Library building at the University of Birmingham.
for their postgraduate students.
l A programme of open workshops offering wider developmental opportu- nities for postgraduate students.
l A new suite of open workshops was developed for all researchers including academic staff, which offers guidance on fast-developing topics such as Research Data Management, Open Research, Research Metrics and Curat- ing Online Identity alongside new tools and techniques in literature searching and bibliographic management.
l 1:1 appointments with Research Skills Advisors are available, to give research staff and students the opportu- nity to discuss their research question, understand that they are accessing the best resources and using the most appropriate tools to develop and manage their own research outputs.
Meeting the ‘lived experience’ Library Services sits within Academic Services in the university structure. One of the four key principles of Academic Services is ‘understanding the lived experience’. Instead of privileging the internal library processes, the training and support offered by the Research Skills Team is focussed on researcher goals. In practical terms this is achieved by:
l Offering workshops that reflect the tasks undertaken throughout researcher careers and then throughout the research lifecycle. For new researchers this includes workshops on thesis writ- ing, surviving a viva and managing a relationship with a supervisor. Our postgraduate development officer has worked with the University Graduate School to improve the Development
January-February 2020
. This ensures that our offering is contextualised and relevant.
Needs Analysis form, based around the Vitae Researcher Development Frame- work3
l Offering small group workshops allows us to facilitate discussion and networking between researchers who are often work- ing alone or in focussed project groups. Surprising cross-disciplinary conversa- tions are an attractive side-benefit of this type of meeting and conversations continue outside the training room.
l Integrating practical elements in workshops so that researchers come away with an action plan, or an ORCID, or an increased citation count because they have worked on disambiguating their author record on the ‘big three’ citation databases. (The latter is of course done in the context of a discussion about respon- sible metrics).
l Understanding the practical pressures on researchers at different career stages. In response to early career researchers who sometimes struggle to carve out time to write, or compose grant applications, for example, we have developed a pro- gramme of ‘Shut up and work’ days where our quiet training room is turned into an open plan office. Researchers set their goals and we provide coffee and biscuits at set break/networking times to give a light but supportive structure.
Scholarly communications skills vs services
Library Services has responded to the changing scholarly communication landscape by providing a framework of support which enables initiatives such as
open access publishing and research data management. The influential information specialist Lorcan Dempsey4
has suggested
that changes in research libraries reflects an ‘inside-out’ approach, where rather than just encouraging users to be consum- ers, there is: “a growing interest in sharing research and learning outputs, research expertise, and other institutional assets with external users. Together, these are becoming an important focus for academic libraries”. In response to this, the Scholarly Commu- nication Services team in Library Services has developed services and systems that allow researchers to manage their publications and datasets. These sophisti- cated processes are constantly developing to meet the frequent updates in funder and publisher mandates. The University of Birmingham encourages adoption of open research beyond mere compliance, however, and the Research Skills Team’s exposure to researchers in their everyday work enables targeted advocacy. The Research Skills Team works along- side Scholarly Communication Services colleagues to keep up to date with initia- tives such as Plan S5
, and developments
such as improvements to the institutional data repository and eTheses repository. Whilst the team keeps their knowledge as up-to-date as possible, there is a recogni- tion that there is a natural remove from working with these systems in a tangible way every day. In some way this gives us parity with researchers who are learning about the publication landscape too. We can put ourselves in their position, and we are still learning – we have empathy with their situation and can use our librari- an experience to navigate the systems
INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL 45
RST
pp44-47.indd 3
22/01/2020 20:44
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
