Connecting Librarian

I’m not a patient person generally. I want things done and I want it done now.  But I have learned the value in patience in life in general and in the library as well.

Much as I want all the new things, changes, adaptations, removals etc to happen at the time that they are all shiny and new, my enthusiasm is not always shared with those that these changes will affect. Whether it be managers, fellow staff or library users, sometimes it takes a bit of patience to make a success of something new or different.

This patience may be required so that the kinks can be worked out of the system, so that the plan can be laid out for all affected and so that people can get used to the idea and think through all the implications (which is often of help to me, as I don’t always see the potential issues).

This patience has stood us in good stead in the last 6 months or so. We took longer to relaunch our discovery layer, to get our new website launched and to start with our first e-book platform and we are reaping the benefits. The benefits have been the rolling out of a good, stable product and wide acceptance (and often applause) from our library users.

You may not always get what you want, when you want it. Be patient. Sometimes it just takes time, some education and your persistence. Its worth it in the end.

The State Library of Victoria hosted this event, in conjunction with Public Libraries Network Victoria last Friday.  There was good representation from libraries across the state and I am happy to say they weren’t all tech people.

Anyway, here are my notes from the day.

NBN and libraries of the 21st century – Mary Todorov NBN Co.

Presenter thanked libraries for her education story – single mum completing masters.

NBN is now listed as an essential service. Not unlike electricity, which came about due to the creation of appliances.

NBN provides the infrastructure to provide equitable services to all.

Government entity like Australia Post, connecting all of Australia. Existing copper network cant meet the demand now, let alone into the future. Majority will be fibre, then fixed wireless and for remote areas will be satellite.

44 providers who are buying the service from NBN at set wholesale prices. As fibre is rolled out in towns and cities, the old copper network will be shut down.

LIBARIES already on the NBN – Kiama, Pyrenees, Yarra Plenty, Townsville. Also Brunswick digital hub at the neighbourhood house – using volunteers to teach – social inclusion. C31 Frankston TV coming with their roll-out. More details at www.nbnco.com.au.

Mill Park Digital Hub – Chris Mackenzie and Tania Barry

 Digital Hubs funding to promote the roll-out to local communities. So far 38 hubs in Stage 1,2,3, sites. Fifteen located in public libraries.

 Hub is a space for training. It fits very well with library’s role. $390,000most for training, but good amount for equipment. It gives libraries an opportunity to improve their profile and develop community partnerships.

Libraries already doing this sort of training, open long hours and have complimentary programs.

Researched their South Morang residents , to support their application. Major partner is U3A and City of Whittlesea. Training plan household, health, small business and education in two year period. Specialist furniture, equipment including video conferencing, tablets, and of course the connectivity.

Four streams, some of the content was dictated by the Dept. Strong KPIs, including promote the NBN, available outside of regular hours, 26 group sessions (minimum of 4 attendees for 1 hour) and 40 individual sessions (minimum of 1/ 2 hour each).

Have a coordinator and 7 staff who conduct the 4-6 hours of training required each day to meet KPIs. Program is on their website, on radio and delivered to the community. Have a range of program partnerships in the works.

Looking at becoming RTO, showcase evenings for local schools, live streaming lectures, technology in the round and more.

 Albert – 90 year old learning email. Lottie learned how to use her Windows 8 laptop.

 Lessons learned – changing classes to meet user demand, technological advances and no corporate plans for NBN.

 Places and spaces for online students – Cathy Stone and Rose Talo

 Open Universities Australia owned by 7 universities. The qualification is awarded by the universities. Most students are HECS applicable. Mostly mature age and in paid employment.

OAU Pilot in 4 libraries in Wyong and Shell Harbour, where they could access library resources, learn about services and network. Libraries ran sessions for students and OAU trained library staff and promoted to students, including using social media.

Student feedback was consistent in the themes of isolation, technology assistance and networking needed. 83% of students would recommend this course to their friends. Expanding to include Lithgow, Newcastle, Kiama, Paramatta and Auburn.

