Education for eScience Professionals: Job Analysis, Curriculum Guidance, and Program Considerations

Large, collaboratively managed datasets have become essential to many scientific and engineering endeavors, and their management has increased the need for "eScience Professionals" who extend librarianship into solving large scale information management problems for researchers and engineers. This article focuses on understanding the dimensions of work, worker, and workplace, including the knowledge, skills, and abilities needed for eScience professionals. We used focus groups and interviews to explore the needs of scientific researchers and how these needs may translate into curricular and program development choices. A cohort of five master's students also worked in targeted internship settings and completed internship logs. Results showed that students worked in three major areas: data management, communications between technical and non-technical staff, and science-related functions. We organized this evidence into a job analysis that can be used for curriculum and program development at schools of information and library science. We conclude with suggestions that the emerging eScience profession comprises a promising educational and research focus for information and library science in the coming decade and that science and R&D labs are an underappreciated setting for productive librarianship.