Terence Huwe from the University of California (Berkley) opening this session – going to talk about how ‘faculty’ (academic staff) see the research library, and how we (the librarians) see faculty.
Terence is director of the library at the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment – the library is the ‘digital publisher’ for the institute. Faculty study by Ithaka in 2009 – at http://www.ithaka.org/ithaka-s-r/research/faculty-surveys-2000-2009/faculty-survey-2009 – tells us about faculty and their attiudes to information/libraries
More faculty members are conducting research at the ‘network level’ – using internet resources as a place to start research, with a growing preference for online/full-text. However faculty members slower to adopt these things that librarians, and also science faculty lead the way – before social science/humanities/arts scholars.
A complex world requires new approaches…
Scholars are responding by increasing the amount they work in groups and consult with each other, more aware of Grey literature – pre-publication work of high interest, working papers etc. Increasingly aware that others have the skills to search an increasingly complex information environment (i.e. turning to librarians) – but may still have trouble admitting this to themselves and others! We need to help them with this 🙂
What does this mean for libraries? This is an opportunity to reframe our image strategically:
- save time by assisting discovery
- educate and form research partnerships
- to offer interpretive services
[this sounds in some ways very much like a shift from librarian -> information scientist to me? More like information scientists might work in a business environment?]
Move the library away from ‘a place you go’ to a service.
New learning spaces – at UC Berkeley now have bSpace – scalable campus teaching portal – based on Library a la Carte – open source, Sakai platform. As Ithaka research suggests, adoption by faculty is slow, but it is happening.
Terence stresses need to act upon locally acquired wisdom about user behaviour. Outreach is powerful (that means talking to people! Often 1-1), and now you can do effective outreach online.
It is important to monitor the environement for new roles – digital publisher etc.