Research Support in Australian Academic Libraries: Services, Resources, and Relationships

Abstract

In the last decade Australian academic libraries have increasingly aligned their research support services with assessment criteria used in the national research evaluation exercise (Excellence for Research in Australia). The same period has seen growing interest in research impact outside of traditional measures, such as bibliometrics. Social media has provided opportunities for research dissemination and new tools, altmetrics, to measure these activities have emerged. This paper reports on research into the extent and nature of research support services at Australian academic libraries, how the services are managed, and the factors that influence their development and delivery. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were used to compare the findings with an earlier study and to provide a deeper understanding of research support in Australia. Three key themesservices, staff and resourcing, and relationships -are discussed in relation to the management and challenges faced in providing research support.

Findings from a training needs analysis survey to support health professionals across the research lifecycle

“…For this reason, the librarians felt it was important to continue this service. Other authors have discussed aligning research libraries training services to user preferences and needs, which means at times one‐to‐one individual consultations are going to be crucial to meeting these needs (Haddow & Mamtora, 2017; Hamilton, 2013). Library staff are working to balance this pressure from above as well as contending with budgetary staffing cuts while still providing a valuable service to clients.…”

Evolution of Research Support Services at an Academic Library: Specialist Knowledge Linked by Core Infrastructure

“…In addition, UQ eSpace is designed to meet the unique requirements of the Australian higher education landscape which includes: Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) 2 , The National Science and Innovation Agenda 3 , The Digital Access to Collections framework 4 , and compliance with national research funding bodies. Their impact on the demand for research support services in Australian academic libraries has been noted in Richardson et al, (2013) and Haddow and Mamtora (2017).…”

“…In addition to training, staff are encouraged to drive their own professional development, such as individual exploration of new tools and trends. In their discussion of research support in Australian academic libraries, Haddow & Mamtora (2017) note that specialist skills need to continually develop in response to upgraded tools. Functional teams allow for staff from digital scholarship or bibliometrics to invest time experimenting and maximising usage of a new software or methodology.…”

Research productivity of the state universities of Sri Lanka, a case based on SciVal and the contribution of the libraries towards excellence

“…In response to the challenges imposed by these changing trends in higher education, researchers have identified several responsive measures that can be adopted by the librarians. Support in Research Data Management and bibliometric support services to measure the research impact have been stressed by many researchers (Brown, Alvey, Danilova, Morgan & Thomas, 2018;Corrall, Kennan, & Afzal, 2013;Haddow & Mamtora, 2017;Keller, 2015;Kennan, Corrall, & Afzal, 2014;Sewell & Kingsley, 2017;Shelley & Jackson, 2018;Si, Zeng, Guo, andZhuang, 2019 andZhao, 2014). Open access material related services and training in using related tools (i.e.…”

“…2018;Si et.al. 2019) and guiding researches by providing consultancy and training (Keller, 2015;Haddow & Mamtora, 2017;Si et.al. 2019) are the other initiatives identified as the research support services that need to be offered by the libraries in order to cater to the changing needs of the higher education.…”