Identity crisis – am I a librarian or a geologist? Why not both.

Abstract:

As a doctoral candidate, in the ‘early stages’ of my professional career, I constantly have to remind people I actually already had a career. I am still in the early stages of my career as an academic and information scientist. But before starting my doctoral program, I worked as a geologist for 7 years. During that time I’ve worked on a drill rig and collected data in the field. I’ve described cores and cuttings in order to map aquifers. I wrote grants and worked on teams. Now, as an information scientist I look at how researchers access, discover and reuse existing data sets. It involves understanding how data is used, created, and how scientists think about finding data. It hasn’t been an easy change, but lately the two domains are converging in the form of data scientists.

The change in my career happened organically. The needs of my organization dictated the skills I developed. I thought these needs were just issues in my organization but then I found many other organizations asking the same question. Through the United States Geological Survey’s National Geological and Geophysical Data Preservation Program (NGGDPP), I met other geologists working with physical data, and dealing with access, discoverability, and data usage. I found a number of member communities within groups such as the Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), the Research Data Alliance (RDA), EarthCube, and the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) working to on similar questions related to earth science data.

Most importantly, I have found that ideas and concepts from my experience with data curation, archives, reference, metadata, organization of information and other library science topics have prepared me to help find solutions to these questions. As the concept of libraries change, so too must the role of the librarian. With this presentation I will discuss my unique career path and how I believe domain sciences and information science can benefit from each other.