The Perils of Terminology (and Lunch)

For the last four or five years, librarians at Cambridge University have met once a month at lunchtime to discuss issues in library research, generally centred around a single paper or report. These meetings are termed "brown bag lunches" - after the generic, or American, term for the receptacles that hold the packed lunch that are consumed at the meetings. And I have become in some sense an honorary member of this group.

Which brings me to libraries and their terminology, and to the difficulty that users of academic libraries can have in understanding it. Last week I found myself at just such a lunch, munching chocolate tiffin and discussing a paper by John Kupersmith at the University of California, Berkeley entitled "Library Terms that Users Understand". Understanding terminology is more of a problem for many users, even academic ones, than some librarians realise. Students, in particular, can fail to realise that "Journal" and "Periodical" are used by different libraries to refer to the same type of document - and how about "Serial"? And to say nothing of "Database"... This was not such a problem in pre-Internet decades when users were more often face to face with librarians. The term "users" now refers just as often to users of library websites as to those seen walking around libraries.

After agreeing that users - and librarians - had difficulty working out what exactly was meant by the term "database", the librarians at the meeting - that is, everyone but me - spent some time discussing how they could make their websites more user friendly. Kupersmith's paper recommended avoiding acronyms and vague terms, and using "mouseovers" - now there's a term that not everyone will understand - to define any terms that are not immediately obvious. We heard of one library that has teamed up with another in Australia to provide a real-time "Ask a Librarian" service almost 24-7, and another that provided interactive maps showing the location of specific resources. Much as I admire Aidan's use of Gliffy to produce a map of his library, that is available only in hard copy.

Putting my scientific hat on, I noted that molecular biologists have problems with terminology too, but in a rather different way. While different libraries use different terms to refer to the same concept, biologists have a historical problem with the naming of genes. In the decades before the torrent of data arising from genome projects, it often happened that the same gene would be discovered at roughly the same time by several independent labs. Each group would give the gene a name, and endeavour to keep using that name to highlight their role in the discovery. Pity the poor students with three or more keywords to use when searching for papers on just one gene. One answer to this has been the Gene Ontology - a structured vocabulary for genetics that links the various terms together, listing synonyms for each one. This is only one example of many ontologies that are now widely used in biology.

I asked the librarians at the brown bag lunch whether they had any use for the concept of an ontology. They answered that they did - but they called it by a different name. And I have already forgotten what it is...

Switzerland in London for the Olympics - and Life Sciences

A small part of London has been transformed into Switzerland for the duration of the London Olympics. Well, to be fair, it is one building: but what a building! Glaziers Hall, the headquarters of the wonderfully-named Worshipful Company of Glaziers, has temporarily become "House of Switzerland UK 2012": the Swiss Government's hospitality centre for the duration of the Games. It is tempting to speculate just how much the Swiss must have paid the glaziers to get out of town for the summer, for their building has a delightful and convenient location, sandwiched between Southwark Cathedral and the river. Even the much hyped Olympic crowds at London Bridge station failed to materialise, at least when I was there on Day 4 of the Games, at mid-day and latish in the evening.

But what has this to do with biology, or journalism, or indeed any of the usual topics of this blog? Showing that biotechnologists are not above taking advantage of the networking opportunities offered by the Olympics, the canton of Zurich organised a very interesting Life Science Day at the House of Switzerland on 30 July. The Day, more precisely a long afternoon, was divided into three sessions. The first, organised by the EU HealthTIES consortium, presented some of the most important scientific and technical advances that are likely to affect healthcare in the next decades.

The HealthTIES consortium links biotech and health organisations in five European regions - Zurich (of course); Oxford ans its environs; BioCat in Catalonia, Spain; Medical Delta in the Netherlands; and Ëszak-Alföld in Hungary - aiming to promote innovation in technology for healthcare through collaboration. The first session brought together experts from Zurich, Oxford and Hungary to discuss some of these innovations and their implications for policy and ethics. It was particularly interesting for me to hear Hagan Bayley from the University of Oxford, whose academic research I had recently reported on for the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology at Birkbeck and UCL, wearing his entrepeneurial hat to discuss the promise and implications of the $1000 Genome. Highlights from other UK speakers included Lord Brennan QC describing his own heart attack as a preface to a talk on health policy and Peter Walton's presentation of the clinical benefits of the UK's Adult Cardiac Surgery Database.

