11:45 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Big Data is everywhere. In the first 6 months of 2014, there were more than 31,000 articles on Factiva mentioning the term. However, only 59 of these articles also mentioned librarians and information professionals. Similarly, when Tom Davenport wrote in Harvard Business Review that the “data scientist” is the “sexiest job of the 21st Century,” it wasn’t in the context of the information industry. These are new buzzwords, but they are not new concepts for info pros. We have been excellent at working with data all along! The challenge lies in demonstrating to our stakeholders that we can play integral roles in Big Data initiatives. Join Affelt for this session and learn how to leverage your unique abilities to find, analyze, and judge the quality of data in order to tell compelling stories and create imaginative deliverables. She suggests tools to use and ways to learn more through MOOCs (massive open online courses) and graduate LIS program options, especially for those who want to learn how to code (and it’s not as scary as it sounds to some!).
