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The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the 29th IATUL Conference on “Digital discovery: strategies and solutions” held in Auckland, New Zealand in April 2008.

The article gives an outline of the issues, content, keynote speakers, social networking and location of this conference.

The IATUL meeting presented a wide range of cutting‐edge topics defining the future roles of librarians in a globalised information society. Participants gained insights into the workings and visions of librarians around the globe, had the opportunity to share experiences and best practice and to find new inspiration and encouragement for their own daily work. The conference included areas such as policies for the information society, digitalization strategies, open access initiatives, e‐research developments, library support for e‐science, library customer orientation, Web 2.0 applications for libraries, learning experiences of the Net generation, information literacy as well as data and knowledge management.

The paper provides a conference report of value to library and information professionals, in particular to library directors and senior managers, regarding the development of a modern dynamic infrastructure for digital information and communication and the role of libraries therein.

The paper aims to present a conceptual model for networked academic library services in a research‐intensive university. It also seeks to focus on the potential challenges that the networked library faces in responding to massive needs of the researchers for digital content in different forms and formats.

The author conducted a personal interview (face‐to‐face, and email communication) with 75 research faculties and postgraduate students in the colleges of business, engineering, IT, and sciences at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). The approach to design the conceptual model for the research‐oriented library service was based on the feedback and observations of the interviewees on the pattern of query processing, research consultations (e.g. comprehensive, expert, topical search), e‐resources coverage, and relevance of the returns to their queries and information needs.

The proposed conceptual model demonstrates the virtual reference service, processing of research queries, online information search and retrieval, and data delivery to the researchers within a virtual research environment (VRE) in the UAEU. The study argues that the UAEU library should employ new strategies to meet the arising challenges of digital content and ongoing advances in information and communication technology (ICT), as well as considering how to embed itself within a research‐intensive university.

The personal interview does not claim to be all‐inclusive since the research faculties in the humanities and social studies were not reached. The inference of the study is encouraging the directors of the academic and research libraries to consider new models and strategies for providing reliable research‐oriented information services for supporting the emerging paradigm of e‐research activities.

The study derived research‐oriented service implications for the subject librarians to engage effectively with the research‐devoted community either in the physical or in the virtual sphere, i.e. a two‐faceted sphere.

An extensive literature review revealed that there is a lack of scholarly works on research‐oriented library services that are provided by the academic libraries at the UAE‐based universities. The study is the first in the UAE to provide a broad understanding to an academic library in a research‐intensive environment for adjusting its web‐based information services. It presents also a suitable approach to embed librarians in the activities of the new paradigms of e‐learning and e‐science.

This paper aims to supply an introduction to the bioinformatics discipline for information professionals, outlining how current information management issues are hampering the effective integration and interoperability of resources.

The approach taken is to outline some of the more challenging issues to illustrate their consequences, such as syntactic and semantic heterogeneity, data storage formats and media, and the existence of inconsistencies in information content in bioinformatics resources. A discussion of these topics indicates how semantic web concepts and technologies, together with e‐science initiatives, can be used to address these problems.

The paper reveals that, if one considers the use of semantic web technologies such as XML and ontologies for the development of information standards that allows integration of different information systems, these systems could then be placed into applications such as web services and GRIDS tailored for biological studies. Such applications would provide automated functionality for database integration, workflow management, inclusion of provenance data, and notification of services.

The value of this paper is that it exemplifies how information professionals can make an impact on the discipline of bioinformatics, which historically has not been addressed by experts with information skills.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrated analysis base to facilitate computational neuroscience experiments, following a user-led approach to provide access to the integrated neuroscience data and to enable the analyses demanded by the biomedical research community.

The design and development of the N4U analysis base and related information services addresses the existing research and practical challenges by offering an integrated medical data analysis environment with the necessary building blocks for neuroscientists to optimally exploit neuroscience workflows, large image data sets and algorithms to conduct analyses.

The provision of an integrated e-science environment of computational neuroimaging can enhance the prospects, speed and utility of the data analysis process for neurodegenerative diseases.

The N4U analysis base enables conducting biomedical data analyses by indexing and interlinking the neuroimaging and clinical study data sets stored on the grid infrastructure, algorithms and scientific workflow definitions along with their associated provenance information.

Data librarianship, or data-driven librarianship, is the combination of information science, data science and e-science fields and is gaining gradual importance in the library and information science (LIS) profession. Hence, this study investigates the data librarianship core concepts (motivational factors, challenges, skills and appropriate training platforms) to learn and successfully launch data librarianship services.

A survey method was used and the data were collected through online questionnaire. Purposive sampling method was applied and 132 responses were received with 76 respondents from the public and 56 from the private sector universities of Pakistan. The statistical package for social sciences (SPSS version 25) was used, and descriptive and inferential statistics were applied to analyzed the data.

LIS professionals understand the importance of data-driven library services and perceive that such services are helpful in evolving the image of the library, helping with the establishment of institutional data repositories/data banks, developing data resources and services for library patrons and especially researchers, and receiving appreciation and acknowledgment from the higher authorities. The major challenges that emerged from the data were: missing data policies, limited training opportunities for data librarianship roles, no additional financial benefits, lack of infrastructure and systems, lack of organizational support for the initiation of data-driven services, and lack of skills, knowledge and expertise. Data librarianship is in its early stages in Pakistan, and consequently, the LIS professionals are lacking basic, advanced and technical data-driven skills.

