Knowledge exchange and community engagement: an academic library perspective

Abstract

Purpose-The article seeks to document the strategies and initiatives developed in a major Asian academic library aiming to enhance the library's role in promoting knowledge exchange and community well-being. Design/methodology/approach-The article examines the library's role in knowledge exchange at the university. It highlights a series of initiatives undertaken by the library that serve to promote community access to collections, services and special events. It also introduces ways in which the library has reached out to the local, regional and international communities. Findings-The success of the initiatives is demonstrated in many ways including the devoted commitment to making information available to the public at both university and library level, extended access to the library resources and services, active public participation in the special events and the library's increased visibility and leadership in the local, regional and international communities. Research limitations/implications-While many of the initiatives have been innovative and well received, the reality remains that the true emphasis of knowledge exchange within the university lies with the faculties. Licensing agreements also impose restrictions on access to the electronic resources by a larger user group. The traditional "closed door" policy due to the space shortage inevitably limits the library's ability to engage a wider community. Further studies need to be done on the investment and return of the book talks. Practical implications-While it is often cited that public libraries are those that serve the community at large, this article provides the perspective from an academic library 2 viewpoint and emphasizes the view that such service should not be limited to public libraries alone and that academic libraries must play a role in community well-being. Social implications-Academic libraries are provided with practical examples of how one such library has contributed to society. Many of these examples could readily be introduced into other academic libraries to help them support their local, regional and global communities. Originality/value-The article provides a practical example for academic libraries in attempting to play an active role in knowledge exchange and community engagement.

A holistic view of academic library supply chain model

“…Finally, controlling involves monitoring different library processes and services (Surulinathi and Duraipandi, 2014). As for the academic library, Sidorko and Yang (2011) said libraries are places of cultivating students' morals, developing their scientific and cultural excellence, nurturing professional technical education and providing encouraging environments for improving students' comprehensive excellence (Jiang et al ., 2017). To appropriately deal with the academic library, key elements of the library must be distinguished.…”

The Social Mission of Academic Libraries in Higher Education

“…Engaged libraries have moved beyond partnering with other cultural heritage institutions on digitisation programs to working with local organisations and individuals on knowledge exchange projects to preserve and 'publish' both historical and contemporary hidden materials, using public scanning events and oral history interviews to collect both analog and born-digital items, and thereby create, document and contextualise community and family histories as resources to support academic and community research and learning (Cho 2011;Gwynn, Henry & Craft 2019;McIntosh, Mangum & Phillips 2017). Libraries are also repurposing their institutional repositories as expertise locators (expert finders) to support institutional knowledge exchange endeavours (Sidorko & Yang 2011) and as public archives for digital artefacts (project documentation and final outputs) from communitycentred work, such as campus events and community-based teaching and learning (Makula 2019;Miller & Billings 2012;Moore, Collins & Johnston 2020).…”

E hoa ma, ina te ora o te tangata (My friends, this is the essence of life): Meal-making as a pedagogical tool for learning about food politics

“…Instead, the importance of this engagement is now strongly emphasized, where knowledge is understood to be exchanged rather than simply transferred. ‘The concept of knowledge transfer has been broadened to that of knowledge exchange, in recognition of the fact that rarely is it a one-way relationship when academia and society meet’ (Sidorko and Yang, 2011: 386). A core goal for the field of participatory geography, for example, has been to ‘question and destabilise traditional barriers between “expert researchers” and “researched communities” to enable spaces for collaboration, negotiation and the co-construction of knowledge’ (Wynne-Jones et al., 2015a: 218).…”