Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- Glossary
- 1 Supporting research and researchers: some perspectives
- 2 Current challenges for libraries and research support
- 3 Defining research and researchers
- 4 Collection management
- 5 The researcher’s toolkit: resources
- 6 Services to facilitate research
- 7 The information-literate researcher
- 8 Facing the future: key challenges
- 9 Key principles for supporting research
- Bibliography
- Useful websites
- Index
6 - Services to facilitate research
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 September 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Acronyms and abbreviations
- Glossary
- 1 Supporting research and researchers: some perspectives
- 2 Current challenges for libraries and research support
- 3 Defining research and researchers
- 4 Collection management
- 5 The researcher’s toolkit: resources
- 6 Services to facilitate research
- 7 The information-literate researcher
- 8 Facing the future: key challenges
- 9 Key principles for supporting research
- Bibliography
- Useful websites
- Index
Summary
Introduction
In this further practical chapter our attention shifts away from providing appropriate resources to ways of creating distinctive, targeted services.
The chapter aims to:
■ identify ways that librarians can act as facilitators rather than supporters of research
■ discuss a range of services which the library could offer to researchers.
Researchers will always need information, but will they always need libraries? Traditionally, research libraries have been sure of their position within the research environment but in the digital age such complacency is dangerous. We face challenges to the ways that we develop and deliver our services, as researchers are much less dependent on their own organization's library and information service than in the past. We must evolve and enhance our work to continue to provide vital, essential services.
In Chapter 4 we discussed the challenges of managing and developing collections across media in complex organizations during times of financial constraints. We now turn our attention away from resources to the ways that libraries should develop their role and relationship with the research community. In Chapter 3 we discussed the diversity of the modern research community, a diversity that brings with it a much more complex pattern of library and information use. Many researchers use a wide range of different libraries and other sources to gather information. Access to catalogues, databases and physical spaces is much easier. Some researchers claim never to use libraries at all: ‘The importance of physical libraries is minimal: books are less important due to the fast moving pace of my subject’ (Professor of Housing, UK).
In our interviews we discovered how many libraries our researchers used: ‘I use [my university] library, and New York Public Library Dance Collection (virtual use almost daily, regular visits) … the Dansmuseet in Stockholm … the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal.’
Do these changing patterns of use mean that research libraries are now in competition (or collaboration) with each other? What is it about your library which will make researchers choose it over another? Do you have specialist resources, is it the most convenient or cheapest option, do you offer a well known specialist service, or does it simply provide a supportive and pleasant environment?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Providing Effective Library Services for Research , pp. 123 - 152Publisher: FacetPrint publication year: 2013