Libraries & Cultural Resources

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Browsing Libraries & Cultural Resources by Subject "Academic Research and University Libraries: Creating a New Model for Collaboration"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Library Labs: Bringing the Right People Together
    (2019-10) Hickerson, H. Thomas
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    Redesigning the Researcher-Library Experience
    (2019-12-10) Hickerson, H. Thomas; Brosz, John
    Libraries have developed ways of designing their online user experience and student experience. What is our design method for research? Researchers no longer depend on libraries for “search” and the resources purchased and licensed are of diminishing centrality. Providing new functional services, infrastructure, and expertise is essential. Services such as data curation, visualization, and geospatial analytics are now core capabilities. Capacities such as metadata, digitization, and copyright are being deployed in new ways. Library expertise and collaborative spaces are of critical importance. Yet, these often remain hidden by traditional image of libraries, or by organizational models obscuring vital points of intersection for both researchers and library staff. In this session, we will identify essential elements derived from case studies and offer recommendations and checklists for assessing, redesigning, and repositioning the library’s presence in campus research.
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    Remaining Relevant: Critical Roles for Libraries in the Research Enterprise
    (2019-08-25) Hickerson, H. Thomas; Brosz, John
    With the advent of the internet and the increasing effectiveness of search engines, libraries’ contacts with researchers have steadily diminished. Moreover, the traditional disciplinary silos used to organize library collections and services have become less relevant to the multidisciplinary approaches required in addressing today’s “grand challenges” research. Academic libraries have reached a point at which they must fundamentally reposition themselves within the campus research enterprise. New research at the University of Calgary has identified a constellation of services and expertise that will be necessary to enable today's multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Calgary’s library undertook an evidence-based study of scholars’ needs through direct partnerships with faculty research teams in twelve competitively selected sub-grant projects. The study revealed new avenues by which libraries can become key collaborators in research. These include moving from disciplinary-based to functional, cross-disciplinary support; bringing together of digital media and analytical tools to offer a more integrated digital experience; enhancing data curation, visualization, digitization, and metadata services; providing collaborative lab spaces; and taking a partnership rather than transactional approach to working with researchers. This new paradigm will demand fundamental changes in how libraries staff, fund, and organize their operations. But there are signs that libraries are responding, redirecting their focus and energies in order to remain essential participants in research success at their institutions.
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    Research Has Changed, Have Libraries?
    (2019-03) Hickerson, H. Thomas
    Over the past several decades, the direct intersection between university libraries and academic research has noticeably diminished. In recent years, however, new relationships between libraries and researchers have begun to evolve based on shared interest in emerging technologies, research techniques, and the perceived need, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, for robust digital platforms and services. This paper reviews outcomes of a multi-year, $1M study funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation conducted at the University of Calgary, Academic Research and University Libraries: Creating a New Model for Collaboration. This project seeks to identify, through evidence-based inquiry, what constellation of services will be necessary to support today’s multidisciplinary research. It also reflects the broad recognition, as seen in funder and university research priorities, that “grand challenges” of this century require true cross-disciplinary inquiry. How are research libraries responding to these changes? This study began in 2015 and has evolved over several phases. The initial phase involved more than 50 faculty, from 15 disciplines, in facilitated discussions to define what they needed from a 21st-century library to support their multidisciplinary research. The discussions included external experts, and library staff participation as observers but not contributors to ensure the deliberations were not overly influenced by library-centric perspectives. Building on scholars’ expressed needs, the Library undertook a second phase of inquiry through competitive sub-grants, in which faculty proposed research projects and worked with library staff to define what the needed services, expertise, and infrastructure would be. In two successive competitions, 12 faculty projects have been approved with approximately $400,000 in internal grants disbursed. The process includes external reviews by expert panels. Through these studies, essential elements of the new research platform have emerged: • analytics and visualization • data curation and sharing • digitization to support content analysis • metadata services • dissemination • rights management • virtual and augmented reality • design and modelling for digital – 3D creation • web programming • collaborative spaces Other key findings include: • the importance of direct collaboration between library staff and scholars, and between library staff in different areas, in shaping services • the essential role of a library research project facilitator • the new synergies between digital content and analytical tools • how special collections can be exploited in new ways, e.g., text mining • a need for lab-like spaces to support evolving research methodologies. Faculty who may seldom have been seen in the library are now using these lab environments and incorporating students into the experience. Senior research administrators involved in the study have been learning about, and promoting, these new library capacities. Ultimately, the findings emerging from this and related studies will inform conversations about research libraries’ future roles, and their continuing relevance in the modern research ecosystem. Presentation video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUldbTN64Nk.
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    What is the Future of Libraries in Academic Research
    (2018-12-10) Hickerson, H. Thomas; Brosz, John; Goopy, Suzanne E.
    Research has changed, have libraries? Research at the University of Calgary has identified a constellation of services necessary to enable today's multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. This session will address the nature of evolving challenges and explore steps critical to the future of research libraries. With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Libraries and Cultural Resources is seeking to instantiate a combination of services, expertise, and infrastructure through direct partnerships between library staff and scholars in a diversity of research endeavors. This research, enabled by competitive sub-grants, has ranged from providing real-time public access to arctic sensors to digitization and textual analysis of early science fiction writings to a repository for 3D scans of cultural heritage sites. This process will be examined from the perspective of the Project Coordinator, John Brosz, detailing the nature and results of direct participation by library staff in the various research projects and in the re-envisioning of library space as a constantly changing research lab. Suzanne Goopy, a social anthropologist and lead investigator in one of the funded projects, will illustrate her team's introduction of empathetic cultural mapping -- an approach that blends personal stories with population-level data. She will provide a researcher's perspective on how this experience has produced for her and her team a new understanding of the scope of library services and the opportunities for substantive collaboration. Tom Hickerson will address the critical importance of implementing a functional infrastructure and adopting a new model for the role of the library in campus research. He will describe the potential impact of this redefinition on libraries and on their continuing relevance in the research enterprise.