FILLING LIBRARIAN-SIZED GAPS IN GEOINFORMATICS: TACTICS FOR LIBRARIAN ENTRéE INTO THE REVOLUTION

Trends in geoscience librarianship seem to have fallen behind trends in geoscience generally, at least in the area of cyberinfrastructure and geoinformatics. Geoinformaticians are busy building data-rich systems on the ideas of interoperability, shareability, re-use, and long-term sustainability. Librarians, where they are working on data preservation, discovery, or dissemination issues, are similarly tasked. This presentation delineates various ways geolibrarians can push (or be pulled) into the world of geoinformatics, which welcomes librarian participation (but will not sacrifice progress to wait for it). Libraries-led education initiatives, librarian contributions to CI-building projects such as Purdue University's IsoMAP project, and high-potential (but largely untapped) projects such as the U.S. Geoscience Information Network will be discussed vis-a-vis their potential for librarian participation as a way to help steer, rather than navigate, the information landscape.