whatever I need to do with the information.  To get to that speed level, scalable training material is the main concept to be achieved, with the role of librarians being, in my opinion, much more important, but definitely different. It is different because rather than trying to be the "primary person to go" resource, a much more fundamental role of the librarian is to create these training resources that will allow us to learn how to get things done in three seconds.  Principles for putting this material together are that they should be easy to find, easy to modify, easy to share, and easy to explore.  Only when failing to find the answer we want from this material is that we would like to talk with a librarian.  

Now, the shocking true:  Despite what I call an identity crisis within the librarian profession, librarians ultimate goal is not to have users come to them to ask questions, since that represents a failure of the existing first level of scalable training material.  What this means is that whenever a researcher approaches a librarian with a question, this request should immediately trigger the need for the creation of another portion of training material that users can easily find, explore, share, modify, and then go back to get their jobs done. Trust me, with the new information technologies coming out every second, there is plenty to do and the task of creating scalable training materials will be more than enough to keep creating more librarian jobs. 

Additionally, finding out the best format to communicate these scalable training materials is another role for the librarian.  While now we can think of blogs, videos with searchable content, documentation in wiki format, the need to keep testing new technologies and how users react to them is absolutely essential.  

And finally, please make them all freely available through an open access license such as, for example, Creative Commons.

3. Resources have to be easily accessible.  We keep going back to a basic metric of time to get something done because it is a simple concept, but even in its simplicity the message doesn't seem to get through.  Three years ago, using the Duke Library system I used to be able to perform a search on PubMed and, within a couple of seconds, I would be reading most articles in full text.  Today, I will either get my computer stuck in a vpn connection or will have to track the article down through a painstaking process of going to a specific journal and then searching through its issues.  The end result:  I am less productive.  Now, I heard from several people the reasons why this change had to happen and all the copyright, security, and other issues in place.  I understand it, but my problem remains unsolved.  My request:  Please keep accessibility in mind and make the work of biomedical researchers easier over time rather than more difficult.  The solution?  Well, incorporate informal time and motion studies into the user observations I previously suggested.  If an activity went from taking three seconds to taking five minutes, then something is wrong and needs a better solution.

4. Make information easy to manage and share.  I personally think that the current reference management tools available in the market are at least 10 years behind our needs.  Commercial tools are close to a monopoly, and existing free tools are definitely short of what we need.  Now, this is not something that most individual librarians solve themselves, but while this anachronism persists they could help users find existing tools that are at least not as horrible as what we have to deal with right now.  The need list is easy:  Point us to tools that will automatically get references and full text from our browsers, allow for sharing among our collaborators in a cloud environment, and format the information according to the silly journal specifications, assuming that having journals accept a universal reference format is too much to ask at this point.  The role of the librarian would then be to create what within our Research on Research group we call a radar:  The radar finds information about tools, test these tools under different circumstances, and then create scalable training materials that will help us make a decision about what tool is best for the problem at hand in a split second.  You are probably tired of hearing me say this at this point, but the goal is to get us to our jobs and get them done as quickly and efficiently as possible.  Now, creating and maintaining a radar function is no easy task, since most tools out there will either not work well or will only be helpful for a selected number of tasks.  While all of this might sound like a whole lot of work, I see it as another essential role for our librarians to help us out.

Finally, Paolo also asked me to talk about how our activities at the Research on Research group could synergize with these efforts, specifically with our System Dynamics approach to analyzing research processes.  But this is a topic for another conversation.  To be continued ...