Dynamic research support for academic libraries

Pages841-842
Date07 August 2017
DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1108/EL-05-2017-0110
Published date07 August 2017
AuthorOwen Peter Lund
Subject MatterInformation & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet
used by scholars to demonstrate the value of research outputs, but overall there is not a great
deal of analysis of the tools themselves, which tends to reduce the practical value of this
chapter. Beecroft’s chapter on the use of mobile devices for measuring impact “on the go”
shows how altmetrics might develop, and the concluding chapter by Tattersall on open peer
review is another look into the future. This is such an important subject for academics that
librarians who can give sound advice will be much appreciated, so the book is a worthwhile
addition to all academic library collections.
Philip Calvert
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Dynamic Research Support for Academic Libraries
Edited by Starr Hoffman
Facet
London
2016
154pp.
££49.95 soft cover
ISBN978-1-78330-049-5
Keywords Academic libraries
Review DOI 10.1108/EL-05-2017-0110
Over the past decade, academic libraries have increasingly segmented the provision of
their services into those for teaching and those for research. A dependable text that
informed the management of the research support function in the past decade was
Providing Effective Library Services for Research by Webb, Gannon-Leary and Bent
(Facet, 2007). This new book is therefore a timely update on ways in which research
support has developed in the past few years. As it says on the cover, the book “provides
illustrative examples of emerging models of research support and is contributed to by
library practitioners from across the world”. The book is well structured, being broken
down into three parts:
(1) Part I: Training and Infrastructure, describes the role of staff development and
library spaces in research support.
(2) Part II: Data Services and Data Literacy, illustrates the way research data
services in universities help researchers to develop their data-literacy and the
importance of doing so.
(3) Part III: Research as a Conversation, discusses academic library initiatives that
support the dissemination, discovery and critical analysis of research.
Introductions to each of these three parts, two written by Starr Hoffmann, the third by
Jackie Carter, cleverly serve to bind the book together. Indeed, I found these
introductions to be the most satisfying and inspiring sections. It was refreshing, for
instance, to see Hoffman recognising the need for libraries to “do less, but deeper”
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