Academic Librarianship

Technologie et pratiques bibliographiques en milieu universitaire

by Gerald Kembellec

Bibliography Of Jews In The Islamic World

by Maria Angeles Gallego

Bibliography of Jews in the Islamic World. Edited by Maria Angeles Gallego, Heathery Bleaney and Pablo García Suárez. Leiden, 2009. (http://www.brill.nl/bibliography-jews-islamic-world).
Speech given for the reception of the "2011 Bibliography Award" (Association of Jewish Libraries): "Librarianship, bibliography, and two pioneers of the study of the Jews of Islam" (Montreal, junio 2011)

Beyond the Holy Grail: why academic librarianship is more than just reference (2008)

by Rebecca Parker

Paper presented at the 4th ALIA New Librarians Symposium (NLS4), Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 05-06 December 2008

It’s easy to graduate from library school with the perception that all academic librarians spend their days behind a... more It’s easy to graduate from library school with the perception that all academic librarians spend their days behind a reference desk. Reference work is the primary focus of most information provision subjects and is held up as the exemplar of library services, the ‘holy grail’ of professional librarianship. Yet there are many other challenging quests that need the support of librarians in the academic library context. In the past there has been a tendency to focus almost exclusively on the information needs of students in the university environment, but academic libraries also serve a variety of other user groups central to the existence of universities and the advancement of research. By engaging with new areas of responsibility within universities, academic librarians step outside the traditional boundaries of librarianship and into new and exciting professional realms. Skills in information management and a detailed understanding of publication trends make librarians invaluable to universities for collecting and managing research outputs. Their support for open access publishing and institutional repositories puts academic librarians at the vanguard of the open access movement, a response to the desire for wider access to research than established scholarly publishing models allow. Increased research exposure benefits universities and individual academics, as it improves their research profiles both here and overseas. In this paper, I will show how the open access movement fosters opportunities for academic librarians to break down barriers to information access, while still actively serving researchers--and universities--who are often neglected as academic library users.

Building Swinburne Research Bank: an engaged, user-centred approach to content recruitment (2009)

by Rebecca Parker

Co-authored with Helen Wolff; appeared in Proceedings of the 14th ALIA Information Online Exhibition and Conference, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 20-22 January 2009

The now-defunct Research Quality Framework (RQF) required all Australian higher education facilities to create open... more The now-defunct Research Quality Framework (RQF) required all Australian higher education facilities to create open access institutional repositories for the storage and archival of university research outputs. Most universities followed the University of Southampton model of open access by pursuing mandates for authors to self-submit to their repositories. This well-established workflow places the onus for depositing research, managing copyright and creating metadata on authors, and as a consequence has typically achieved low contribution rates. Swinburne Research Bank repository managers have pursued a different, more involved, service model-bringing the repository to the researchers, rather than waiting for them to come to the repository. By maintaining responsibility for content sourcing, metadata creation, copyright permissions and deposit, Swinburne has been able to provide a more personalised service to its researchers. This model increases the workload for repository managers, but allows them to build valuable working relationships with individual researchers and research groups, and to gain access to a breadth of research material beyond the scope of HERDC requirements. This engaged, user-centred approach to content recruitment has seen high rates of contribution, and authors have even begun to actively contribute work for deposit. In this paper, we describe the rationale and outcomes of our unique approach, and propose a way forward for content recruitment in institutional repositories.

Partnerships at Swinburne (2009)

by Rebecca Parker

Co-authored with Teula Morgan; appeared in inCite, 30(9): 19-20

The role academic libraries perform for the corporate side of their institutions is usually much less public than... more The role academic libraries perform for the corporate side of their institutions is usually much less public than those provided to their most visible user groups: students and academics. This is starting to change. Swinburne Library is one of many Australian academic libraries managing an institutional repository---a digital collection of the university’s research publications designed to maximise their potential to be discovered online. Institutional repositories can achieve many admirable goals for librarians---they preserve digital assets into the future, address the problem of skyrocketing journal prices, facilitate open access to scholarly research, and provide a single point of entry to an institution’s entire body of research. For universities, though, the benefit of institutional repositories is more concrete. Information about a university’s research achievements made available online helps to attract student enrolments and funding for more research.

What the library did next: strengthening our visibility in research support

by Rebecca Parker

In Proceedings of 'eM-powering eFutures', the 16th Biennial VALA Conference and Exhibition, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 06-09 February 2012

Academic libraries have a long and proud history of supporting teaching and learning in universities. However, there... more Academic libraries have a long and proud history of supporting teaching and learning in universities. However, there is growing recognition that supporting research in line with their universities' expectations requires new approaches and different skills from librarians. Many Australian university libraries are now appointing specialised research librarians to take on these challenges. In this paper, we show the scope for libraries to commit to developing new customer-focussed services for researchers that ensure the importance of the academic library to institutional research, while taking into account stakeholder needs and organisational expectations.

Data Needs and Data Services: A Case Study/Minglu Wang and Ka-Neng Au

by Minglu Wang

Library space and place: Nature, use and impact on academic library

by Emmanuel Ezeji

Boutique libraries at your service

by Andy Priestner

Co-authored with Libby Tilley. Published in CILIP Update, July 2010.

