Notably Christine Borgman, Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) was a key player in bringing e-Science, and the idea of networked knowledge communities, to the attention of the library profession.
In 2004, as a visiting fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute, she conducted research and lectured publicly on e-Science, Digital Libraries, and Knowledge Communities.
[6] In addition to academic libraries' interests in providing support for their researchers engaging in e-Science, the health sciences library community also emerged as a major proponent for creating librarian positions for supporting the information needs of large-scale, networked, research collaborations on their campuses.
[8] Then, in 2013, Shannon Bohle, an archivist who was employed in the library at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, an NCI-designated basic cancer research facility,[9] used experience gained there and previous papers and presentations about preserving scientific archival materials[10][11][12] to expand the traditional definition of e-Science by including the terms, principles, and practices used in archival science.
[14] Many areas of science are about to be transformed by the availability of vast amounts of new scientific data that can potentially provide insights at a level of detail never before envisaged.
Research libraries have traditionally been discipline focused and, although increasingly technologically sophisticated, do not have systems of the scale or complexity of the e-science environment.
Elaine Russo Martin, Director of Library Services at the Lamar Soutter Library and Director of the NN/LM NER developed this comprehensive e-Science program to build librarians' subject expertise in the sciences, developing their data management skills, and their familiarity with cyberinfrastructure and e-Science.
[19][20] This portal includes educational resources for specific tools and subject/discipline tutorials and modules to assist librarians new to e-Science.