10.2 Museum Libraries as Change Agents in the Era of Data Science

The purpose of this talk is to describe how natural history museum libraries and archives have embraced digitization and technology to meet the needs of scientists who rely on content that spans historical and modern time to complete their research. The Museum of Comparative Zoology Ernst Mayr Library of Harvard University (MCZ), Smithsonian Institution Libraries, and the Natural History Museum, London (NHM) will serve as the primary use cases described in this presentation. Natural history museum libraries embrace open access and open science principles; in fact many have participated in digitization designed to populate the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). Additionally, museums are integrating specimen data from multiple collections and data links from literature to specimens. More than in any other field of science, researchers who use these museum libraries depend on the historical literature for the underpinnings of their research. The impact of the strategy to digitize content from the great natural history collections and share content for open access and responsible re-use has resulted in a global ‘biodiversity commons.’ that improves research methodology. The scholarly enterprise encompasses partnerships among libraries, scientists, citizen scientists and researchers in the digital humanities with the result that there are collaborative grant submissions, opportunities for data mining, data sharing and data linking. National memory collections, previously hidden in archives can be exposed, stories developed and museums can integrate old data into new analyses. For example, field notes from early scientists provide a vast array of data that can be used to describe climate or show relationships of scientists with their peers in art, history and government. The accessibility of print collections and archives as they are digitized enables greater exploitation by non-scientists as well as scientists. An unexpected result of digitization is that new socioeconomic questions arise–when can digital surrogates replace physical collections? If print collections are dismantled once there is an acceptable digital copy, is anything lost? Many objects are readily available as a digital surrogate and this allows us to think more flexibly about what we do with the physical material although in museum library settings, there is value in the physical object (book, specimen) even if it has been scanned. Co-location of museum specimens and the literature describing them can be better achieved with the digitization of both sorts of objects; however there is a loss of information if the physical objects are discarded. Physical objects contain information–chemistry, construction and other features that are elements for research, some yet undefined. Has the science embedded in museums become history? Library materials are physical things that have become objects of study along with the content that is more readily mined in a digital form. The sensory perceptions of specimens cannot be conveyed (yet) via digital versions. Physical objects reflect social history and are elements of cultural heritage that may be compromised if only the digital surrogates exist. In effect, the museum itself becomes a database that incorporates physical and digital objects each with their own characteristics