Building a Bioinformatics Community of Practice Through Library Education Programs

Abstract

This paper addresses the following questions:What makes the community of practice concept an intriguing framework for developing library services for bioinformatics? What is the campus context and setting? What has been the Health Sciences Library's role in bioinformatics at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill? What are the Health Sciences Library's goals? What services are currently offered? How will these services be evaluated and developed? How can libraries demonstrate their value? Providing library services for an emerging community such as bioinformatics and computational biology presents special challenges for libraries including understanding needs, defining and communicating the library's role, building relationships within the community, preparing staff, and securing funding. Like many academic health sciences libraries, the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill Health Sciences Library is addressing these challenges in the context of its overall mission and goals.

Research Support in Health Sciences Libraries: A Scoping Review

“…These lessrepresented services ranged from sitting on ethics review boards (40,77), research committees (40,(78)(79)(80) or Animal Care and Use committees (81), to serving as full members of research teams (29,31,(35)(36)(37)(38)59), offering copyright-related services (82) or consent form and research protocol assistance (83). Reported services also included the creation of tools, portals, or taxonomies (35,37,67,78,84,85), providing non-systematic review search support (2,69,78,81,86,87), creating new library spaces for researchers (88), providing training in various topics of relevance along the research lifecycle (31, 64, 67-69, 78, 82, 83, 85, 87, 89-91), or leading communitybuilding activities such as forming groups or hubs to connect researchers with potential collaborators (26,69,74,(91)(92)(93).…”

A Community of Practice: Librarians in a Biomedical Research Network

“…27 Face-to-face interactions are critical to developing relationships and building communities. 19 To understand the needs of the targeted population and to position the library as a respected institution within the CoP, librarians must sometimes leave the library, go into the community, and directly work with a population to train or resolve issues. While most libraries strive to provide online access to resources and information, there is frequently no substitute for comprehensive, face-to-face outreach, especially in TCU settings.…”

“…A CoP does not have defined characteristics like a weekly meeting or listserv, and they do not necessarily work together every day. 19 CoPs are popular in business and management, but Belzowski, Ladwig and Miller note that universities and academic libraries are slower to adopt CoPs, even though they appear to be a good fit for research and learning environments. 20…”