Natasha Simons and Sam Searle Redefining ‘the librarian’ in the context of emerging eResearch services
Thinking about kinds of skills and knowledge that they’ve found useful and how other libraries moving into this area could gain skills / support transition. Various ways working in eResearch is quite different from traditional research support.
eResearch Services
* technical solutions – promoting tools already available, like an onsite survey manager (has just reached 1000th survey); adapting existing solutions; building custom solutions
* advice, referrals and consulting
* partnership with other providers like ANDS, Nectar, RDSI, QCIF, NCI
Apply for lots of internal and external grants which has helped grow teams to 30 people but most on term contracts.
Similarities between eresearch services and research support
* directly working with researchers
* providing advice
* supporting compliance with policies/mandates
* seeking funding
* metadata support
Differences
* combine client and technical services
* organised around projects in flat structure. Focus on project management, change management
* often have to challenge stakeholders’ assumptions, promoting change, convincing people of long-term benefits to short-term pain.
* primary working relationships aren’t with other librarians – mostly with IT who don’t always understand/respect their skills/experience
Need to be able to use your knowledge of your lack of knowledge to fill the gaps in your knowledge.
What we bring as librarians:
* being brokers and boundary spanners – babelfish translaters between different groups that have their own languages (software vs metadata) and cultures
* understanding the braoder policy environment and working well with different stakeholders
* promoting standards – legislative, ethical and technical. Software developers often focus on user needs above compliance/reporting/interoperability requirements.
Paper identifies eight topics; talk concentrating on three:
* metadata skills – might need to focus on collection level instead of item level, or on admin/preservation/rights management instead of just subject-based. Much has to be learned on the job.
* scholarly communication – awareness of developments in open access, research methods (someone reads lots of research not for the research but for the discussion of methodology)
* project management
More in paper about development pathways too (self learning, workplace learning, education, training).
Curious whether there are personality traits that have a bearing. 2008 study suggests different librarianship specialities attracts different personalities. Technique-oriented vs people-oriented. Sam and Natasha think “adaptive archivists and systems librarians” and “adaptive academic reference librarians” best fit librarians moving into eResearch support.
For people who want to move into eResearch support, some will find it easier than others. Need to be aware of your preferences and able to assess how well they fit with the area you’re moving into. No clear pathway into it – or through/beyond it either.
For organisations there are implications for recruitment and training – instead of focusing on skills need to develop traits like resilience and assertiveness. Managers can support transition through professional development on both skills and traits.
eResearch teams can benefit from librarian involvement but much work will go on whether we’re involved or not so need to sell our value to researchers and IT.
Q: Looking 2 years in the future, are we looking at a multidisciplinary thing rather than silos of library vs departments?
A: Good way of looking at it. Need teams of people with range of skills. They do consultations as a team (software developer, data specialist, etc) instead of one librarian going out. Resource intensive but better outcome and get more respect of what they can bring to it.
Q: Have tried this but danger of overwhelming the researcher. [Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!]
A: Need to balance it and would avoid taking more people from ‘our’ side than their side. Not just descending on one researcher, trying to work with a group of researchers – even a research team with multiple projects to improve their practice generally.
Q: More on the eResearch Hub?
A: Research Hub pulls together stuff from grants system, data repository, etc etc – researcher profile system on speed.