New Roles for Research Librarians: Meeting the Expectations for Research Support presents strategies librarians can use to adapt to the new conditions and growing expectations that are emerging from students and researchers. Even if they have never completed a PhD, or even been engaged in independent research themselves, this book will provide a new roadmap on how to deal with the new work environment. The book provides different approaches that include the library in the research process, an area that is often neglected by researchers during their planning and strategic work on research projects. Users will find content that offers tactics on how to create a new dialogue between the librarian and the postgraduate student, along with comprehensive discussions on different starting points, and how communication and collaboration can help reach the best of both worlds. Explores the new roles available for research librarians and how they can be integral parts of research Provides a new roadmap on how to deal with the new work environment that now exists between librarians and researchers Discusses the development and systemizing of research support services and strategies Offers insights into the collaboration between the librarian and PhD-candidates

At a time when budgets are dwindling, libraries must overcome insularity through collaborative initiatives that allow them to support each other through resource sharing and networking. These collaborative networks can expand beyond libraries to include cooperative efforts with archives and museums in order to surpass challenges in the digital era. Cooperation and Collaboration Initiatives for Libraries and Related Institutions is a critical research publication that explores digital advancements in library collaborative technologies and the steps needed to implement them in order to achieve institutional goals. Featuring topics such as e-records, policymaking, and open educational resources, this book is essential for librarians, archival staff, museum staff, knowledge managers, policymakers, educators, and researchers.

"Institutions of higher education and academic libraries are not the traditional organizations they once were. They are subject to a variety of forces, including shifting and changing populations, technological changes, public demands for affordability and accountability, and changing approaches to research and learning. Academic libraries can no longer establish their excellence and ground their missions, visions, and strategic directions using the old means and methods. Leading Change in Academic Libraries is a collection of 20 change stories authored by academic librarians from different types of four-year institutions. Librarians tell the story firsthand of how they managed major change in processes, functions, services, programs, or overall organizations using John Kotter's Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change as a framework for examining change at their institutions, measuring their successes and areas for improvement, and determining progress. In five sections--strategic planning, reorganization, culture change, new roles, and technological change--chapters discuss tackling common challenges such as fear, anxiety, change fatigue, complacency, unexpected changes of leadership, vacancies, and resistance; look at the results of their tactics; and provide effective practices they found. Each section ends with a thorough analysis of the stories within and the most effective tips for leading that kind of change. Leading Change in Academic Libraries can help you establish flexible, nimble, and collaborative decision-making processes, and facilitate the transition from legacy collections-based libraries to forward-looking service-based libraries"--from the ALA website.

Librarians have been providing support to researchers for many years, typically with a focus on responding to researchers’ needs for access to the existing literature. However, librarians’ skills and expertise make them uniquely suited to provide a wide range of assistance to researchers across the entire research process, from conception of the research question to archiving of collected data at the project’s conclusion. In response to increasingly stringent demands on researchers to share their data, and as computationally intensive and primarily data-driven scientific methods begin to take the place of traditional lab-based research, the “research informationist” has emerged as a new information profession. With a background in library and information sciences, as well as expertise in best practices for data management, grant funder policies, and informatics tools, the research informationist is capable of implementing a full suite of research support services. This book will discuss how the research informationist role has developed out of the previously established clinical informationist model and how it expands on the model of embedded librarianship. The book will also examine core competencies for the successful research informationist and the training and preparation necessary for students in library and information sciences programs, as well as currently practicing librarians. Finally, this book will consider how research informationists can form collaborative partnerships with research teams and build their services outside the walls of the library, citing practical examples of the types of support research informationists can offer.

In 2005, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program – an institution-based grant intended to re-engineer the clinical research enterprise, speeding the time from pre-clinical discovery to the development of therapies to improve human health. As universities competed for CTSA funding and often struggled to develop or recalibrate institutional infrastructures and research support services, the face of pre-clinical and clinical research changed dramatically. These changes (and their intended and unintended consequences) introduced the possibility of new roles for health sciences librarians, creating novel opportunities to engage with researchers, research administrators and community members as active partners in the research enterprise. This book demystifies translational research by providing a comprehensive historical background and context on the CTSA program, including the impact of funding reductions and administrative changes. The highlight of the book are case studies by librarians from CTSA Consortium institutions. These case studies, including successes, challenges, and lessons learned, will detail specific routes to librarian involvement in translational research, including collection development, creating and maintaining relationships with researchers and administrators, instruction and training, data management, team science and more. The variety of case studies, including challenges and lessons learned, will help libraries that are looking for ways to engage the translational research audiences at their institutions, or those who currently work with CTS but face new challenges due to declining federal research funds, shifting institutional priorities, or other factors. The book will not be a comprehensive accounting of librarian engagement at each institutions but rather a sample of “best practices” to help librarians develop programs and relationships relevant to translational research, and a look at newly emerging opportunities to leverage skills in information organization and dissemination.

The Academic Librarian as Blended Professional employs a model that allows for individual and managerial reconceptualization of the librarian's role, also helping to mitigate obstacles to professional development both internal and external to the library. Using traditional and personal narrative, the book extends Whitchurch’s blended professional model, designed to consider the merging of academicians’ roles across several spheres of professional and academic influence in a higher education setting, to academic librarians. The book is significant due to its use of higher education theory to examine the professional identity of academic librarians and the issues impacting librarian professional development. The work offers a constructive, replicable research design appropriate for the analysis of librarians in other academic settings, providing additional insights into how these professionals might perceive their roles within the larger context of a higher education environment. Following the application of the blended professional model, this book contends that academic librarians have similar roles concerning research, instruction, and service when compared to an institution’s tenure-track faculty. The scope of professional productivity and the expectation of the librarians, though, are much less regimented. Consequently, the academic librarians find themselves in a tenuous working space where their blended role is inhibited by real and perceived barriers. Uses a model from the discipline of higher education in order to better conceptualize and understand the academic librarian's role in the institution Allows for the analysis and understanding of the librarian's identity and role in a context familiar to those outside of the academic library system Provides a unique understanding of both the library system and its librarians, explaining the nuances of the greater higher education collective