Whether it's e-research in Australia, cyberinfrastructure in the United States, the grid in Europe, or e-science in the United Kingdom, a transformation is clearly occurring in research practice, a transformation that will have a profound impact on the roles of information professionals within higher education. Research is becoming more multidisciplinary, more collaborative, and more global. The sciences have led these developments as physicists and astronomers seek to leverage the large investments in specialist scientific equipment and to collaborate on the analysis of massive data outputs. Now the social sciences and the humanities are also becoming interested in sharing large multimedia datasets for research collaboration.