Librarians are excellent research collaborators, although librarian participation is not usually considered, thereby making access to research funds difficult. The University of Michigan Library became involved in the university's novel funding program, MCubed, which supported innovative interdisciplinary research on campus, primarily by funding student assistants to work on research projects. This article discusses three different MCubed projects that all benefited from librarian involvement. These projects spanned across many areas from translational research to systematic reviews to digital humanities. Librarian roles ranged from mentoring and project management to literature searching. IntroductionTraditionally, librarians have adopted supportive roles in their research collaborations with faculty. While such roles still exist within academic librarianship, there is an increasing emphasis on librarians as partners within research collaborations. 1These partnerships include grants, systematic review publications (a specific type of comprehensive literature review), and other projects that benefit from librarians' specialized skillsets. The ability to contribute funds to a research collaboration creates a more balanced partnership, allowing librarians to more fully contribute to projects with other faculty researchers. The University of Michigan (UM) University Library values collaboration and participation in research, which is evident through the library's participation in the MCubed program, a recent pilot program designed to fund innovative interdisciplinary research on campus. The University Library participated in the program, providing an opportunity for the authors of this paper to propose projects, find interdisciplinary collaborators, and contribute funding to conduct research. Most important, because librarians were equal contributors of funding, they engaged in these Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Librarian Involvement in Grant Projects 273 projects as full collaborators, paving the way for stronger relationships with faculty and future research opportunities.The inability to obtain funding is a common barrier to librarian involvement in research initiatives. In 2009, Gore et al., after discovering that a only a quarter of research articles published in top health sciences library journals identified funding sources, noted that "funding for health sciences library research remains either limited or nonexistent."2 Yet, at the same time, funding is perceived by Association of Research Libraries (ARL) library directors to be one of the most effective mechanisms for promoting research among librarians.3 Further, there is evidence to suggest that funded research is associated with "substantially higher impact" than nonfunded research. 4 Not only did participation in the MCubed program provide librarians with funding opportunities, it also set the stage for meaningful collaborations with nonlibrary faculty across campus, which is generally underreported in the literature. 5This paper outlines three int...
Librarians are excellent research collaborators, although librarian participation is not usually considered, thereby making access to research funds difficult. The University of Michigan Library became involved in the university's novel funding program, MCubed, which supported innovative interdisciplinary research on campus, primarily by funding student assistants to work on research projects. This article discusses three different MCubed projects that all benefited from librarian involvement. These projects spanned across many areas from translational research to systematic reviews to digital humanities. Librarian roles ranged from mentoring and project management to literature searching. Introduction Traditionally, librarians have adopted supportive roles in their research collaborations with faculty. While such roles still exist within academic librarianship, there is an increasing emphasis on librarians as partners within research collaborations. 1 These partnerships include grants, systematic review publications (a specific type of comprehensive literature review), and other projects that benefit from librarians' specialized skillsets. The ability to contribute funds to a research collaboration creates a more balanced partnership, allowing librarians to more fully contribute to projects with other faculty researchers. The University of Michigan (UM) University Library values collaboration and participation in research, which is evident through the library's participation in the MCubed program, a recent pilot program designed to fund innovative interdisciplinary research on campus. The University Library participated in the program, providing an opportunity for the authors of this paper to propose projects, find interdisciplinary collaborators, and contribute funding to conduct research. Most important, because librarians were equal contributors of funding, they engaged in these Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Librarian Involvement in Grant Projects 273 projects as full collaborators, paving the way for stronger relationships with faculty and future research opportunities. The inability to obtain funding is a common barrier to librarian involvement in research initiatives. In 2009, Gore et al., after discovering that a only a quarter of research articles published in top health sciences library journals identified funding sources, noted that "funding for health sciences library research remains either limited or nonexistent." 2 Yet, at the same time, funding is perceived by Association of Research Libraries (ARL) library directors to be one of the most effective mechanisms for promoting research among librarians. 3 Further, there is evidence to suggest that funded research is associated with "substantially higher impact" than nonfunded research. 4 Not only did participation in the MCubed program provide librarians with funding opportunities, it also set the stage for meaningful collaborations with nonlibrary faculty across campus, which is generally underreported in the literature. 5 This paper outlines thr...
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Graduate students in the humanities increasingly view training in the use of digital tools and methodologies as critical to their success. Graduate students' interest in becoming familiar with digital tools often accompanies their awareness of a competitive academic job market, coupled with a recognition that teaching and research positions increasingly call for experience and skills in the Digital Humanities (DH). Likewise, recent debates over DH's role in the future of humanities scholarship have heightened the sense that DH skills can translate to crucial job skills. While many graduate students receive encouragement from faculty to pursue digital scholarship, individual academic departments often have limited resources to prioritize the development of these skills at the expense of existing curricular components. This chapter looks at initiatives at the University of Michigan Library that demonstrate the ways in which subject librarians, in collaboration with data and technology specialist librarians, can fill this gap by creating opportunities for graduate students to develop DH skills.
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