This document discusses the changing role of librarians in supporting researchers. It outlines researchers' evolving information needs across the research lifecycle and identifies key skills gaps for librarians, such as in advising on data management, curation, and preservation. The document examines models for delivering researcher support services and highlights challenges libraries face in defining new roles and acquiring necessary skills. It emphasizes the urgency for libraries to understand researchers' current behaviors and design systems accordingly.

1. Safe boundaries to
uncharted frontiers –
re-skilling librarians
to support research
Mary Auckland
Ticer International Summer School
23 August 2012
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31216636@N00/6116971061/

2. Overview
• Background
• Information needs and requirements of researchers and the role of
liaison librarians
• Skills and knowledge required by librarians
• The skills gap
• Acquiring new skills and knowledge
• Models of library support for researchers

3. http://www.rluk.ac.uk/content/re-skilling-research

4. “[the] need for librarians to reinvent their
roles as partners in the scientific and
research process is acute”
RIN, 2011

5. Where researchers’ needs and the liaison
librarian role intersect 1
• Conceptualising new research, developing proposals, and
identifying funding opportunities
• Seeking new information
• Information management
• Research data collection/generation
• Research data discovery, management and curation
• Sharing, discussion, online collaboration
• Analysing and reflecting on information and research data
• Writing up and dissemination

6. Where researchers’ needs and the liaison
librarian role intersect 2
• Compliance, intellectual property, copyright and
other statutory requirements
• Preservation
• Quality assessment and measuring impact
• Commercialisation
• Emerging technology

7. Areas where skills are needed
• subject/discipline
• research process
• partnerships
• subject information
• research data
• information literacy
• scholarly communications
• funders’ mandates, assessment
• ‘legal’ and compliance requirements
• metadata
• emerging and Web2.0 technologies

8. 9 areas of increasing importance
over next 2 – 5 years
• Excellent knowledge of bibliographic and other finding tools in the
discipline/subject
• Excellent skills to design information literacy training to meet the
identified needs of different types of researchers
• Outstanding skills in information discovery, literature searching etc.
• Knowledge to advise on citing and referencing, and the use of
bibliographic management software
• Ability to pro-actively advise on and market appropriate library services
to researchers
• Good knowledge of data sources available in the discipline/subject
• Excellent knowledge of content available in the discipline/subject
• Awareness of current and changing local research interests
• Ability to gain an appreciation of individual researcher/project
needs, including effective listening skills

9. 4 areas unnecessary now or
in the future
• Knowledge of sources of research funding to assist researchers to
identify potential funders
• Deep understanding of discipline/subject
• Ability to synthesise, analyse and provide digests of ‘discovered’
information
• Ability to advise on the preservation of project records

10. High skills gap in 9 key areas
• Advising on preserving research outputs
• Advising on data management and curation, including
ingest, discovery, access, dissemination, preservation, and portability
• Support researchers in complying with the various mandates of
funders, including open access requirements
• Advising on potential data manipulation tools used in the discipline/
subject
• Advising on data mining
• Advocating, and advising on, the use of metadata
• Advising on the preservation of project records e.g. correspondence
• Knowledge of sources of research funding to assist researchers to
identify potential funders
• Skills to develop metadata schema, and advise on discipline/subject
standards and practices, for individual research projects

11. “While there is general agreement that liaison
roles are changing, research libraries are
grappling with defining the scope of these new
roles. Identifying emerging roles, determining
what work to let go of, designing supportive
institutional structures, and ensuring that
liaisons have needed skills and knowledge
present challenges.”
ARL website

12. Bridging the skills gap
• Training providers
• Library and Information Schools
• Recruitment

13. “The Library will become a clear and critical
component of a central service that addresses
all aspects of the research lifecycle.”
University of Edinburgh

14. Models of researcher support
• ‘traditional’ liaison model
• greater engagement and embedding
• more hybrid support in which new library posts are being
created
• University posts, departments and initiatives
• shared services and outsourcing
• commercial services

15. “The main message ... for research libraries is
that the future is now, not ten years away, and
that they have no option but to understand and
design systems around the actual behaviour
of today’s virtual scholar.”
CIBER 2008

16. Expectations of participants
• Learning more about new and potential ideas and strategies for libraries to support
research. Informing thinking on positioning research support in the future
• Which services will be or are successful? Plans and programmes from other libraries. How
can we ensure that our services are the ones needed? Is my library on the right track? Do
we concentrate on the right services and can I get a glimpse of how the future looks?
• Discussion on new and future roles of subject librarians, for example in providing research
data
• How to transform current staff in tasks around research support. What are the skills that
are needed?
• How do we start a dialogue about the services of the future which will support researchers’
needs?
• The challenge of only communicating with researchers digitally – how should we go about
it? Discussing ways of working more closely with scholars
• To get inspiration and examples to take home to convince colleagues ...
• To get a comprehensive overview of the actual developments in libraries, projects and
ideas for the future, to understand user expectations as to what they will find in our online
services and in our library buildings and above all integrate them in a new library strategy