Libraries are offering regular drop in sessions, one-off information sessions,promotion of online sessions. 

www.open.edu.au/libraryconnect – need some Victorian partner libraries.

eSmart Libraries – Kate Barry

Changing behaviours to make people cyber smart, safe and responsible. eSmart is a road map to incorporate standardised practices into Australian libraries. Its free and open to sign ups later this year – it is not about filtering.

In 2012,5.4 million people were victims of cyber crime. 70% download illegally and 75% have illegal software. 38% of 14-15 year olds have friended people they have never met and 14% have sent photos to people they don’t know.

1500 schools are now part of eSmart program. Sponsored by Telstra. Developed in partnership with library associations. Will be offered to all 1500 libraries.

Framework – vision procedures, staff knowledge, user guidance and community connections. Register, then plan, implement, achieve status and sustain. Takes 1- 3 years to complete. Pilot running in 106 branches, including Hume and Yarra Plenty.

www.esmartlibraries.org.au – available from July 2013.

Digital access and community – Paula Bray – Powerhouse Museum

Top 5 for digital content – findable, meaningful, responsive, usable/shareable, available.

What are you going to provide and who for? Audiences want to share and tell stories. They want to curate content eg. Pinterest. Technology is changing and we need to change with it and needs to work for the type of engagement we want.

Visitor cycle – pre (Web), during (on devices), post (social).

Risks need to be taken. Think about other ways of doing things, think outside the box.

115,517 items and 134,385 photos online, but still more to come. First went live in 2006 and about to redevelop their online presence.

Flickr Commons – share publicly held images that can be tagged, mashed and reused. Over 2000 images, which have been geolocated. Layar app. Commons explorer. Led to partnership with ABC. Sepiatown geomapped their images and corrected their location data.

Zoomify.

Their online interactions have influenced their on site interactions.

License as much as they can under Creative Commons licenses.

Aim to build a map of Australia, rich in content using Historypin. Run a year long series of events, to be done in the next year or so.

Games, maker-spaces and open catalogues: three intersections of technology, communities, libraries and play – Phil Minchin

Your digital experience, should: understand your community, what is the experience, make content accessible/usable, technology is only a tool, be participatory and responsive.

Play is key to self directed learning. Its frivolity but is serious frivolity.

Books matter,but how they do is changing. We still need them, but their access, form, availability channels are changing. They are linked to online,not necessarily only sequential.

We still need to archive them, we need to provide the format for that audience and more.

What else matters? All forms of culture, communities of learning.

Games – no institutional home, a culture that drives technology, that needs community, that promotes systems literacy and theory of mind – and involves a lot of reading. All skills we need to foster.

The focus on choice, systems analysis, possibility and action. Induce subjectivity. Require and reward reading. Are extremely popular. Encouraged us to look at EVE Online and Minecraft. Even non- electronic games are powerful tools, great at community building.

Online gaming model – need to get our thought together on what we want, before publishers dictate it to us.

Upcoming- 3d printing, robotic mills, general robotics, touch and motion controls, voice, 3d and VR, eeg control and then ???

Maker-spaces are usually community owned and where people work on physical and software projects. Strong community spirit and great opportunity to collaborate. Empowers users, have great info literacy, strong male demographic, reuse e waste. Likely to produce localised content, likely to be worthy of archiving.

Are libraries for our towns or of our towns?

We shouldn’t be publishers, but work with local authors, writers groups and more.

What if we opened our catalogues? Users could add items the want to give away, heavily moderated. Emphasises local community sharing. LibraryThing does this. Maybe book requests become book wanted. Not just books, but cultural works, events or proposed events, crowd-funding, public meetings, purchase request voting?

I normally don’t weigh in with a blog post when there is a heavy topic in library blogging, but am going to on this one because of my own particular interest and experience of late.

If you haven’t already caught the discussion on libraries, their mission and 3D printers, I recommend you do so first.  In particular:

• Hugh Rundle: Mission creep – a 3D printer will not save your library (http://hughrundle.net/2013/01/02/mission-creep-a-3d-printer-will-not-save-your-library/)
• R. David Lankes: Beyond the bullet points: missing the point and 3D printing (http://quartz.syr.edu/blog/?p=1567)
• Phil Bradley: 3D printing – is it for libraries? (http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2013/01/3d-printing-is-it-for-libraries.html)

First off, I want to say I agree with a lot of what these guys are saying and I cheer them for having the conversation and making me think about where I am on this particular topic.

