Dynamic Research Support in Academic Libraries

This inspiring book will enable academic librarians to develop excellent research and instructional services and create a library culture that encompasses exploration, learning and collaboration. Higher education and academic libraries are in a period of rapid evolution. Technology, pedagogical shifts, and programmatic changes in education mean that libraries must continually evaluate and adjust their services to meet new needs. Research and learning across institutions is becoming more team-based, crossing disciplines and dependent on increasingly sophisticated and varied data. To provide valuable services in this shifting, diverse environment, libraries must think about new ways to support research on their campuses, including collaborating across library and departmental boundaries. This book is intended to enrich and expand your vision of research support in academic libraries by; inspiring you to think creatively about new services; sparking ideas of potential collaborations within and outside the library, increasing awareness of functional areas that are potential key partners; providing specific examples of new services, as well as the decision-making and implementation process; and encouraging you to take a broad view of research support rather than thinking of research and instruction services, metadata creation and data services etc as separate initiatives. Dynamic Research Support in Academic Libraries provides illustrative examples of emerging models of research support and is contributed to by library practitioners from across the world. The book is divided into three sections; Part I: Training and Infrastructure, which describes the role of staff development and library spaces in research support; Part II: Data Services and Data Literacy, which sets out why the rise of research data services in universities is critical to supporting the current provision of student skills that will help develop them as data-literate citizens; and Part III: Research as a Conversation, which discusses academic library initiatives to support the dissemination, discovery and critical analysis of research. This is an essential guide for librarians and information professionals involved in supporting research and scholarly communication, as well as library administrators and students studying library and information science.