Presentation from the 6th CILIP ARLG-SW Discover Academic Research and Training Support Conference (DARTS6). Dartington Hall, Totnes, Thursday 24th – Friday 25th May 2018

1. Getting there from here:
changes for academic librarians supporting research
Kara Jones
Head of Library Research Services
University of Bath Library
DARTS6 24 May 2018

2. • Then and now
• Developments in Libraries
• The Higher Education environment
• Changes to research and researchers
• How these changes affect academic library support
• Five years from now
• Changing roles
Overview

3. University of Bath
Library Research Services
About Head of Library
Research
Services
Research
Publications
Scholarly
Communications
Librarian
Repository
Support Librarian
Repository
Administrator
Research
Analytics
Librarian
Research Data
Management
Senior Data
Librarian
Research Data
Librarian
Research Data
Librarian
(Systems)
Archives &
Research
Collections
University
Archivist &
Records Manager
Archives &
Records Assistant

4. How have academic library services evolved? Key developments include:
• Print to electronic resource provision
• Self-service
• Skills development/facilitation of access to resources
• Infrastructure changes – space utilisation
Developments in Library services

5. • Changes in the HE sector
• ‘Seat of learning’ to marketization of HE
• Funding changes, grant income
• Target-hitting, ratings, forming a USP
• Transparency/accountability
• League tables and assessment exercises
Changes to institutions

6. http://www.bath.ac.uk/corporate-information/rankings-and-reputation/
Changes to research - institutional

7. Changes to research
• Digital scholarship
• Huge increase in research outputs created, analysed and shared.
• Publishing models are changing.
• Increased collaboration and inter-disciplinarity
• Increasingly competitive nature of higher education – league tables, rankings,
performance measurement, research strategies, grant capture, compliance…

8. https://www.vitae.ac.uk/vitae-publications/rdf-related/researcher-development-framework-rdf-
vitae.pdf
What is important to PostDoctoral
Research Associates (CROS March
2017)
• Being a valued member of staff
• Developing their career and
independence
• Applying for funding
• Teaching and PGR/Masters
supervision
• Web presence

9. • Bibliographer model (capturing
the end products of scholarship,
cataloguing, intermediary)
• Liaison model (recognising the
need for advanced library
research assistance within the
disciplines, instruction
• Engagement model (enhancing
scholar productivity, empowering
lowers, participating in research,
teaching and learning lifecycles.
• 2013 – ‘New Roles for New Times:
Transforming Liaison Roles in Research
Libraries’
http://hdl.handle.net/11299/169867
Role developments
Engagement
model
Liaison
model
Bibliographer
model
‘professional development and re-skilling of current
staff, creative approaches… and collaborative
partnerships within libraries, across campus units,
and among research institutions’ (‘New roles…’p.16)

10. Research Life Cycle image, University of Bath, 2014.

11. 1. Conceptualizing new research, developing proposals, and identifying funding opportunities
2. Seeking new information
3. Information management
4. Data collection
5. Data discovery, management, and curation
6. Sharing, discussion, online collaboration
7. Analyzing and reflecting on information and data
8. Writing up and dissemination
9. Compliance, IP, copyright and other statutory requirements
10.Preservation
11.Quality assessment and measuring impact
12.Commercialization
13.Emerging technology
RLUK approach to the research life cycle (Brewerton, 2012, p.104)
2012 – ‘Re-skilling for Research’
http://www.rluk.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/RLUK-Re-skilling.pdf
Skills gaps from research lifecycle

12. Five years on..
• ‘Research Support’ and
‘Library Research Services’
emerging as functional
specialisms for librarians
• Many of those skills gaps
addressed.
Where are we now?

13. What do academic librarian job descriptions look like?
Job descriptions

14. “It’s really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don’t
know what they want until you show it to them.” Steve Jobs
What do we want?
• Libraries need to partner with other parts of the institution such as the research
office and computing services.
• Librarians need to find out the tools that will make a researcher’s life better,
faster, easier and tidier in a way that is obvious.
• Libraries need to train their own staff in these tools, develop deeper expertise,
while creating an understanding of where that expertise lies within the
organisation’
(Groenewegen, D, 2017 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13614533.2017.1336637)
Five years from now..

15. “Respondents seemed
confident that the library
would continue to be
involved in delivering,
indeed leading, on a wide
range of services”
(Pinfield, Cox & Rutter, 2017. Mapping the
future of academic libraries: A report for
SCONUL, p. 48)
The library position in the
University is changing.
Future Library services

16. • Move towards working with researchers as the
producers of information (ie. authors), not only
the users of information.
• How to get there – Qualification questions?
Equivalent advanced degrees? Professional body
membership? CPD and training to support staff
development is essential.
• Naming of parts – job titles important to attract
right skill sets, library structures – where does
research support sit?
Changing roles for academic librarians
Future job descriptions / keywords
• Impact
• Social Technology
• Personalisation
• Ethics/legal expertise
• Coding
• Preservation/version control

17. • New areas of support/institutional priorities/ways of working =
engagement role + functional expertise
• New relationships – providing expertise for institutional
research strategies, libraries having expertise in their own right;
working with other professional services; working with
academics in different capacities (i.e. Directors of Research).
• Re-skilling and professional development – CILIP, SCONUL
and RLUK are active in this area
Summary

18. Kara Jones
Head of Library Research Services
Library
University of Bath
Claverton Down
Bath, UK. BA2 7AY
Ph : +44 (0)1225 38 4897
Em : K.L.Jones@bath.ac.uk
Li : https://www.linkedin.com/in/kara-jones
Thank you

19. Changes to Library support
https://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc
-horizon-report-2017-library-edition/
Auckland, M, 2012. “Re-skilling for Research”, RLUK. Available:
http://www.rluk.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/RLUK-Re-skilling.pdf
Doolan, L, 2018. “From diversity to skills – how the HE sector is planning for change”,
Information Professional Online. Available:
http://www.cilip.org.uk/page/LousieDoolapt2May18
Groenewegen, D, 2017. ”Yesterday and Today: Reflecting on Past Practice to Help Build
and Strengthen the Researcher Partnership at Monash University”, New Review of
Academic Librarianship, 23:2-3, 171-184, DOI: 10.1080/13614533.2017.1336637)
Jaguszewski, JM & K Williams, 2013. “New Roles for New Times: Transforming Liaison
Roles in Research Libraries”, ARL. Available:
http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/publications/nrnt-liaison-roles-revised.pdf
NMC Horizon Report > 2017 Library Edition. Available:
https://www.nmc.org/publication/nmc-horizon-report-2017-library-edition/