The Informationist: Collaboration Between Scientists and Librarians March 30, 2010

This was an interesting seminar sponsored by Elsevier in trying to look at the expanding and changing role of librarians in the sci/tech/med arenas. Speakers included Dr. Ellen Detlefsen (U. Pittsburg), Dr. Edward Shortliffe (Pres. CEO AMIA), Annette Williams (Esking Biomedical Library at Vanderbilt University), Dr. Medha Bhagwat (NIH), Dr. John Schnase (Goddard Space Flight Center), and Dr. Steve Kempler (Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center). The bottom line was all about informatics, data, data manipulation, and the role librarians or informationists might play in that process as informatics grows. For me the real take away was that the ability of professionals to interpret and analyze information and informatics is extremely important in an information rich world.