This article explores the role of the academic library in providing information services in a transnational context. Many of the ideas expressed in the paper were drawn from discussions with academics and librarians in an Australian university initiated as part of a review of the library's response to transnational expansion Discussions indicated the value of strong partnerships between academics and the library and highlighted strategies adopted to meet the offshore education environment. The university's graduate qualities framework, including lifelong learning and information literacy provided a focus for the discussions.
The academic library cannot remain immune to the extraordinary dynamic of the internationalisation of education, and its impact on the Higher Education Sector (HES). Universities and tertiary institutions in Australia have responded to the needs of a culturally diverse student cohort-whether on-or off-shore -in a number of ways. This paper focuses on a particular action-research program designed by psychologist/educators of the Victorian Transcultural Psychiatry Unit/Centre for Cultural Studies in Health (VTPU/CCSH) working closely with an academic librarian/ researcher with extensive experience in international education. The program was developed in response to the University of Melbourne Libraries' endeavour to translate the university's Cultural diversity awareness policy into practice in the library workplace. If frontline library staff can operate with confidence in an internationalised workplace, the entire university sectoroperating in on-campus or distance education mode -will benefit. Outcomes of the study indicate that the benefits of the program have the potential to extend beyond a single institution, or the needs of a specific international cohort.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.