The promise of academic libraries - [occupying a different space within the campus community]

Interesting article looking at ideas on how to 'turn outward' -  "new possibilities as academic libraries span boundaries and occupy a more visible, catalytic role on campus".

April 2014 College & Research Libraries News vol. 75 no. 4 182-186

 "By turning outward, we have found common purpose with colleagues and students across the university"

Reimagining the liaison role of librarians - "embedding services in the teaching, learning, and research processes" ; “getting in the flow of users”

Community conversations about the undergraduate experience - engaging with university leaders and students -  "opened new possibilities for librarians to engage more actively with colleagues across the campus." 

Moving from talk to action - "clarify our value within the academy as we develop a sense of common purpose and set realistic goals"

Pockets of change - "identify and take intentional steps toward a more engaged approach to library programs and services" (examples: engaged celebrations; promote civic engagement activities; strengthening partnerships with other units; launching more outward-looking team structures; redesigning positions to respond more effectively to campus initiatives.)

Measuring impact (new ways to gauge progress) -  "beyond reporting on what we have done" ; "why and what difference [library activities] make in the broader university context" ; What kind of indicators will measure the success of community engagement?

 

 

 

Librarians' Views of Academic Library Support for Scholarly Publishing: An Every-day Perspective

 Some of the topics discussed in the article: (from J of academic librarianship)

• How do academic librarians perceive their role in relation to the research community in their everyday work? 
• How is it possible to make academic librarians active in the processes surrounding academic research
• more integrated view of the different parts of the university in that researchers and non-academic staff are tied closer to each other
• academic libraries ... today are expected to take a larger responsibility for the publication output of the university, primarily through the establishment and support of open institutional archives and Open Access journals. In keeping these archives, insight and participation in the scholarly processes are required in order to keep researchers aware of the opportunities offered by the university library to make research results public through internal, open channels.
• a gap between attitudes and action, where positive attitudes about Open Access are confronted by the rigidity of the university system and its library practice.
• basic tension between the traditional “reactive” academic librarian and the “proactive” librarian expected to meet contemporary demands
• the importance of the pedagogical discourse that has dominated academic libraries for the last decade is now decreasing. Instead a combination of traditional bibliographic work and development of engagement in researchers' publication strategies is emerging. Even though there are several ways of looking at the practical solutions for the library's engagement in digital repository development and Open Access publishing, there is a clear sense that this will be of increasing significance for academic libraries in years to come.
• increasing importance of bibliometric research evaluation indicators both locally and nationally is felt to be a factor which will influence both the position of academic libraries in organizational settings and the practical work for librarians, not least in relation to the digital institutional repositories, where bibliographic records must be developed and maintained.
• With new prerequisites for scholarly publication through peer-reviewed Open Access journals and institutionally based digital repositories, academic librarians now feel that there are opportunities emerging both in relation to the individual researchers, research groups and to the universities as a whole. Turning focus from information seeking tutorials towards publication support and strategy formulation makes the academic libraries, also at relatively small universities as those in this study, active parts of the development in scholarly knowledge production.

What do academics want – (includes the changing role of the academic library)

A new survey has been undertaken which looks at the changing practices of academics in the UK. Ben Showers of Jisc and Mike Mertens of RLUK discuss three key findings of the survey which demonstrate the influence of new technologies on research, the altering perceptions of support services and the changing role of the academic library.

(Interesting dichotomy - see the graphs in this article - researchers are not particulary interested in publishing in open access publications but the do want to be able to find the information they need freely available to download!)


"The survey underlines that for academics, electronic versions of monographs are not well suited to some research activities.  Specifically, a majority of academics indicated that reading cover-to-cover or in depth reading was ‘much easier’ or ‘somewhat easier’ in print format..."

and: "A major set of findings highlights the value academics place on the role of the library within their teaching and research. While only 2% of respondents visited the library to begin their research query, nearly 90% of respondents saw the library’s most important function as a purchaser of content. Furthermore, around 30% of respondents indicated that the library has a role in increasing the productivity of their research."

Designing researcher-centric library services

from 12th May 2013 Research Information (Analysis and Opinion)


"....findings highlighted three primary areas that would benefit from new or redesigned services. Firstly, there is the area of information discovery. In particular, there is a need to support chemists in keeping up with the literature and enabling serendipitous discovery.
The second key role is research dissemination and scholarly communications. While academic chemists publish frequently, the report revealed the need for greater support in disseminating their research outputs.
Data management and preservation was the third area identified. The report acknowledged a gap in training in how to store, manage and curate the data that is collected by chemists and their labs..."

Libraries help researchers save time, says new report

University libraries are saving academics time by helping them find quality material more quickly, says a new report.
Academics are choosing the library as their first choice for getting hold of scholarly material because access is quick, it helps them make new connections to related information and the library may be the only place they can access that material.
Academics are then using their reading to inspire new thinking and improve their research results.
This picture of the library at the heart of university life has emerged as part of a new JISC Collections report which canvassed over 1000 academic and associate staff at six UK universities in 2011.