Research Support

Scholarly resources

Traditionally, print books and journal collections have been the most visible indicators of a library’s support for research. However, the shift from print to electronic journals, databases, and e-books has resulted in a significant shift in the importance of collections as an indicator of research support.

Support for Grants

Library staff have become active partners with academic staff in the application process for research grants, and have been successful in obtaining funding for a variety of activities, including:

• Digitizing research collections
• Providing funding aids to primary research material

Library as Place

Researchers’ increased use of electronic information has given the impression that they are virtual users of library services and no longer regard the library as a physical space.

• Researchers’ Centres
• Postgraduate Reading Rooms
• Private Study Rooms

Trainings

With so many new electronic services and resources available to support research, there is an increased demand for training for both postgraduate research students and academic staff. Among the training workshops are:

• Information literacy for researchers
• Bibliographic management software
• Referencing styles for academic publishing
• Citation searching

Online Reference Services for Researchers

The provision of online reference services is another key factor in academic libraries’ development of strategies to provide support to researchers.

• Virtual research consultations
• Library webinars on research support topics
• Customized literature searches

Research Collaboration

Research collaboration has become the norm in many disciplines, and librarians have an important role to play in facilitating connections between researchers and facilitating inter-institutional and cross-disciplinary collaboration.

• Providing access to collaborative research tools
• Networking opportunities for researchers

Research Output Services

To assist researchers, a variety of new services focusing on the university’s research output are emerging. Many of these research output services are initiated and/or promoted by library staff, who in many cases have the technical skills and expertise to make research output globally available via the Internet. Libraries are becoming publishers of scholarly information as a result of these services, which go beyond simply providing access to published scholarly information. Here are some examples:

• Electronic theses
• Institutional repositories of peer-reviewed e-prints
• Data repositories of research data
• E-press publishing of institutional journal titles
• E-press publishing for conference proceedings
• Repositories for grey literature

Research Consultations

The models of service delivery vary, but interaction is increasingly taking place in the faculty rather than the library. These outreach services have frequently replaced reference desk services with personalized services provided to researchers where they work.