MicaH altMan (Ph.D. California Institute of Technology) is Senior Research Scientist in the institute for Quantitative social science in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard university, Associate Director of the Harvard-Mit data center, and Archival Director of the Henry a. Murray research archive. dr. altman conducts research in social science informatics, social science research methodology, and American politics, focusing on the intersection of information, technology, and politics;

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... d on the dissemination, preservation, and reliability of scientific knowledge. His current research interests include survey quality; computationally reliable and efficient statistical methods; the collection, sharing, citation and preservation of research data; the creation and analysis of networks of scientific knowledge; and computational methods of redistricting. His over thirty-five publications and five open-source software packages span informatics, statistics, computer science, political science, and other social-science disciplines. WHere does MicaH see tHe industry in five years: The next five years will see a further application of Melvin kranzberg's second law of technology: "Invention is the mother of necessity." We are now seeing a flood of new inventions for the individual and social creation, recording, and dissemination of knowledge. Information is becoming ambient -continually created, and recorded. Libraries, by necessity, will need to take a larger role in integrating with the workflows around this knowledge, and especially around tagging, social annotation, and other forms of social creation of secondary data.