My Life as the Sea Jellies Clearinghouse Manager at the MBLWHOI Library Melanie Wilson LIS 796 Spring 2011

Mission Statement As a member of MBLWHOI, a world leader in the organization and dissemination of marine research information, SJC supports the needs and objective of scientists, researchers, and the general public, providing extensive and cutting edge information on sea jellies, their environments, and their ecological impact.

The library in brief The Sea Jellies Clearinghouse (SJC), a subdivision of the MBLWHOI Library in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, is an international hub for information and artifacts relating to sea jellies (also referred to as jellyfish). This department was created in 2009 to meet growing international interest in sea jellies research, particularly in light of increased sightings of giant jellyfish off the coast of Japan, as well as blooms of sea jellies in waters around the world. Believed to have environmental and ecological causes and impacts, as well as having an effect on shipping and fishing industries, the blooms have drawn significant scientific, governmental, and economic interest. The SJC makes accessible to the scientific community, government organizations, and the public such items as peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, research data, historical documents, educational materials, and cultural artifacts. SJC has one full time librarian manager, two volunteers, and a summer MLIS intern from either the University of Rhode Island or Simmons College in Boston. As SJC is a department within MBLWHOI, its librarian answers directly to MBLWHOIs library director, and many of its functions and activities are similar to and performed in concert with those of the larger library, but focused specifically on sea jellies.

About MBLWHOI Located in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, the MBLWHOI Library is jointly operated by the Marine Biology Laboratories (MBL) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI). The library was founded in 1888, and for most of its history has been based on an informal agreement between the two institutions to co-manage it; that agreement was made formal in 2007. MBLWHOI is privately owned, and both MBL and WHOI are private non-profit organizations, each governed by a board of trustees whose members include scientists, representatives of business and industry, and community leaders. It not only serves the needs of local the scientists and researchers, but also from all over the world. Sometimes scientists and researchers visit and use the facilities in person; other times the library provides reference and other services through email. Twice a year, in cooperation with the National Library of Medicine, MBLWHOI offers courses in BioMedical Informatics. The library offers other courses as well, and is involved in the Bioinformation Science Consortium (BISC) and the Boston Library Consortium, as well as The International
Association of Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers (IAMSLIC) and the regional division SAIL.

Staff includes a director and assistant director, a coordinator of library services and a technical services coordinator, three librarians, a library scholar, an archives manager, head of patron services, an institution archivist, a digital processing technician and assistant, several data analysts and developers, and about ten regular volunteers. Librarians and information professionals at each of MBL and WHOI, as well as other research facilities around the country, do research for the librarys publications and reports. The librarys major departments are the MBL Lillie department (housed at the Lillie building), the WHOI Data Library and Archives, the Scientific Informatics Group, and the Lillie DPC. The growth potential is good, especially with growing research in biomedicine and ecology, and the way digital technologies are allowing scientists and researchers to collaborate globally. As the library is already a widely recognized leader in their area of expertise, and as they are continuing to expand their electronic resources, they are well positioned to become an ever-greater part of this scientific growth. In 2008, the library and partners became involved in the open access Biodiversity Heritage Library digitization project, and many of the items they provided to this project have also become part of the Encyclopedia of Life project. They were also an instrumental part of the team creating the online portal for accessing these documents, as well as the developer of a tool that identifies book duplicates in the collections of the BHL member libraries before the scanning process begins. Under the direction of former library director Catherine Norton, the Informatics department created a freely accessible interactive taxonomy tool to track the discoveries of new species since 1750 (http://taxatoy.ubio.org/). The library charges fees for accessing its collections, with different rates charged for different types of researchers, as well as time of year (one monthly fee for June-August, another lower rate for September-May). It also offers a couple of research grants and fellowships for visiting scientists. The library can be accessed 24 hours a day by those with an access card, and during regular business hours by the general public. The Data Library and Archives are only open to the general public by appointment. MBL has a digital processing

center, offering photocopying, digital imaging, and fax services. WHOI offers Graphics Services, with a team of professional designers, illustrators, photographers, and technicians, offering everything from slide duplication to creating animations.

