What's special about science, technology, medicine?

Introduction

Science examines the natural world. It is concerned with thoughtful, rigorous observation of phenomena in this world and that leads to considerable emphasis on measurement which leads to numbers, statistics, and sophisticated instrumentation. While some social science disciplines, economics comes to mine, engage in elaborate models and simulation requiring great amounts of data, that is unusual. At the same time, few non-STM disciplines involve experimental research. Although psychology is sometimes an exception.

Is the emphasis on thoughtful, rigorous observation of the physical world likely to color the attitude that scientists bring to information provision?

When we consider the three great discipline clusters -- humanities and fine arts, social sciences, and STM -- STM is the least popular and most forbidding. Fewer people are literate in these disciplines and more lack experience with them except exposure in the popular media. In the library or the information agency, it is much more difficult to find information professionals who are interested in STM or interested in information provision for those working in these disciplines. Historically, there has been a substantial shortage of science information professionals. In contrast, there is an abundance of those interested in historical information.

How would you characterize your own attitudes toward STM, especially during high school and college?

Technology orientation, early adopters

While certainly not true of every scientist, those working in STM fields are often early adopters of innovative information technology and of new ways of improving scholarly communication. Scientists were involved in the creation of the Internet and were quick to use it both in their research [large databases], but also to communication. They were the first in the scholarly community to become comfortable with the digital and leave much hard copy behind. For example, the physics community quickly developed a digital eprint repository and a large community of participants. Given the high comfort level with technology, scientists and technologists are a likely audience for for new library services incorporating social networking and web-based services.

How might you take advantage of this interest in providing collections and services?

At the same time, scientists have many demands upon their time and have little interest in services that are not likely to be useful and time-saving. It's fair to say that many scientists are in a hurry and that means that they don't wish to wait for their information. 

Impact on library services and collections?

Note too that membership in the "invisible college" means that a considerable amount of important communication will be informal and beyond the boundaries of the library or the information center

Eprints and preprints

Pre-prints are drafts of research articles. By sharing a preliminary draft, the author benefits from a variety of suggestions for improvement, certainly from a much wider pool than normally found in the peer-reviewing process. These results should result in a much better product. Since the article is revised after the draft-sharing. This does not constitute "primary disclosure." The pre-print process was cumbersome and awkward. However, eprints and digital repositories dramatically simplify the sharing process, provide for preservation, expand the audience, and make feedback both easier and quicker. Examples of eprint depositories include:  Los Alamos, arXiv.org, and OSTI's eprint network.

While digital sharing of preprints is found in non-STM disciplines, the scientists have led the way and are the most active users.

Numbers, measurements, statistics

Mathematics is the language of science. Obviously, the social scientists observe and measure a variety of phenomena and in some cases engage in experimental research with animal and human subjects. Still, the depth and rigor of measurement is often limited and the ability to make accurate predictions remains limited.

Those in science and technology must be comfortable and fluent with numbers. Numerical literacy, however, is a substantial problem for many and may be one of the reasons that relatively few information professionals seek positions in STM information provision. While we can certainly become more literate on-the-job, lack of this literacy is a major national problem.

Scientific measurement typically involves instrumentation so science and technology interact. Highly sophisticated and sophisticated instrumentation certainly distinguishes science. Consider the cost and technology needed to create, launch, and maintain remote sensing instruments in a satellite.

Statistics, often at a high level, are used to explore, test, support, or reject relationships between variables. Statistical literacy and a high comfort level with statistical software programs is another important part of science and technology. Since the software does the heavy lifting, those in STM need to know which test to select, its assets and liabilities, but no longer need to do the calculation. NSF has a division of Science Resources Statistics.

How comfortable are you will numbers, measurement, and statistics? What might you do to increase the comfort level?

Vocabulary, nomenclature

Each academic disciplines or profession has its own vocabulary or nomenclature. Science literacy certainly includes familiarity with the vocabulary. For some, it seems more challenging and difficult to understand that the vocabulary of other discipline clusters. Interestingly, many of the difficult to understand STM words are actually compounds where smaller words or word parts are combined.

For those unfamiliar with science, this is probably the easiest "literacy" to gain. Working with users, browsing ins TM texts aimed at undergraduates, browsing in periodicals and on the web [part of a reasonable current awareness program anyway], will quickly boost the vocabulary. It's important that the science information professional "speak the language."

To what degree is this likely to be a problem for you?

What's special about a special library?

By definition, the STM library is a special library since it is narrowly focused by subject or subject specialized. Typically, the "special" in special libraries is related to:

1. Subject
2. Audience
3. Collections
4. Services.

Outsourcing

A somewhat notable trend in corporate and government special libraries has been to eliminate the special library, usually outsourcing library functions in some way or manner. Sometimes this is done by substituting desktop access to commercial databases or server based content. In some cases, the library itself is placed on a stand-alone cost recovery basis where it sells its services to clients [most likely in a corporate setting]. The case of the EPA libraries is a particularly compelling case. Outside the LIS environment, there are many misconceptions about the need for libraries and information centers in the digital age, especially since they are seen as cost centers.

If outsourcing was a possibility in your situation, what might you do to showcase the benefits of an in-house STM information provider?