The second session brought the focus more firmly on to Switzerland, with presentations from five companies located in the Zurich region. Four of these were biotechs: EMPA, which manufactures biodegradable "plastics" from chemicals synthesised by micro-organisms; INSPHERO develops three-dimensional cell cultures for drug testing; Xeltis is developing methods to grow heart valves and blood vessels from a patient's own cells, and Virometrix is involved in vaccine design. The fifth presentation was by a finance company, SIX Swiss Exchange.

The final session was badged as part of the UK co-organiser One Nucleus' BioWednesday series of informal discussions and networking meetings. One Nucleus is a membership organisation for biotech companies and professionals in the greater London and Cambridge areas. This "BioWednesday on a Monday" took the form of a discussion of the characteristics and benefits of a successful biotech cluster, taking Zurich and London / Cambridge as examples. The combined London / Cambridge cluster is about twice the size of the one centred on Zurich, with 167 biotech companies compared to Zurich's 87. A lively discussion led by panellists from both countries cited features of successful clusters that included quality of life (with one Swiss panellist describing his whole country as "a biotech cluster with recreational add-ons"); communication links; and a mixture of different types of company with universities and teaching hospitals. Not surprisingly, the one negative feature of the locations much cited by delegates from both countries was their high costs.

An excellent "standing dinner" with wine brought this very worthwhile meeting to its close before we all braved the Olympic traffic home.

Disguised as a librarian

It's been a long time...

What has now woken Ursula up from her long "winter torpor" (not true hibernation, it seems) was a presentation in Cambridge by Phil Bradley, President of CILIP (the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, and thus Aidan Baker's professional body). Phil describes himself as an "information specialist and Internet consultant" and I have been following him on Twitter for a couple of years now. As I have always maintained that writers and lecturers need to be expert users of the Internet (and Web 2.0 and social media) just as much as librarians, I duly disguised myself as a librarian and went along. And it was well worth my while!

The afternoon was divided into two parts: first Phil's presentation with questions and answers, and then two sets of discussion groups. I chose a session on Internet tools and one on networking, and when volunteer live bloggers were asked for I put my name forward. On the one occasion I've done this before, at the National Cancer Research Institute conference in Liverpool last year for the online oncology journal ecancer, it meant submitting two accounts of each day's presentations, one in mid-afternoon and the other generally approaching midnight. This time, I didn't even have the luxury of a few hours to put my thoughts together: I simply recorded them as the session proceeded, and the resulting words were recorded on the CILIP East of England blog, much as they had been written.

In the rest of this brief post, therefore, I will concentrate on Phil's own presentation. This was divided into two sections: first on CILIP and the role of the President, and then on the importance of social media for information professionals (a topic on which is is not only an expert but also something of an evangelist). In the first, he discussed the challenges and changes facing the library and information professions, and the way that CILIP's role has been changing with an increased focus on advocacy.

Phil started the second part of his presentation by defining social media as much wider than just "Facebook and Twitter", rather a whole new way of looking at the Internet: a transition from expert-generated content to user-generated content. People, rather than organisations, are now in control of what is posted, and organisations - or rather, the people in them - need to realise this and engage with this new world. It is certainly possible to opt out, but opting out has consequences. People are building their own authority as professionals using their social networks. He cited an example of an employee in the US who moved companies, taking his thousands of Twitter followers with him, and he managed to prove in law that those followers belonged to him, the individual, rather than his company. Some of the newest search engines will favour sites recommended by reputable people that the searcher engages with.

His final message was that the of the social Web is "chaos" and "anarchy" but that this provides an opportunity, rather than a threat, for librarians, who are some of the best placed people to act as guides. And lecturers and writers, perhaps?

Phil Bradley's website is worth a close look. It can be found here.