Organizational Chart

MBLWHOI Boards of Trustees

MBLWHOI Library Director

MBLWHOI Assistant Library Director

MBL Coordinator of Library Services

SJC Librarian

DLA Manager/WHOI Archives

Scientific Informatics Group

Lillie DPC

Technical Services Coordinator

Volunteers

Publication Services

Web Application Architect

Head Digital Processing Technician

Senior Automation Services Officer

MLIS Interns

Systems/Data Librarian

System Administrator and Developer

Digital Processing Center Assistant

Document Delivery/Cataloging Librarian

Head of Patron Services

Natural Language Processing Analyst

Document/Systems Librarian

Cell Image Library Analyst

Institution Archivist

Data Manager/Developr

Data Analyst

The external environment Woods Hole is a census-designated place with a population of 925, located within the town of Falmouth, which has a population of 32,660. Located off state route 28, it is accessible by sea and ferry from Marthas Vineyard and surrounding islands. Nearby libraries include the Woods Hole Public Library and the Falmouth Public Library, both of which have special marine collections, in addition to their general interest collections and resources, and collections on local history. The area is known for having a high concentration of scientific research organizations focusing on marine biology and oceanography. The US Geological Survey, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Marine Fisheries Service also have facilities in the area. Originally a fishing village, there is also a strong tourism business, with many people visiting while catching ferries to Marthas Vineyard. Other facilities in the area include the Sea Education Association, offering educational programs for high school and college students both in classrooms and at sea on, the Woods Hole Research Center, as well as the Penikese Island School for troubled teenage boys, all of which are private. All of these entities, with the exception of the Penikese Island School, are served by MBLWHOI. The librarys resources are also frequently used by the Boston University Marine Program, and the MIT/WHOI Joint Program. Over the summer many scientists and students come from all over the world to visit the library and use its resources to assist them with their research.

Workspace The MBLWHOI library is located on the 2nd floor of the Lillie Building at MBL. SJC is a small room on this floor, lined with windows overlooking Eel Pond. There is a circle of work stations for the library director, volunteers, and MLIS intern. Each workstation consists of a large flat monitor and computer, and there is a high-resolution large flat bed color scanner/printer centrally located, which is also connected to the MBLWHOI network. Most of MBLWHOIs collections are located in either the rare book room, which is on the same floor as the library itself, or in three stories in the basement of the building. These stacks, which are part of the original foundation and help support the buildings structure, contain bound volumes of scientific journals and monographs. SJC has been given permission by MBLWHOIs library director to select items from the collection pertaining to sea jellies and display them in rotating collections in the SJC library space. There are also three workstations for visiting researchers and members of the public, as well as other MBLWHOI professionals who may need a quiet space to work. These workstations also double as touch-down suites for scientists and researcher working on sea jelly related projects.

Collections

MBLWHOIs collection consists of both print and electronic titles, focusing on the biological, biomedical, ecological and oceanographic sciences. The library is currently moving towards more digital resources and less print, though they are also expanding their archive of historical materials. Most items have been purchased over the librarys history, but many have also been acquired through physical and monetary donations. Special collections include the MBL Rare Books Collection, Archives of the MBL, Montgomery Collection on Arctic and Antarctic Exploration, reports from expeditions and cruises since the 17th century, research papers and reprints by MBL and WHOI investigators, and Rudolph Leukarts Teaching Wall Chart Collection. There is also the Data Library and Archives, consisting of WHOIs archives, historical photographs, antique oceanographic instruments, scientific imaging from the Alvin submarine, seismic profiling data, echo sounding reports, technical report collections, maps, nautical charts, theses, and the WHOI Oral History Report. Some of these items are available online to the general public, such as historical photos. As a new department, the bulk of SJCs collections are drawn from MBLWHOIs collections; digital resources are accessible through SJCs various gateways, as well as the blog. SJC is also in the process of collecting its own expanded collection of historical items, creative commons licensed images from sources such as Flickr and the Wiki commons, as well as creating a database of knowledge gathered from a wide range of researchers and scientists working on projects involving sea jellies and related animals. All of these resources are also organized in MBLWHOIs Dspace, as special collections within the main Dspace collection. Dspace is open source software created by MIT and used by libraries and information centers for enabling free open access of their digital resources.

