Week 11 – Research Support – Twitter Chat Champion

[Christopher Brander]

First of all, my apologies that I did not participate in the twitter chat this week despite being one of the twitter chat champions. When I signed up to be the twitter chat champion for this week I forgot that it was the public holiday on Monday and I had made plans to be away on holiday for the long weekend. I actually did try to participate using tchat.io on an ipad but it was not my own ipad and I couldn’t remember my twitter password and by the time I had sorted it out the twitter chat was already 15 minutes through and I wasn’t able to catch up…

I will first reflect on my own learning from the readings and then discuss how they related to the twitter chat.

Richardson et al (2012) conducted surveys to examine the current status of research support in QLD. One of the main findings was that the research landscape is rapidly changing and libraries are needing to restructure their workplaces and roles in order to adapt. This involves identifying potential new roles and letting go of the old outdated ones. This commonly involves librarians becoming integrated into interdisciplinary teams, such as working with other academics in a particular faculty rather than working on a team with only librarians. Research infrastructures are also undergoing change. There is a push for research data to be more open and accessible. There is also increased scrutiny and accountability eg academics need to provide evidence of the work they are doing and argue why their work is important in order to secure funding from the government or other funding agencies. Data management is thus becoming more relevant and librarians are working to improve the skills of academics in this area.

Keller’s (2015) article was an interesting reflection on the differences between research support in academic libraries in Australia and libraries in Europe – particularly Switzerland and Germany. European libraries appear to be much more conservative in that their collections are still seen as the heart of the library and the differentiating factor between libraries. This makes sense considering they have rich histories and books that are hundreds of years old. Australian libraries tend not to have such historically significant collections and thus their point of pride and point of difference is the services they are able to provide. Thus, Australian academic libraries seem to provide high levels of research support compared to other countries.

The opinions on the twitter chat seemed to match what was spoken about in the readings. The first question (“Should librarians create more partnerships with researchers and actively to research projects?”) was met with positive responses and people seem to believe that librarians have an important role to play in research support. Interestingly, some people pointed out that this also requires the academics to be cooperative.

I submitted 3 twitter chat questions which were not part of the discussion but one was related to the second question “Can you see any possible negative impacts of an increased focus on research support in academic libraries?” and fourth question “Is it fair that HDR students enjoy ‘privileged treatment’ over undergrads?”(my question was a little more specific, “Are other potential library tasks being too greatly diminished in order to provide a high level of research support?”) It stands to reason that if more and more time is being spent on research support then this will leave less time for other tasks and this point was raised during the discussion. A particular concern was that too much time was being allocated to Postgraduate students and not enough time was being given to Undergraduate students. Another concern, which was also mentioned in the readings, is that too much focus is being put in research and not enough on teaching. I think the roles of librarians need to be balanced – research support appears to be highly valued but it’s not the only role that librarians are expected to play. It seems that librarians are trying to minimise the impact that the increased focus on research support is having on other areas. For instance, a big previous focus was on digital literacy. Conducting many classes on digital literacy takes up a lot of librarians’ time, whereas if they are able to provide videos or online tutorials then this frees up the librarians’ time for other tasks such as research support.

The third question “How important is subject specialisation to effective research support? Are librarians subject experts? Should they be?” also raised some interesting discussion. The guest tweeter, Carmel O’Sullivan argued that librarians are experts on how to find the information but the academics/researchers are the subject experts. Some people said that it is helpful to at least be familiar with current research if not necessarily an expert. Personally I wonder if this might be a more explicit requirement for librarians in the future if they are moving out of librarian teams and into interdisciplinary teams.

[Saurav Khadka]

Hi Chris, it is a nice and informative post. Australian libraries do provide lots of research support. However, I don’t agree that they should be prioritizing postgraduate students to undergraduates and give more time and attention to them. It’s a librarian’s job to provide all possible information to the ones who need. And for the last question, I too agree that they don’t necessarily have to be expert on any subject matter, if they are it’s good, but the important thing is to know, and to be able to guide the users on how to find the needed information for any researches. Once again, a wonderful post Chris.

Cheers!

[Deborah Fuller]

Great post Chris, I think the summaries of the readings were succinct and informative. Like Saurav, I believe librarians should be supporting undergrads, postgrads and researchers equally, as we all start off as undergrads and if the support is provide early enough, it might not be needed so much later on. Your summaries of the Twitter Chat responses were thoughtful and well written, it’s hard to believe you weren’t actually there.

[Christopher Brander]

Thanks Saurav and Debbie. I suppose I didn’t really give my opinion on the Postgrads vs Undergrads debate. I agree that librarians  should be providing support to everyone and undergrads should not feel excluded. In some ways though I can understand how more time would be spent on Postgrads eg Postgrads pay more money and would likely have more complex research questions so I can see how proportionally librarians might spend more time with them.

[hanan albishri]

An interesting post and great summarize of the topic .. Thanks Chris.

[Rachel Kersley]

Hey Chris, I think the idea that familiarity with current research might become more of an explicit requirement is interesting, though I’m not sure how likely it is. Mostly because it would require a fairly high degree of specialisation (I know I wouldn’t want to be the librarian trying to be familiar with current research about everything) meaning that libraries would either need to become far more specialised as well, or employ a lot more librarians – at least one for every area. Of course that’s taking the idea to its extreme, so it might still be fine if done to a lesser degree. Regardless, it’s interesting to consider.

[Christopher Brander]

Hey Rae. Yeah I can see it quickly becoming overwhelming to try and know about the research of everything. I guess maybe I need to back pedal the degree of expertise that librarians would need to know. Since there are so many specialisations even within each faculty it would be impossible for a librarian to know as much as each researcher in their particular field. Yet maybe they would have a bit more knowledge about the current research in the faculty they are assigned to as opposed to a generalist academic librarian or a librarian assigned to another faculty.

[Rachel Kersley]

Yeah, I think it’s probably a case of trying to find a middle ground – not quite the ideal in terms of knowledge, but much more workable for the librarians in question.

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