Building an eScience Thesaurus for Librarians: A Collaboration Between the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region and an Associate Fellow at the National Library of Medicine

Objective: In response to the growing interest and adoption of eScience roles by librarians, those from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine, New England Region (NN/LM NER) and an Associate Fellow from the National Library of Medicine collaborated to build an eScience Thesaurus. The Thesaurus will introduce librarians to terminology and concepts in eScience, point to relevant literature and resources on data and digital research topics, and provide links to interviews with librarians and experts working in eScience-related roles. The eScience Thesaurus is a starting place for librarians to find the vocabulary to research the background, resources, and tools necessary for developing their capacity to provide eScience-related services.

Methods: The Associate Fellow completed a review of eScience-related literature to identify the seminal publications for the originations of these terms and concepts as they apply to libraries. Next, the Associate Fellow worked with the NN/LM NER to compile an environmental scan of resources that would be useful and applicable for librarians, and created a scope document and record structure. The team interviewed prominent librarians working in eScience roles and experts that have created digital tools and services used by the library community. Finally, the team sent the Thesaurus records out to five members of the advisory and editorial review boards from the eScience Portal for New England Librarians for evaluation.

Results: The eScience Thesaurus is now hosted on the eScience Portal for New England Librarians’ website. It provides a comprehensive list of more than 50 different terminologies and concepts, with links to seminal and relevant literature, resources, grants, and interviews on a variety of eScience-related topics.

Conclusion: The eScience Thesaurus is an evolving resource; as the field expands and more eScience-related terms are adopted by the library and information science community, the Portal will enable its users to electronically submit new vocabulary and records to the Thesuarus, thus preserving it as a go-to eScience resource for librarians.