Job Seeking Tips for Up and Coming Academic Librarians

by Mara Egherman

After several requests for this I thought I'd post it here to be findable. Prepared for lunchtime discussion at LIS student conference for those seeking employment in academic libraries. I am pleased to say that since this was written, I have been successfully employed as an academic librarian.

The revolution will not be shushed: guerrilla librarians fight for literacy

by Tara Brabazon

On Line Opinion, July 23, 2003

Transcription Maximized; Expense Minimized? Crowdsourcing and Editing 'The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham'

by Tim Causer

Co-authored with Justin Tonra and Valerie Wallace.

Published in Literary and Linguistic Computing, Vol. 27, Issue 2, 2012, pp. 119-137.

This paper discusses the award-winning crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, Transcribe Bentham, and how it... more This paper discusses the award-winning crowdsourced manuscript transcription project, Transcribe Bentham, and how it will impact upon long-established editorial practices at the Bentham Project, University College London, which is producing the new and authoritative edition of The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham. We site Transcribe Bentham in the burgeoning field of scholarly crowdsourcing projects, and attempt to assess the potential benefits of engaging the public in a seemingly complex task in order to further humanities research by detailing our experiences of running and administering the project.

The paper examines the conceptualisation and development of Transcribe Bentham, and how editorial practices at the Bentham Project may change as a result. We account for the design of the bespoke transcription tool which is at the project’s heart, and allows volunteers to transcribe the material and encode it in TEI-compliant XML. We attempt to answer five key questions: is crowdsourcing the transcription of complex manuscripts cost-effective? Is crowdsourcing exploitative? Would the volunteer-produced transcripts be of sufficient quality for editorial use and uploading to a digital repository, and what quality controls are required? Would crowdsourcing ensure sustainability and widen access to this priceless material? And finally, should the success of a project like Transcribe Bentham be measured solely according to cost-effectiveness or the volume of work produced, or do considerations of public engagement and access outweigh such concerns?

Library Users Are the Best Advocates

by Dana McKay

Co authored with Derek Whitehead and Rebecca Parker (second author). Published in ALIA inCite, Vol. 31, no. 11 (Nov 2010), p. 13. Author final draft available at http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/95609

Recent economic hardship has seen local and national governments around the world target libraries as a cost cutting... more Recent economic hardship has seen local and national governments around the world target libraries as a cost cutting measure. It may be tempting in these straitened times to spend time lobbying government for more money, or to cut back opening hours or services in the hope of demonstrating a more concrete return on investment. Rather than attempting to please or convince government, however, we are better served by focusing on another group: library users. And to have users who will advocate for libraries, we need to offer something to users that they value enough to speak out in support.

Pre-service legal education for academic librarians within ALA-accredited degree programs

by Phillip Edwards

Cross, W. M., & Edwards, P. M. (2011). Pre-service legal education for academic librarians within ALA-accredited degree programs. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 11(1), 533-550. Retrieved from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/portal_libraries_and_the_academy/v011/11.1.cross.pdf

In order to explore the current state of legal education for graduates of LIS programs, we present the results of an... more In order to explore the current state of legal education for graduates of LIS programs, we present the results of an examination of the curricula and faculty composition at all 57 institutions that offer ALA-accredited graduate degrees. Concluding that, even under the best circumstances, many students graduate with a limited understanding of legal issues, we also discuss two prominent types of postgraduate training: formal continuing education programs/workshops and materials for self-paced, independent study. In light of these various alternatives, this paper suggests the necessity for thoughtful, reflective changes in legal education of academic librarians.

Changing times and art librarians

by Mark Wolffe

Co-authored with Cora Weisenfeld
In Art libraries journal, Vol. 34(2009), No. 4, p. 36-41

Excellent organisational and communication skills, familiarity with available digital technology, and the ability to... more Excellent organisational and communication skills, familiarity with available digital technology, and the ability to anticipate new developments are attributes art librarians require if they are to continue to be respected and valued professionals. Collaboration between museums, knowledge-sharing and merging library collections will cause individual museum libraries to disappear or be transformed into knowledge centres affiliated with museum collections. These will be a forum for discussion and the exchange of ideas between researchers and intellectuals who share a common passion. The infrastructure for art-related information will be a digital research environment where the indexing of research material is both unambiguous and exhaustive and integrally available

Come back Zenodotus. All is forgiven

by Tara Brabazon

Times Higher Education, April 10, 2008

Librarian Faculty Status: What Does It Mean in Academia?

by Nathan Hosburgh

published in 'Library Philosophy and Practice', June 2011

Strategic Planning on the Fast Track

by Elizabeth Stephan

Library Leadership and Management, accepted for publication, Fall 2010

The academic library as place

by Elizabeth Stephan

A Usability Survey at the University of Mississippi for the Improvement of the Library Homepage

by Elizabeth Stephan

co-authored with Daisy Cheng and Lauren Young. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, January 2006, pages 35-51

A usability survey was conducted at the University of Mississippi Libraries as part of the ongoing assessment of the... more A usability survey was conducted at the University of Mississippi Libraries as part of the ongoing assessment of the library and its services. By setting criteria to measure the success of the survey, librarians at UM were able to assess if the library home page successfully met the goals and mission statement of the library.