Data, Data Everywhere and Not a Drop to Drink

In the NNLM Big Data in Healthcare: Exploring Emerging Roles course, we asked participants, as they progressed through the course to consider the following questions: Do you think health sciences librarians should get involved with big data in healthcare? Where should librarians get involved, if you think they should? If you think they should not, explain why. You may also combine a “should/should not” approach if you would like to argue both sides. NNLM will feature responses from different participants over the coming weeks. Written by: Jeff Durham, Medical Librarian, Desert Regional Medical Center, Palm Springs, CA We swim in a sea of information; more often than not we are drowning in it. When a person is presented with a smorgasbord of data, how do we determine what we should eat? This is the current situation with regards to big data and healthcare. What data should be utilized and how. It is in this data-centric meal that the data-savvy health science librarian should be most at home: as critic, guide, and chef. As health science librarians, we have a responsibility to not only provide the communities that we serve with access to up-to-date and accurate information, but also must be available to enable and facilitate the informational needs of researchers in our communities. With the tremendous amount of big data that is generated on a daily basis, health science librarians have a duty to become involved and assist all of their patrons, both lay and professional, t...
Source: Dragonfly - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: Data Science Source Type: news