Customers Scientists/researchers SJC supports the research needs of scientists in all aspects of marine research, including marine biology, biomedicine, oceanography, marine ecology, and water quality, both those working for any of the various organizations in Woods Hole and those accessing the librarys resources remotely. These users have very specific research projects they are working on, and primarily do their own research. Their main expectations from the library consist of document delivery, maintaining the necessary journal and database subscriptions, and performing the back-end work that allows them to access the librarys resources. While this user group is very knowledgeable about their specific research areas and information needs, they tend to return to the resources they already are familiar with, and therefore are not always aware of different tools they could be using to get useful data. Because many of the researchers are working remotely, it is difficult to conduct in person workshops to instruct them on different discovery tools and techniques. Instead, SJC has collaborated with MBLWHOI staff to conduct webinars, and to highlight different databases and discovery tools with short videos on the librarys site. Under their direction, the informatics department has created a central gateway to all of the librarys resources. It is on this site that these highlights are posted, as well as links to recorded past webinars. The webinars and instructional videos are also advertised in monthly emails, as well as postings in the buildings on the Woods Hole campus. This gateway has also been designed to address the issues involved in gathering metrics on document retrieval. Because many of the scientists access materials through the websites of the various professional organizations they belong to, the gateway includes links to all of these sites. This puts everything the scientists need in one central location, and their resource usage can now be tracked through the gateway site. Sea Education Association (SEA) Students SEA students are undergraduates from various universities and majors who come to Woods Hole for a summer course focusing on marine studies. They are not necessarily science majors; many are also liberal arts majors. The program consists of six weeks of academics in Woods Hole, followed by six weeks at sea where they conduct self-designed research projects. During their time on land, the students have full access to all of MBLWHOIs resources, as well as those of the scientific and government organizations in the area. Because they are in Woods Hole for such a short period of time, and because most of them access the library after hours (as daytime hours are spent in classes), SJC staff do not have much direct contact with this user group. As they are also in an early

stage of their exploration and discovery, their interests and information needs are much broader than those of the career scientists and researchers. They have also not yet become attached to any particular discovery tools or databases, and so this provides an excellent opportunity for the library to expose them to the wide assortment of tools at their disposal. With recent sightings of giant jellies off the coast of Japan and the increased sightings of blooms of sea jellies, as well as the very unique nature of these animals in and of themselves, there is significant interest among the SEA students in sea jelly research. SJC has therefore created a separate information gateway designed specifically for SEA students. It features instructional and informative videos, pathfinders, research tools, and an extensive image database. The gateway provides a chat service, as well as a form for email reference services.

Special Projects Excited by the possibilities of open access, and inspired by a discussion in John Willinskys monograph The Access Principle on the contributions to knowledge throughout history by amateur naturalists, the library seeks to engage the public in contemporary research projects concerning sea jellies. As Willinsky states amateurs...are able to generate a considerable body of observational data often making significant discoveries in the process which serves the professionals theorizing and follow-up (Willinsky 2006, 122). Starting with the Columbia Center for Backyard Astrophysics as our model, SJC has invited amateur marine biologists, oceanographers, fishers, sailors, etc to contribute both their own observational data and anecdotal evidence to our collections. We are in the process of developing a database that will not only organize their contributions and make them publicly accessible, but that will also link them to open access research data gathered by our scientists and researchers. By utilizing this wealth of resources, we can more rapidly enlarge global knowledge about sea jellies and their place in the oceans ecosystems. Public information contributions can be submitted via email or uploaded to the SJC site. All contributions are fully credited. We are hoping that the success of this project will result in a similar program being established with the parent MBLWHOI library. Other ongoing projects involve digitizing the librarys wealth of archival materials, including over 100 years of bound foreign scientific journals, photo collections, maritime artifacts, etc.

ROI and Metrics As a new department, SJC is taking advantage of its unique opportunity to establish early on a system of metrics to measure how we are meeting the needs of our users. Ideally this system will become a regular part of operations, so that we can monitor our performance over time. We also are working with the rest of the MBLWHO staff to integrate a system of performance assessment across the library as a whole. MBLWHOI has not taken any kind of internal audit for several years, and the new library director has recognized the need to establish a set of metrics, to evaluate where we are currently and identify ways to improve. In addition, despite the fact that SJC is intended to be a temporary department to later be integrated into MBLWHOI, we feel there is a real long-term value to divisions such as SJC. In fact, we believe that there would be a significant value to our users and scientific knowledge as a whole, if there were other similar subdivisions within MBWLHOI, to better direct our offerings to our different user groups. To this end, SJC is working towards using metrics to also prove our worth as a permanent department in the larger library, and the worth of similar departments focusing on other areas of marine and aquatic research. Currently we have been utilizing MBLWHOIs subscription to Web of Science for citation tracking. We are aware of the fact that even more could be gained by tools such as Scopus, but as finances are always a concern, we must by necessity limit the amount of paid subscriptions we have to those that are most needed by our customers. However, we recognize that a large part of the librarys value lies in the usefulness of our resources to our customers, and by extension, how their research provides value to scientific knowledge as a whole. Therefore, in addition to establishing some traditional usage metrics and user satisfaction surveys, under our direction MBLWHOIs highly skilled and innovative informatics department is creating a new multi-faceted citation tracking service. In the same way that MBLWHOI has played a major role in creating the technical infrastructure for the BHL project, we expect to make this citation service available to other institutions as open source software. Variables that our citation tracking service will measure: Number of published papers by our users that utilize resources in our collection Number of these resources that were acquired throughout document delivery Anecdotal evidence as to what research has built upon our resources Number of resources that are used by multiple research teams and in collaborative projects Number of times our users published papers are being cited; how many of these are papers that also cited resources in our collection?