So, 3D Printers and libraries.  Where am I on this issue?  Firmly on the side of I want one!  But of course, for myself personally I will have to wait until the technology becomes mainstream enough that I can have one on my desk at home.  The whole idea of 3D printing just fascinates me.

Where does that leave my library.

Technolust? – I can be blinded by this as much as anyone. But my technolust is not going to get me the funds needed to buy a 3D printer for my library.  My management team does not have the same affliction as I do, so it will take good reasons and a well presented case to justify such an addition to our library.  And I would not present such a case to them, without knowing whether it is something our community wants or needs and that we can sustain over time. Grant money for such things is well and good, but you need to have the funds available to maintain new technology, once the grant monies disappear.  With the current financial situation, there are no excess funds to be spent on what some would consider to be trivialities – so something else would likely have to go to enable such an addition to be purchased. 

Lifelong learning?

My library’s mission statement:

Imagine:        Library services that encourage creativity and growth.
Explore:         A pathway to a worldwide range of knowledge and information
Understand:   High quality resources to inform and support life-long learning

The vision statement is: To inform and inspire our community. 

Funnily enough, nowhere in there does it say anything about books or any particular format at all.  We run seminars that are hugely popular and involve no hard containers whatsoever, just the spoken words of the presenter. Experience is, after all, just another form of information communication. Being a highly visual person, I find experience is a just teacher and invaluable for helping me to remember things. How much more valuable would it be for people to be able to use these new technologies, such as 3D printing, in a safe and open environment. They can learn, they can explore, they can discover.  So many libraries now have tech tool kits which enable library users to borrow (either in the library or to take home), to experience using such devices.  I wouldn’t suggest lending 3D printers at this stage, but couldn’t it be an expansion of such a kit?  Isn’t that what our users want?

Community?

This is one I had never thought of until one recent night.  I ended up going to an open night (with hubby of course) run by Connected Community Hackerspace group (http://www.hackmelbourne.org/), where they were demonstrating 3D printing. (check out the photos on Flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/tang02/sets/72157632510795414/). It was fascinating.  They had about half a dozen printers of various vintages and types, with three beavering away at creating things.  Nothing mind blowing, but the process was rather hypnotic and we caught ourselves several times just watching the printers at work.

Also had a chat with a few members of the group about the printers, (some had been built from scratch – most had been ‘hacked’ to a certain extent), how they were used, the advances in 3D printing and more. My epiphany moment however, came at the end when I was talking to the group’s president Andy.

We got talking libraries and this sort of tech and it seems that the State Library of Victoria had already had discussions with him. (Go SLV!).  He could see definite possibilities for libraries in this tech space, because of their locations, good reputation and accessibility to all.  He described a vision that I found intriguing and could see the potential for.

His vision was one where there were specific libraries, say four around Melbourne, that were set up as community Hacker/Maker spaces. They had the 3D printing, the laser cutters and all the other equipment that you read out in existing library and/or community hacker/maker spaces. They also had people there to run classes and assist the community with their projects in these spaces. He also saw 3D printers in most libraries as manufacturers move to a future, where replacement parts are printed on demand. So for example, if your oven dial was to break, instead of ordering a new part, you would be sent the plan, take it to a library, where they would use the 3D printer to print a new one for you. Quicker for the consumer, no need for stock control for the manufacturer.  And this was just one small example.

This idea intrigued me and got me thinking. It would take a lot of funding and staffing (neither of which is in ready supply at present) to make this ideal a reality. What could make it happen in the shorter term, which would meet the needs of all involved?

One of our libraries has space within our building for a family history group.  They have all their collections/resources/equipment housed there and members can access it anytime the library is open (which is 61 hours per week).  They also open to the public several sessions a week, asking only for a gold coin donation.  Could a similar model work for a maker/hackerspace?

There are maker/hacker groups out there, looking to expand, looking for space, looking for members and more.Could this type of arrangement work for the groups, for the libraries and for their communities?   Could we find space in a few of our libraries for these groups to set-up, on the proviso that they have publicly available time and give access to their equipment? I like to hope so, but I don’t know if it could and what sort of model we would need to make it work. And even if there is, I don’t know if my library is the one where it could/would happen.  But I aim to keep investigating. 

