Source: LISU
A six-month research project commissioned by SAGE, titled Working Together: Evolving Value for Academic Libraries, found no systematic evidence of the value of academic libraries for teaching and research staff, despite positive feedback received by librarians.
The study was carried out by LISU, a national research and information center based in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University (UK), and included data from eight case studies in the United States, United Kingdom and Scandinavia. Universities studied include Purdue University, Towson University, University of Utah, Wake Forest University, the University of Nottingham, University of Sussex, Karolinska Institutet, and Akerhus University College. A survey of 630 librarians in the same regions was instituted for comparison.
The report provides examples of best practices, and makes recommendations for how to improve academic libraries’ perceived value in the eyes of teaching and research staff. For libraries, it recommends that staff be supported in developing teaching and marketing skills, as well as greater personal relationships with teaching and research departments, in part through resource allocation. It also suggests that a senior member of library staff take on the systematic collection of evidence of value as a specific responsibility. For senior university managers, the report recommends changing their campus culture to give library staff equivalent status to teaching and research staff. This helped library staff to promote their services, as they were seen as partners in the process.
 |
Data-Driven Libraries: Navigating Options & Measuring Outcomes: Librarians today are facing the inescapable reality that data is slowly beginning to govern much of what they do. Whether it is figuring out the best way to curate data sets or learning how to parse the ever growing number of metrics that every library is generating, librarians have to determine the most constructive way to deal with this ocean of information that a growing number of software companies and applications are making available. Watch this webcast series to learn innovative data-driven solutions that will navigate you through the data to create viable plans for your library's future |
About Meredith Schwartz
I do not believe you can “give” librarians equal status to teaching and research staff. First, that assignment just drives librarians into their own narrow path of specialty, since the way to evaluate and reward such status assigns no value to the community efforts required for librarians to provide value to the process, but to individual achievement, grants and publications. Second, the way to achieve partnership in the process is to be seen as contributing to it with energy and commitment, to bring your best efforts and make yourself indispensable to the teaching and research community. It is hard work, it is other-directed, and it tends to frustrate the organizational structure, since it means ones loyalties are to the customers and THEIR process, not necessarily to the library structure itself, or to personal professional advancement. To add value to the teaching and research process, a librarian does not have to have faculty rank, advanced subject degrees, or other trappings. A librarian has to make her or himself a working part of the educational machine, with zeal, dedication, and active engagement. In this way, respect will be earned, and recognition of value-added and values shared will be accorded. Work harder, whine less.
I agree with the above comment by BFRANK1. Happily, our faculty deeply appreciates the librarians and the administration, faculty, and library are respectful of each other and want the best for students and the institution.