On Feb. 23, the international scientific journal "Nature" highlighted the work of STEM Librarians Melanie Gainey and Chasz Griego. The piece, which appeared in the journal's career section, explores the ways librarians can serve as key research partners who help to scour the literature, manage data and make science open.
Why every scientist needs a librarian
Walk into a big academic library, and chances are you’ll enter a hushed space with soaring ceilings. “It’s like going into a church or a place of worship,” says Jane Harvell, director of library culture and heritage at the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK.
But academic scientists don’t always take full advantage of these temples of knowledge, which have morphed from places full of quiet, dusty stacks to dynamic research centres with the latest technologies. Researchers who do enter these hallowed spaces seeking help with their toughest research questions might encounter coding classes, maker spaces, platforms for citizen-science projects or students and researchers engaged in a hackathon. Librarians like to say that an hour in the library is worth a month in the laboratory, quips Kristin Briney, biology and biological engineering librarian at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, California. And the Caltech library team points out that a researcher could avoid hours of solo Internet searching by just sending a quick e-mail to a specialist librarian to get the same results.