Branding and Marketing SJC has developed its own logo, which is used on all promotional materials, information products, letterhead, educational materials, blog posts, reports, newsletters, etc. The library has a Twitter and a Facebook page, which it uses to highlight publicly accessible digital items in its collection, to inform the public about activities and events at both SJC and the larger MBLWHOI library, as well as in Woods Hole and nearby Falmouth. Items added to the BHL collection are also showcased, and entertaining and educational facts about jellies and related animals are also shared. Fans of the Facebook page are invited to post their own related news items and photos and videos on the SJC wall. SJC also maintains a blog, updated weekly, which includes buttons for sharing posts on Facebook, Twitter, and a multitude of other social networking and bookmarking sites, via email, printer friendly versions. Comments are enabled and monitored; posts are tagged and a tag cloud is displayed. The blog also includes a link to RSS feeds to posts and/or comments, using a variety of RSS readers. Menu buttons on the blog include links to SJCs website, the MBLWHOI website, the BHL website, and the parent organizations of MBL and WHOI. There is a Google search box for searching the site. Blog posts cover similar topics to those on the Facebook page, but more in depth and with more options for adding metadata, links, sharing, commenting, etc. Most of the blog entries are written by the SJC librarian, though the MLIS interns and researchers make guest posts as well. Users can also subscribe to an email newsletter.

Position Advertisement Library Director Sea Jellies Clearinghouse MBLWHOI Library Woods Hole, MA Salary: $55,000-60,000 Status: Full-time Reports to: MBLWHOI Library Director MBLWHOI Library, an internationally recognized information organization serving the biological, biomedical, ecological and oceanographic scientific community, is developing a subdepartment focusing on the rapidly growing field of sea jellies research. This is a solo librarian position, though collaborating as part of the MBLWHOI library and informatics team is expected. Woods Hole is also home to several federal research departments, such as NOAA and NFS. The successful candidate is both responsive and innovative, and will support the MBLWHOI community of scientific users, as well as engaging students and the general public. While full access to library resources are reserved to subscribing researchers and their parent institutions, collections are also open to the public. As this is a new department, the SJC library director will be responsible for establishing best practices, performance metrics, and developing the librarys special collections. The position also requires outreach, liaison services, and user instruction. MBLWHOI is a major player in the Biodiversity Heritage Librarys Encyclopedia of Life project, contributing both digitized materials and technical support, and the successful candidate will be participate in these responsibilities as well. Qualifications: REQUIRED:

ALA-accredited Masters degree in Library and/or Information Science Experience using research databases and other resources in biology and the natural sciences Commitment to innovative and successful user-centered services Proficiency in the use of relevant technology for instruction and outreach purposes Knowledge of collection development issues and trends Excellent communication, presentation, and interpersonal skills Ability to pass a background check

A biology or natural science background is preferred but not necessary. Collection development in a science library or research organization is desirable.

Resources

Caputo, Joseph. MBLWHOI Library Develops Taxonomy Toy. MBL News Archive [Online], July 24, 2008. http://www.mbl.edu/news/features/taxatoy.html Columbia Center for Backyard Astrophysics Home Page. http://cbastro.org/ Hebert, Gina. MBLWHOI Library and Partner Institutions Make 14,000 Pieces of Biodiversity Literature Accessible to Libraries and Researchers Worldwide. Press Release [Online], Dec. 23, 2010.

http://www.mbl.edu/news/press_releases/2010/2010_pr_12_23.html Jennifer Walton (MBL Coordinator of Library Services), in discussion with the author, April 2011. Marine Biology Laboratory Home Page. http://www.mbl.edu/index.html Marine Biology Laboratory. MBL Annual Report 2008. MBL Communications Office. http://www.mbl.edu/governance/gov_annual_report.html Marine Biology Laboratory. Welcome to Woods Hole. Informational Brochure. http://www.mbl.edu/about/visit/pdf/welcome_to_woods_hole.pdf MBLWHOI Library Joint User Committee. Annual Report 2009-2010 MBLWHOI Library website. http://www.mblwhoilibrary.org/index.php
Norton, Cathy. "The Encyclopedia of Life, Biodiversity Heritage Library, Biodiversity Informatics and Beyond Web 2.0" First Monday [Online], Volume 13 Number 8 (9 August 2008)

http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2226/2013
Willinsky, John. The Access Principle: The Case for Open Access to Research and Scholarship. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2006. Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woods_Hole,_Massachusetts Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute Home Page. http://www.whoi.edu/