Collaborative Librarians

One of the interesting things about working with scientists is how rational they are. Most of the time. They really seem to believe that the world operates under a set of rules and principles and that if they just try hard enough and ask the right questions, they’ll get everything all figured out. I’m not sure that’s true but that’s why they’re scientists, and I’m not!

I wrote recently about how the major problems of collaborative research can be conceptualized as information problems. So, we should be able to just tell scientists that and persuade them of its truth. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to work that way. I think we’ll need cold, hard facts. In short, we need to prove that having information professionals on your collaborative research team makes all the difference.

How to do that, though, is a bit tricky. How do you prove info pros make a difference? Collaborative projects are generally long and involved, so it’s not easy to compare one with an info pro and one without. And what would we measure? The things that are important to scientists, as far as I can tell, are getting done quickly, saving money and publishing first. If we can find a way to show collaborative science that we can help them achieve those goals, I think we have a case.

I recently started another job, so now I’m working on two different collaborative research projects as the project manager. I have to say, having two 50% jobs is harder than I thought it would be. But it’s been quite interesting comparing the two. One is funded internally, the second is grant-funded, which means they function quite differently, really challenging my very young research administration skills (IRB, grants management, etc).

It’s also given me a chance, though, to test out my theory: The problems faced by collaborative researchers are not generally scientific problems, but information problems. I’m not talking about the scientific questions the research is designed to answer, but the problems of collaboration itself, the issues that make collaborating hard.

What I’ve noticed is that scientists are aware of these issues, but sort of shrug them off, as the way things work. They think of these issues as intractable problems with no real solutions except hiring more people, and who has the money to do that? But I’m convinced that most of these problems, if not all of them, could be solved by an info professional, utilizing the skills we learned in school and on the job.

Some of these problems include managing the overwhelming amount of information (and other artifacts) generated by collaborative work, especially in really big collaborations, difficulty in effectively communicating with the others in the group, finding the information one needs when one needs it, trusting fellow collaborators, writing papers with collaborators on the other side of the world… you get the picture. Scientists quickly get frustrated and tune out.

How can an information professional help? Librarians are trained in organizing information, assessing the needs of their users and developing solutions to meet those needs. Most have strong technology backgrounds that allow them to choose the right tools for the job and deploy them in a way that enhances the project instead of getting in the way.

There are solutions to these problems. We just need to convince collaborative science — and other collaborative endeavors — that we have them. More on that soon.