Value, Vision, and Big Data

摘要

Everywhere I look, the phrase "Big Data" pops up. It seems a very sudden ascent in popularity. I confirmed it's not just a subjective feeling on my part by doing a rudimentary bibliometric analysis using ABI/INFORM and Computer Database. In 2005, scant attention was paid to Big Data, with only 59 mentions in the business database and 10 in the computer file. The action picked up in 2011, with 697 in ABI/INFORM and 720 in Computer Database. The numbers have doubled for 2012, and we're only partially into the year.I'm very tempted to say that librarians understood Big Data before Big Data was cool-and before it gained such popularity. I do believe that information professionals were comfortable with large data sets before anyone else, but Big Data? Did we really get that? I'm not convinced. Certainly, the premium content databases libraries subscribe to contain massive amounts of data. Is it petabytes? Zettabytes? Does it matter if we're not adequately using new discovery tools? Laura Gordon-Murnane makes the point in her Big Data article in this issue that Big Data has the potential to change what we do. It presents opportunities for information professionals to become data librarians and curators-people who can help maximize the understanding of data and fully exploit its value. Preserving data to perpetuate its use and reuse is another skill set possessed by librarians.