3D printers – they are about technolust, but they are also about lifelong learning and they are about community. That’s worth looking into.

At a staff meeting yesterday, I asked staff for feedback on our training blog. The overwhelming response was that actually using the database and seeing what it can do (achieved through an introduction and series of questions that utilise its different features), made staff more aware of the resource in their daily work, more likely to use it themselves and definitely more likely to use it in response to a library user’s query.

I have found that seeing is believing is true in many other instances also.

When called upon to assist a library user with a computer problem, I will try to take the staff member who sought my help with me, so that I can teach them as well as the user, the solution. If that is not possible, I will at least tell the staff member of it afterwards Seeing is believing however and I have found that if they can see or work through the solution themselves, they are more likely to remember next time.

Then there was the situation where I was trying to help a user who was having trouble accessing one of our online resources. She could access it, but couldn’t log in and access the modules she required. It took several emails back and forth before I realised that she accessing the resource through a Google search and was not looking at our library homepage (which was the starting point for the solution) and then two more to discover that she wasn’t keying in the website address into the address bar, but into the Google search box at the top of the screen. In the end, a screenshot of where she had to enter the library website address was emailed  and that was that. (or at least I hope it was).

What situations in library land have you come across where a picture told a thousand words and in a much better way as well?

Most of my full-time job at present has me working as relief librarian, which means I work at whichever library I am assigned, to cover a staff member absent due to training, meetings, leave etc.  I know what shifts I will be doing and where the week before, but that doesn’t stop them from changing at the last minute, as unexpected situations arise. I am doing this three days a week as a maternity leave cover, which at this stage goes to October.

So what do I do as a relief staff member?

A lot of circulation work, as that is where the help is needed most. So that is mostly clearing returns, as we have self-check kiosks which take the load off the loans side. It also involves new memberships, answering queries, clearing the courier run from other libraries, finding titles to fulfill holds on our shelves and also getting all those returns back out where people can find them to borrow.

Being on the tech side of things, the branch staff call on my expertise for any technical concerns they have whilst I’m on hand and if I can’t solve it, I take the pressure off them and sort it out with our IT people.  Being one of a few librarians in the smaller branches, I am also called on to do collection work where time, staffing and busyness allow.

What do I think of the work?

I enjoy being around the different branches. I enjoy being appreciated by the branches, both for being me and for what I achieve in the usually short time that I spend at each library. I enjoy learning how the different branches do things and why. From that I enjoy learning new things that may work better than the old things we are doing elsewhere and I get inspiration for improving/changing things on the electronic side, which is what I do on the other two days of the week.  I enjoy sharing my electronic discoveries with staff and teaching them how to deal with issues or processes, on the fly.

It is reassuring too, to know that people are the same regardless of which library you work at. You have your problem people, with pretty much identical issues and behaviours. But you also have, in overwhelming numbers, people who regularly use and appreciate their local library and the staff who work within it. When a library user expresses that to you, even if its not your usual branch, it gives you pride – not only in your own work, but the work of the team who is there providing that library service, day in and day out.

I do admit though, that its nice to have two fixed days where I know what I am doing and where I am – I know my hours and they are set. I can make plans around work and I can make plans for the work I want to achieve.

Still, whilst I am in this role, I plan to get as much as I can out of it, whilst giving as much as I can to the teams I work with.  A fair exchange I do believe.

Just getting a few things done before heading off to do a late shift and visiting a few of my regular websites that I go to for information on a regular basis.  Yes, amazingly I still use the Internet for more than social networking, banking, photos, communication, game playing and fan fic reading, etc etc.

My most commonly visited information websites are:

• Bureau of Meteorology – which I read recently has taken out a number of national and international awards – deservedly so
• Google Maps – for those new places I need to visit
• My Library website – including the catalogue
• Herald-Sun newspaper, just to touch base with the news of the day, especially if I miss the radio in the morning
• Libraries Stack Exchange
• A wide range of blogs
• And of course, if its the weekend, its the AFL website to watch the footy scores.

