Citizen/Community Science & Crowdsourcing with the National Library of Medicine

Friday, April 29, 2022

11:35 AM – 11:40 AM CT

Presenter and Author(s)

YE

Yamila M. El-Khayat, M.A.

Outreach Services Librarian/ Communication Specialist and Citizen Sciences Engagement Specialist
AZ Health Sciences Library/ NNLM Region 4
University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona

Slides

Author(s)

KC

Kirsten Crowhurst

Program Innovation Strategist
Network of the National Library of Medicine Training and Education Center
NS

Nancy Shin, AHIP

Outreach and Data Coordinator
Network of The National Library of Medicine (NNLM), Region 5
Seattle, Washington
Stefania Acosta Ramirez

Engagement Specialist
University of Iowa, Iowa
Michael Balkenhol, MLIS

Engagement Coordinator
Hardin Library of the Health Sciences , University of Iowa
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Tess Wilson, MLIS, MFA

Program Manager
University of Pittsburgh Health Sciences Library System
Pittsburgh
DC

Darlene Cavalier, MLA

Professor of Practice
SciStarter and Arizona State University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
CN

Caroline Nickerson, MPP

Fellow and Advisor
SciStarter

Background: Community/Citizen Science is a priority topic for our organization, working to familiarize the public with scientific research in accessible ways. Through citizen science and crowdsourcing, we can engage communities in addressing societal needs and accelerating biomedical science, technology, and innovation. Collaborations between communities and researchers build capacity to address problems and meet research goals. Community participation in the research process also builds trust between researchers and the communities that we serve.This lightning talk will introduce attendees to projects and resources as well as funding and programming opportunities.

Description: In 2019-2020 our organization planned an elaborate and highly successful speaker series, as revealed by our program evaluations, on Citizen Science and Libraries. We invited citizen/community science speakers to speak about their research and the subsequent impact of citizen science projects on them. Our members and the public always have access to a citizen science on-demand course in English and Spanish that our organization collaborated on with another well-known citizen science entity in our community.

With growing curiosity in science and research, citizen and community science brings tangible projects to the public to support research projects. Citizen scientists volunteer to collect or analyze data, moving science forward and help researchers understand how things work. We support programming, toolkits, and projects that connect the public to valuable research tools , making a difference directly to the scientific community, and their own!

Conclusion: Citizen/community science programming at our organization is ever continuing and evolving - citizen/community science is a program initiative that is highly valued for its community and scientific research impact. We constantly evaluate our programming with member feedback/programming evaluations that measure the success of our program content and the success of our speakers and instructors and we will continue with these evaluations to make our programs more impactful, successful, and accessible.