Random thought spurred by the coincidence of reading the JISC report on data curation and Deb Kaplan’s report on John Willinsky’s JCDL keynote:
The JISC report admits quite candidly that it doesn’t know where data curators are going to spring from. The subtext, to my jaundiced eye, hints at “from the ranks of underemployed Ph.Ds desperate to stay in the academy.”
But librarians? What librarians? (I do not make this up. I am not sullenly reading my own bias into it. Read the report, which aside from this irritation is a very good report indeed.)
The librarians who run IRs now? Well, We The Researchers are not so much impressed with them. Really, librarians won’t do, don’t you know. They’re generalists, you see. They don’t have Specialized Domain Knowledge. We’re also a bit dubious about their technical skill. Not that we know, of course, because we don’t talk to any and our report-writers at JISC don’t either. (I looked. The only reference to librarian opinions was on the topic of researcher competence at metadata creation. Big surprise: researchers are not competent to do metadata. Guess what? They’re researchers, not cataloguers!)
And We The Researchers are not sure that libraries are serious about this IR business. Are they really committed to preserving information for the long term?
Right. All you librarians, stop laughing now, it’s rude. After all, just because we’ve been preserving information for hundreds of years doesn’t mean we’re any good at it or have any personal, professional, or institutional commitment to it or anything.
Now, look, there are ways to talk about IRs not being ideal for all purposes that aren’t outright offensive. “There may be significant economies of scale and technology in repositories serving more than a single institution” is one way; I happen to think along those lines myself. “The current generation of IR software is not flexible or adaptable enough to manage datasets and their metadata adequately” is another all-too-cogent objection.
But “[IRs'] ability to survive as robust, trustworthy archives is unknown” (p. 57) is pointless insult. Nobody has a track record here, thank you very much. Nobody’s even entirely sure what such a track record is supposed to look like. Government? Can’t speak for the UK, but the US is not a shining example here. Publishers? Do not get me started. Private interests? Portico is too new to talk about. LOCKSS? Oh, hey, wasn’t that a library project? University IT? Please. They can’t plan with a longer horizon than next week. Departmental data centers? Are at least reasonable competition, but you tell me how sustainable their funding models are compared to your average library, and what kind of contingency planning they’ve done for the data they control should that funding someday run out.
Have I done IR contingency planning? You’d better believe I have. Because I’m a librarian. We’re all about contingencies and planning. And long-term preservation of information for use, in case anyone had forgotten—and clearly some have!
What’s going on here is part of the same tired syndrome I have remarked upon before. The substantial and growing segment of the open-access contingent that does not consist of librarians unfortunately shares with academia at large an underinformed condescension toward librarianship and its practitioners. It’s not hard to back up this assertion: merely start with Stevan Harnad.
The more troubling problem, however, is that ridiculous remarks like the one I just eviscerated are just about the only discourse available on librarians (never mind librarian IR managers) in open access outside the librarian literature itself (which nobody reads but us librarians). Librarians are simply absent when We The Researchers talk amongst themselves. John Willinsky, I am looking at you, sir; it’s lovely that you spoke in front of librarians at JCDL, but I’d like you to try listening to one or two, and then writing about what you hear! The Access Principle is a fine book, but on matters touching libraries, it’s stunningly underinformed and incomplete.
For the record: Subject-specialist librarians do indeed have specialized domain knowledge. They have to. I have more than once gone to a colleague to ask about the tools of the trade in a particular discipline. I haven’t lacked for an answer yet.
Moreover, I myself have some specialized knowledge specifically about discipline-based data formats and analysis tools. (I don’t know much about what researchers do with SAS, but I do know bits and bobs about its native data format and export options.) I add more when opportunity arises. That said—I do not consider myself the model of an ideal data curator, and that leads me straight to the other half of my rant…
… which is, where are the L- and I-schools, again? I’d love to learn me some principles and practices of data curation. I haven’t the least notion where to go for tutelage. Some fields are starting to get ahead of the eight-ball here—I hear wonderful things about bioinformatics—but it’s not nearly enough, and it doesn’t help people like me who are in the general ballpark already but need intensive, highly specialized training.
Come on, librarianship. If we’re going to be credible curators, we need to step up and act like we’re serious about it. I’m ready. Who’s behind me?