What are your most visited information websites?

I had a conversation with a friend this morning about Canasta – the card game.

We had recently had a lovely evening catching up with her and her husband, whilst playing Canasta. Subsequently, she had searched for and found her own Canasta desk at home. She said that although she found the cards, there were no rules with it and as they had been trying to remember the rules, this was important.

Before I had a chance to suggest it, she said she had found the rules on the Internet, but that they were pages and pages long and that at this stage, she was just looking for some quick rules on how to play two-handed Canasta.  Having my Android phone to hand (as always), I did a quick search and found a site which presented the basic rules of the variant of two-handed Canasta, in 6 steps.

On telling her my find, she was surprised and asked the question I expected next. How did you find them? The difference was in our search terms. She searched for Canasta, whereas I knew she was specifically looking for the rules of two-handed Canasta and had included that phrase in my search. She was going home to do her improved search to find the real information she wanted.

Librarians are great finders. We listen, we question, we confirm until we are confident that we know exactly what people are looking for and then we use the best search terms possible (and variants on those as well) to find them exactly what they need. Its a skill, but very under-appreciated until people feel the benefit of it. It can be learned by people, but as it was taught to us (and hope it still is to upcoming librarians) it is more ingrained to us.

To quote Neil Gaiman – “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one.”  And that’s just one of the things we do better.

What is Stack Exchange? To quote the source – “Stack Exchange is a fast-growing network of 84 question and answer sites on diverse topics from software programming to cooking to photography and gaming. We build libraries of high-quality questions and answers, focused on the most important topics in each area of expertise. From our core of Q&A, to community blogs and real-time chat, we provide experts with the tools they need to make The Internet a better place. Learn more about us…”

Libraries and Information Stack Exchange is of course focused on issues relevant to libraries and is a great place to ask all sorts of questions about any type of library (or all). You need a free Stack Exchange login to access it, but they you are free to browse the questions, answer them, comment on other responses and even ask your own.

They need people using it to keep it going (and moving on from beta), so I encourage you to check it out.

The exchange is already well populated with a wide range of library questions and answers, so is well worth a browse. You never know, you might be able to help another librarian with their information need, share your experiences or even find something that the group there can help you with. After all, isn’t that one of the things that librarians do best?

After a week chock full of wonderful conference joy at VALA, it was a further joy and a bit of a relief to be able to attend Library Camp Australia 2012, at the Unversity of Melbourne on February 12th. Here are my assorted notes from the course of the day.

 1st session – Jason Griffey – GADGETS

 165,000 attended the new consumer electronics show in Las Vegas in January. One of the large company booths at this is more than ½ the size of the exhibition space at ALA. Awesome that librarians are attending these conventions.

One laptop per child – equivalent XO tablet – runs Sugar Linux or Android – supposed to cost under $100. Sugar is designed to show you how to program as you use it. Designed to be used in disadvantaged areas, so has a hand crank, solar power connection and much more. Uses mesh networking.

Parrot AR Drone, which includes a video camera. Low battery power (about 15 mins), but battery power is improving. Expensive versions have GPS and are programmable, have sensors which do obstacle avoidance. The military ones can have recharge themselves by attaching to powerlines.

Lytro digital camera – $300. No controls. Lens looks like a flies eye – lots of facets. A picture takes multiple everything all at once. The computer does all the work afterwards. You can’t be a bad photographer with this camera. (plenoptic lens). People have used these to create video – but takes a hugh amount of computing power to do this. Makes imaging of pages easier.

 Nest smart thermostat. Created by an ex-Apple engineer. Whole front is touch screen and dial is controller. The aim is to never have to use them. Sensors pick up when there is people in the house. You adjust for the first few days and then it learns. Has wifi, so can control it from elsewhere.

Local studies

NZ has Keta. Want to get people to create their own data. Partnerships need to be developed to ensure the library is not alone in creating and curating it.

 How do we scrape the information that is already out there. Needs to have geocoding, hash tags and tags etc. Storify does it well, but you need to manually create. Pinterest is also being used for local studies – Smithsonian. Need to also accept that these tools may not be permanent, so we need to have it safe elsewhere. ABC Open is doing some great stuff and will do free staff training.

