They are the experts in searching, and have established channels for the sharing of those skills. PubMed 's links, from sequence data to Medline records, has made the similarities with bibliographic databases more obvious. However the nature of the sequence and genome data and the uses to which it is put can be a barrier to anyone without a biological background. Luckily, one of the other great skills of librarians is knowing what they don't know, and knowing when to admit it or to refer on to another enquiry centre. Hence, librarians need to work with their local bioinformatics experts, to obtain advice and to refer on as necessary.
Biologists use bionformatics resources in a variety of ways.
I see a kind of spectrum, from simple information retrieval at one end, e.g. searching a databank to find a particular sequence or fact, through to complex data analysis at the other end, e.g. predicting 3D structure of a novel sequence or finding coding regions in a novel sequence. There is a role for librarians in providing basic search assistance for users of bioinformatics resources, especially students, new users and those who need only occasional access to such information. Bioinformatics specialists can help their local library staff in a number of ways. Identifying a core set of knowledge that is necessary for understanding these resources would be a big step forward. Second, librarians need to be kept informed of the range of problems that can be answered by more advanced bioinformatics tools, in order to ensure that they can effectively refer more detailed questions on.