This article gives an overview of the field of knowledge management and suggests how this can be applied to academic libraries. A literature review has been conducted and has been subject to a critical analysis of comparison to IFLA's standard for "Continuing Professional Development: Principles and Best Practices" (IFLA, 2015). Here IFLA has identified 10 points of best practice. These 10 points will be measured against the literature in the field of knowledge management to ascertain if academic libraries would benefit from a stronger relation to knowledge management.
This article examines if the timing of library instruction courses is an important part of how students experience library instruction as a means of developing information literacy skills. Two student groups, belonging to different academic subjects, have received the same training and the same assessment questionnaire afterwards. One of the groups was in the middle of writing their student thesis as a part of their final year of their bachelor degree work, the other group consisted of different subjects within the humanities and they were not working specifically with an assignment. Research shows that student's information seeking skills have not significantly changed over the last some 25 years. One may argue that information literacy skills are so practical that they cannot be taught in a classroom with a theoretical approach. One may also wonder how timing of library instruction affects the learning outcome for students.
This article aims at suggesting a new way of developing research support for PhD-candidates. Previous research on the field of research support greatly focuses on the librarians' competencies and how to assist researchers with what they lack in information literacy (IL) skills. There is little focus on collaboration with researchers to achieve a mutual learning outcome in regard to developing research support and IL skills. A socio-cultural view on IL indicates that IL skills are developed in a context, and therefore are situated. A high level of IL in one situation could be regarded as insufficient in another. Therefore, a librarian's view on IL could be incomparable to a PhD-student's everyday information needs. Many liaison librarians do not have a PhD, but are still expected to provide PhD-candidates with research support of high quality. How can we do so if we only see the librarian's perspective? Can informal settings and user involvement be a productive way of developing research support and IL skills? As librarians it is not always easy to know what researchers need. However, if the threshold has been lowered, in an informal setting, one might obtain the questions that reveal difficulties for researchers when it comes to library services and resources. Also, through user involvement, the researchers can teach librarians about the research process. This study includes an anonymous survey among PhD-candidates at the Faculty of Humanities and Education at the University of Agder (UoA) and interviews with two of the PhD-candidates
This article examines how librarians can improve their skills through a systematic skills upgrading programme, and how this can help improve their confidence in their own expertise. Two identical questionnaires have been issued to the same group of librarians engaged in research support services. In the time period between the two surveys, a skills upgrading programme was carried out. The aim of the second survey is to examine if the librarians' confidence has increased after the yearlong training programme. Even though one of librarians' main tasks is searching, research is becoming increasingly interdisciplinary and thusly setting new expectations for librarians.
One of Agder University Librarys goals is to support teaching and research at the University of Agder (UoA). To do so, the library should be involved in research projects and offer the right products at the right time. The spring of 2012 a survey was conducted among researchers (academic staff and Ph.D.-students) at the faculty of humanities and education at UoA as well as the library staff. Aditional interviews was made with the library´s research librarians and two of the Ph.D.-students. The surveys and interviews made it clear that researchers and librarians have a different conception on what research support is and should be. While librarians focus mostly on library resources, the researchers focus more generally on practical, economical and administrative help to make research possible. However, the majority answered yes to the question on the library being an important part of research support.Working closely with the researchers can help to offer the right library resources at the right time. Ph.D.-students are less likely to be set in their ways in regards to information behaviour and will often be positive to try new approaches. Also, the Ph.D.-students can be used as a reference group for developing library resources for researchers, for example subject guides. The outside perspective on the library can help to find new ways of approaching research support to make it more useful to researchers.
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