Random things I have been thinking about:

• Had a discussion yesterday with some folks about health informatics. One of the things it made me think about was the difficulty of knowing what we need to teach a librarian or information scientist in order for that person to be  effective in a health environment. When UNC was trying to have IS students enrolled in bioinformatics courses, it was very difficult for them because, at least in part, it seemed the folks on the biology side didn’t have a clear idea of a) what the starting point was for the IS students and b) what the threshhold or endpoint would be for the students to know enough about the domain to be effective. Now granted, bioinformatics may have a slightly higher threshhold of knowledge within the domain that some kinds of clinical informatics. But I still think this is an unsolved problem. You don’t necessarily need an LIS person who also has an advanced medical degree — but just how much and what type of knowledge *does* an LIS person need in order to be able to design and maintain effective information architectures and systems?
• Information science and policy and human rights. The relationships between these things keep nagging at me, but I don’t exactly know what to do with them yet. It still frustrates me that our field (and I guess I’m picking on ASIS&T in particular here) is not involved at the policy-making level as information policy is discussed. Those discussions, I fear, are lacking in the kind of expertise we can provide. So I’m still figuring out what to do about that. And as far as human rights goes — it goes back to the information as power idea. I believe in that philosophy at some basic level — but that doesn’t really help the protesters in Myanmar, for example, in any real sort of way. So what can we do?