The policy, theoretical and practical implications describe an immediate need for framing data policies. Such policies will help the libraries or any other relevant entities to store the data and assign metadata and documentation in such a way that it is easy to retrieve and reusable for others.

This is the first study in Pakistan to investigate the perceptions of LIS professionals about data librarianship core concepts: motivational factors, challenges, skills and appropriate training platforms to grasp data-driven skills and successfully launch library services.

This paper aims to outline the information management principles of the so‐called “new science”, and to attempt to put these in the context of traditional library and information science principles.

A brief review of some work in the area, in particular focusing on the work show‐cased by the annual digital preservation conference series hosted by the Digital Curation Centre in Scotland (www.dcc.ac.uk/).

There is a danger that scientists (as opposed to LIS professionals) will apply the information management techniques of the new science to their own activities inappropriately, especially to research that is best curated as “old” not new science. This is something on which information professionals are well placed to give advice and make judgements.

More practice‐oriented research is needed to enhance understanding of how traditional librarianship practices can be applied to the data‐intensive scientific research carried out by so‐called “virtual organisations”.

This paper makes some initial suggestions about the how the tools of library and information practice can be related to the “new science”. In particular, it highlights their relevance to distinguishing between the information management needs of the “old” and the “new” sciences: these needs are quite distinct, though easily confused.

This paper relates terms from pure science such as the virtual organisation, cyberinfrastructure, and e‐Science to traditional LIS concepts, and tries to create an understanding of the relationship between the two disciplines for the library practitioner.

The traditional means of pursuing research by having all the parameters and processes under one roof has given way to collaborative mechanisms of performing the same task. Collaborative work increases the quality of research and it is a big contributing factor to augment the growth of the scientific knowledge. This process leads to training of new and well-informed academicians and scientists. e-Research (Electronic Research) has gained significant amount of traction as technology serves as the backbone for undertaking collaborative research. The purpose of this paper is to provide a synoptic view of existing research surrounding e-Research and suggest a data lifecycle model that can improve the outcome of collaborative research.

Systematic literature review methodology has been employed to undertake this study. Using the outcome of the literature review and the analysis of the existing data lifecycle models, an improvised version of the data lifecycle model has been suggested.

This study has brought a conceptual model for data lifecycle for collaborative research. The literature review in the domain of e-Research has shown that the focus of these papers was on the following stages of data lifecycle model: concept and design, data collection, data processing, sharing and distribution of data and data analysis.

In this paper, only journal papers have been considered and conference proceedings have not been included for literature review.

This paper suggests a conceptual model for the data lifecycle for collaborative research. This study can be useful for academic and research institutions to design their data lifecycle model.

The purpose of this paper is to boost multidisciplinary research by the building of an integrated catalogue or research assets metadata. Such an integrated catalogue should enable researchers to solve problems or analyse phenomena that require a view across several scientific domains.

There are two main approaches for integrating metadata catalogues provided by different e-science research infrastructures (e-RIs): centralised and distributed. The authors decided to implement a central metadata catalogue that describes, provides access to and records actions on the assets of a number of e-RIs participating in the system. The authors chose the CERIF data model for description of assets available via the integrated catalogue. Analysis of popular metadata formats used in e-RIs has been conducted, and mappings between popular formats and the CERIF data model have been defined using an XML-based tool for description and automatic execution of mappings.

An integrated catalogue of research assets metadata has been created. Metadata from e-RIs supporting Dublin Core, ISO 19139, DCAT-AP, EPOS-DCAT-AP, OIL-E and CKAN formats can be integrated into the catalogue. Metadata are stored in CERIF RDF in the integrated catalogue. A web portal for searching this catalogue has been implemented.

Only five formats are supported at this moment. However, description of mappings between other source formats and the target CERIF format can be defined in the future using the 3M tool, an XML-based tool for describing X3ML mappings that can then be automatically executed on XML metadata records. The approach and best practices described in this paper can thus be applied in future mappings between other metadata formats.

The integrated catalogue is a part of the eVRE prototype, which is a result of the VRE4EIC H2020 project.

The integrated catalogue should boost the performance of multi-disciplinary research; thus it has the potential to enhance the practice of data science and so contribute to an increasingly knowledge-based society.

A novel approach for creation of the integrated catalogue has been defined and implemented. The approach includes definition of mappings between various formats. Defined mappings are effective and shareable.

This paper aims to identify the diffusion patterns, especially the communication channels, in the diffusion and adoption of research data management services (RDMS) among libraries.

Literature about the RDMS in individual libraries was gathered and analyzed. Data relevant to the research questions were extracted and analyzed.

Early adopters conduct much original research to create RDMS and they often serve as change agents in diffusing their RDMS and related innovations to other libraries. In contrast, late adopters usually learn from early adopters and use their innovations for establishing their own RDMS. Communication channels used in diffusing RDMS deviate slightly from those reported in general diffusion of innovations (DOI) theories.

Gathered literature provides incomplete and uneven information for RDMS adopters. This makes it difficult to identify adopter categories and test many generalizations in DOI theories. To overcome these limitations, surveys and interviews will be conducted in the future.

Findings from this project contribute to general DOI theories because RDMS is unique compared with many other innovations. The diffusion of RDMS is a decentralized process that involves a high-degree of reinvention and it involves the generation and diffusion of many relevant innovations. The project also identified scholarly communication and inter-organization networks as new types of communication channels that are not well accounted for in existing DOI theories.