Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Sketchy algorithms. Incomplete and inaccurate data. Fake news. Many found the existence of these phenomena as surprising as Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. But was it surprising to librarians? Not so much. We know the charlatans are out there, but our expertise has always been in discovering and curating high-quality data and information from well-regarded sources and in understanding the results that we present in research projects. So how can we leverage the focus on these concerns in order to showcase our expert information and data evaluation, discovery, application, and analysis skills? This session takes a look at what has gone wrong in recent months when Big Data and fake news were used to make faulty predictions and decisions. Did the poor prognostications signal the death of Big Data? Not quite, and they just might herald a rebirth, led by the professionals most skilled at using it (us!). You will leave this session with an action plan for analyzing the integrity and quality of both data and news, and concrete marketing tips to position yourself in a critical role in making sure that your organization gets it right.