Subject

Like academic departments, the special library limits itself to a few subjects. This could be as large as covering all of the natural or the physical sciences or as narrow as focusing on just on science [geology] or a group of closely related sciences [earth science]. In academic and corporate settings, the library or information center would be located relatively close to those served, i.e. the chemistry library in the chemistry building.

Because the subject focus is narrow, the collections and services have greater depth and are often more specialized.

Audience

The audience varies by setting whether academic, corporate, or governmental so mission, goals, and objectives vary as well. Still, the audience is a relatively narrow one to match the subject focus. The primary audience will be those who do the science and/or the technology. A secondary audience may include managers and administrators as well. 

Science writing is highly structured and that facilitates information retrieval. STM content databases are generally sophisticated, based on considerable experience, and are normally quite comprehensive. Controlled vocabularies and taxonomies are well developed and work well.

In academic settings, the audience is more varied since it includes undergraduates, graduates, postdocs, and faculty. Too, collections and services for lower division undergraduates taking a required survey course will differ from those who major in a particular discipline or professional area. Thus, the academic STM library has a more general audience.

Scientists can be inflexible about their research topics. They may not be interested in looking at related content. Often, they know what they want and are not much interested in alternatives [although that can change with an established relationship].

Scientists who have not had a strong, positive experience with quality information service may need to learn to trust and consult librarians and make them part of the research team.

Please characterize your experience in working with STM professionals, relating that to information-seeking behavior?

Collections

Collections are specialized. Typically, that means that coverage of the literature of the field is comprehensive rather than selective. Database collections of full-text periodicals will occupy the major part of the collection along with hard copy back files as needed. 

Serials, especially periodicals

The serials pricing crisis impacts all academic disciplines and professions, but the cost of serials [mostly periodicals] and the rate of increase in that cost has been substantial and dramatic in the sciences. With substantial cost increases far exceeding increases in collections budgeting, libraries have been faced with canceling titles and reducing access to scientific content. 

The creation of full-text periodical databases has dramatically expanded access to scientific content, but the costs continue to increase. Licensing provisions are often restrictive and content may not be retained if the subscription is not renewed. Publishers provide "bundles" that reduce cost per title but the bundle may include titles that the library does not need. Bundle prices are sometimes relatively low in the beginning, but rise thereafter when the library and the users are "hooked." Vendor provided use data does provide the opportunity to identify high use titles and that provides analytical information not readily available with hard copy collections.

Still, the cost of STM content is too great for research libraries. Whether the open access model which transfers cost to author or the author's institution will resolve this problem remains to be seen. Collaborative or cooperative purchasing reduces costs somewhat, but only nibbles at the problem.

What might you do to insure that STM content remains available for your users in the future?

Special collections

As appropriate, special collections may include gray literature with a focus on report series [especially in engineering], access to patent and trademark databases, standards, and access to data collections or repositories.

While gray literature is important for all disciplines and professions, STM information agencies, depositories, and archives have been more focused on it, especially in technical reports issues by corporations and governmental agencies.

Patents are also important in business libraries and information centers, but the growth of interest in intellectual property has increased interest in patents, patent searching, and patent databases.

Services

One of the characteristics of the special library is that there is much less emphasis on instruction and much more emphasis on providing customers with answers, often synthesized in a report format. Saving the time of the scientific user  [Ranganathan's Fourth Law] is absolutely essential. This is one of the characteristics of corporate special libraries and some governmental ones. It is much less often done in academic libraries because of limited staff and different customer expectations. However, the tension between helping users to learn how to be effective, efficient finds and doing the finding for them remains a notable issue, especially as more users become accustomed to finding content on the web via Google or Google Scholar.

Scientists are frustrated by the need to search different databases each with its own descriptors and search interface. At the same time, federated searching often works poorly because of the differences in the different databases.

While many services are provided in the STM library or information center, alerting services receive a high priority because of emphasis on currency and the latest development. Given Current Contents and SCI [Web of Science], scientific scholarly communication has a tradition of currency and measuring the impact of scientific literature.

Intellectual property, proprietary content

Since research creates intellectual property, and since scientific research may create patents worth substantial amounts of money, information about the nature of the research and the results may be proprietary and not shared. Even information about information requests may be secret. This more secretive environment is more characteristic of corporate and governmental research than academic research. Still, the economic rewards for STM research are more notable than those in the humanities/fine arts or the social sciences. Confidentiality by library staff can be an important issue. 

Currency

Access to the most current information is important in all disciplines and professions, but especially in STM where there is considerable competition to be the first to discover or to patent. Current awareness needs are reflected in research literature collections based upon serials rather than monographs. It is also reflected in a relatively short half-life for the active literature, often less than ten years.

Are there special challenges in a library that relies on current content and does relatively little with retrospective content?

Global

STM, far more than the other discipline clusters, is a genuinely global affair. The Internet allows scientists to collaborate from substantial distances. Research done beyond the North Atlantic countries grows in importance. Since English is the  de facto language of science, most scientists need little foreign language proficiency. Still, foreign language is important in some disciplines such as German in chemistry.

What impact, if any, might this have on information provision?