Libraries can do great leadership in using tagging, so content is at least findable. Part of digital literacy skills. But also about leaving things open so that other people can tag.

Create an exhibition, to demonstrate the potential to users. It gives them a framework and an inspiration. LibraryHack was good in that it had an ideas competition so that people who didn’t have the skills could participate.

Also important to highlight the different groups within the community. What are the different ways we can be collecting the stories.

We are all interested in simple permissions process – form. Just using ‘good enough’ technology. You don’t worry about lighting, sounds etc.

Cowbird – online tool for storytelling.

Today is tomorrow’s history. We need to keep that in mind.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EB9eRqEE6A_h5Vkmp29-iSwAdQbK_YCHY9BTtNk4Cxo/

Sydney public library creates a Flickr group for local festivals and collects photos from it – then sometimes gets permission to re-use.

New content should be released under Creative Commons licences. Also need to say when things are out of copyright and can be re-used.

NZ Public libraries – looked at what kids are doing at school and then engaging them with the library on local history connections. They then ran sessions on creating oral histories – aimed at connecting with the school work requirements – from a human point of view.

Australian National curriculum bringing about opportunities for libraries to engage with their local schools.

Library Camp 2012 Lightning Talks

 Ben – Embedded metadata in digital objects.

 What are libraries and museums doing? Not much. Librarians are committed to their end users and embedded metadata is an end user benefit. We are obsessed with our catalogue, but don’t add metadata to our digital objects. There is a whole stuff attached to the image when it is online, but need to make it downloadable with the object. Yes, its difficult and extremely challenging, but it is possible and it is invaluable.

http://regex.info/exif.cgi – tells you what metadata is in an image online.

Julia – Shameless self promotion.

 Don’t talk about ourselves enough in a positive light. Doing so brings you to amazing places. The thing to remember is to use your strengths – particularly make use of your PLN. Don’t hesitate, go for it, you never know what you will get out of it. Use your community and your interests. Find out more about what you want and then tweet, blog or write an article about it. You are worth the time and effort to do so. Above all, remember it is all up to you.

 Leonie – Money

 Public libraries often have great project ideas, bur not the money to do it. She won the Barrett Reid scholarship for studying young people spaces. Its worth putting in proposals to do a study tours, education courses or programs within your library. Great for PD. Also Churchill Scholarships, ALIA grants and awards, as well as grant applications. Your networks will help you to do the applications.

Amy – Amanda Palmer

 Knew Neil Gaiman was going to be in town, so emailed him and asked if he could come to the library. He said yes. Amanda Palmer emailed them to ask if she could perform at their library (they have a grand piano). Both artists blogged and posted etc about it and they were crammed to the rafters. The lesson – Ask. Its OK to try and fail. Social media was huge, particularly as they asked the artists only tweeted about the event just before it happened. It also helped to improve their social media followings, as those they promoted, promoted them back.

Sara – supporting education in combating social disadvantage.

Digital literacy is going to be big for libraries. To be digitally literate you have to have comprehension literacy and reading skills. Smith Family supports disadvantaged children in their education and a number of components in helping children to help each other improve their reading.

Jennifer – 3D printing

MakerBot 3D printing. You feed plastic through the top and layer by layer it makes up a shape, using glue guns. You can find plans on the web or make your own. You can make just about anything that can be made in plastic. Limit to 10x10x10 centimetres, although you can print in parts. You can also print in multiple colours. Built by engineers. Public libraries can have a role in this. Can get a demo at her library.

Carolyn – Innovation

Tom Peters has a series of videos on innovation on YouTube. Innovation is risky, but risk is not bad. Quite often it is good. It should not be avoided. You should identify it and then work out how to manage it. Innovation can be hard to recognise – its not always gadgets. The companies that we think of as innovative, don’t talk about being innovative. Their goals are focused and innovation is part of the toolset that helps them to achieve that. Innovation shouldn’t be a goal.

You can also check out summary notes on the Library Camp Oz blog (http://libcampoz12.blogspot.com.au/) and tweets on the Library Camp Oz Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/#!/LibCampOz).

Xiaolin Zhan is the head of the National Science Library of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Lots of information challenges to e-science:

1. eScience is built on a lot of data – it is smart data, not just because you can play with it using computers, but because of forthcoming technologies like semantic publishing, and computable. It not only comes as numbers, but intelligent, computable, with metadata.

2. eScience is more than a lot of data – it covers the entire research and development chain, enables integrated resource development and analysis and envisions an integrative infrastructure. Its computable knowledge – can have visualised searches, intelligent tracking, tech trends analysis. Its knowledge driven scientific discovery, workflow and problem solving. The whole discovery process then becomes knowledge driven.

3. eScience is a different information world? Its strategic innovation, interdisciplinary and translational research, its cooperative research, its data intensive knowledge discovery. Now serving R & I decision-makers, lab & project leaders, front-line researchers and engineers. Now scientists go from data to information to intelligence to a solution is happening on the go. They need scholarly publications, research data, applied and market data, applied market and social information and more.

4. A new approach is required. Library solution is no longer the user solution. Library can only build its contribution on users solutions. Users solutions are not data or collections, but R& problem solving solutions. Library should aim for high impact services.

Libraries as smart power for e-Science:

1. Re-purpose the research library: trends tracking, potential testing and priority selection. Not just data, but visualisation and presentation. If we miss these opportunities, we miss this trust and miss the future. Focus on R&D’s new and hurting knowledge bottlenecks – help them to do research better, but with added value. Knowledge as a service – science as service, take steps to make the knowledge into a live tool – smart data.

2. Smart reading for R&D. First look at how people consumer information. No longer linear, static and lonely or reactive. Now weak vs strong information – weak is information you don’t know and don’t know its relevance. Power browsing – key messages rather than linear reading. Strategic reading – fast scanning to extract and accumulate for building context, frameworks and direction. Looked at who is reading what – the higher the position, the more strategic, innovation, interdisciplinary and translational research. Need to provide a lot of information analysis and tools to do this.

3. Integrative knowledge support for R&D> need discovery, customised, embedded, analysis and preservation provenance. Which matches the R&D workflow.

4. Knowledge based collaborative R&D; networked-based knowledge experiments,not just resources, but tools, experts and specialists. Need the facilities, the rights, ability to experiment.

5. Capitalising on complexity of meta-knowledge – we help by building knowledge as a service. Provide knowledge on knowledge, on collaborating, on processes, structures and interactions. Its now a verb as well as a noun. It is live. To do so, need to be strong, have special expertise and organisation. Libraries can do this, but are not ready to do so quite yet. Vendors are already offering this type of service.

Because most researchers and students live over 1000kms away from the National Science Library, they have built a system where the information is pushed out to the users (who are all connected online). They are shifting to a R&D support service, which incorporates an integrated discovery service. They are experimenting with clustering,GIS and visualisation technologies to gather and explore diverse data resources from many institutions and websites. Put much more emphasis on building user environments.RH

Planning a China IR alliance, with other research institutions and also with European partners. They are supporting OA publishing and are a member of arXiv.org. They plan to be a central force in OA resources and policies.

Have fourteen teams working on Research Intelligence Services. Do regular R&D tracking, R &D structure and evolution analysis – using purchased tools and others they have developed themselves, Mapping of sciences and R&D roadmapping, Tech trends analysis – now a big part of what they do. They are developing computer-assisted integrated analysis generation, including automatic profiles, customised analysis, etc.

Also have embedded research support – they liase with their institutes, but not library or documente based. They are user centred. They are doing integrated resource development, helping their institutes to determine what information they need and how it should be organised.

Developing Knowledge platforms as an Academy wide initiative. By end of 2012, it will be live in 15 institutes, by 2012 in all 100 CASS institutes. This will include improved knowledge literacy, so that they not only know how to find the data.

Library will become an open innovation centre. From a library, to a knowledge co-laboratory? They are using the under-utilised library space for consultation, video conferencing, lectures, exhibitions, experiments, seminars and classes.

Challenges:

• technologies – types and integration

• staff – need a knowledge of R&D and tech, not just subject areas

• organisation – reversing pyramid structure – embedded knowledge specialists first