UWA: Research Support Services and Training

The UWA Library provides a lot of research support services, in particular for staff, postgraduates and honours students.
Examples of these services are:

• Research Data Management Services
• Support with Scholarly Publishing and Repository
• Copyright Support
• Support with Research Impact Measurement

At each UWA branch library there is staff (often liaison or subject librarians) to provide advice and support to researchers, either in individual consultations or to groups.
The library offers a Research Support Programme of regular workshops which are designed to develop research skills and assist with common challenges in the research lifecycle.

Some examples of workshops (that we surely can learn from!):


1. Overview of Library services
"The University Library supports HDR (Higher Degree Research) students and early career researchers in a number of ways. This introductory session will provide an overview, and suggest how you might benefit from library support at different stages in your research process.

2. Literature searching
"Scholarly literature searching is much more than a few keywords! Find out how to carry out thorough, efficient and effective searches using UWA tools and scholarly information resources provided by the University Library."

3. Advanced Google for researchers
"Harness the power of Google to find scholarly materials to support your research, find out how advanced Google functions can enhance the quality and efficiency of your searches."

4. Staying up to date
"Setting yourself up to keep abreast of new publications, news and developments in your field can save you hours of time through your research project. This workshop will cover technologies, tools and tips to simplify this aspect of your life."

5. Research Data Management
"All researchers have an obligation to manage their research data and ensure compliance with UWA and funder policies. This workshop will provide an overview of best practice relating to data storage, IP, metadata, documentation, sharing, disposal and more."

6. Maximising and Measuring your Research Impact
"Understanding the impact of your research is essential to your future success. This workshop will cover citations and other evidence of impact, the h-index, journal rankings and impact factors, researcher profiles, and focus on strategies to maximise impact. This session will be useful for researchers completing the Research Performance Evidence section of grant applications and anyone needing to demonstrate their research impact."

7. Where to Publish
"Deciding where and how to publish is an important step in the research process. This workshop will cover a range of factors to consider, and introduce the tools and guides that can help. Open access publishing and the UWA Research Repository are covered."



Here you can have a look at the Library's webpage for Research Support:
http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/research

As you can see there are also a lot of online guides/LibGuides!

UWA Perth: library strategy and strategic teams

When I had a meeting with Jill Benn who is the University Librarian (library director) at The University of Western Australia (UWA) and with Scott Nichols who is the Associate University Librarian, they were talking to me about the library's organisational structure, about their work with the library strategy, and - most interesting - about the different strategic teams.

Regarding the organisational structure, I don't have an updated chart for the library. The main reason is that one is working on a new structure for the whole university, including the library. But I have a print document describing the various positions, functions and sub-functions. And, there is an interim management structure for UWA and it is very interesting that the library is organised under the Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research. It is also interesting that there is no Vice-Chancellor Education (but a Pro Vice-Chancellor, Education Innovation). The reason for that is the focus on research at UWA. If you are interested, have a look at the structure here:
http://www.governance.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/2915615/Interim-Mgmt-Structure.pdf


The most important item we were talking about were the Strategic Teams at the library. These teams are cross-functional teams and there are five of them:

• Research Strategy Team
• Education Strategy Team
• Collection Strategy Team
• Marketing and Communication Strategy Team
• IT and Inquiry Support Strategy Team

For each team there is a list of members, scope and responsibilities of the team and information about the meeting frequency, email address of the group, who the team reports to and which librarians are collaborating with this team.
As an example, here you have the scope and responsibilities of the Research Strategy Team:

Scope: 
"The team will provide a strategic direction for the development of innovative library research services to support the University's strategic goal to be recognised as a global leader in internationally renowned research. This will include establishing relationships with and working with:
Researchers, research centres/institutes and research groups to develop an on-going understanding of researcher needs.
The ORE (Office of Research Enterprise) and GRS (Graduate Research School) to ensure that University requirements relating to research are met and supported.
Other relevant areas of the University to promote and market library research support services and initiatives.
External organisations (including vendors) to ensure knowledge and awareness of new and innovative research related systems and tools."

Responsibilities: 
"The team will have responsibility for the following in relation to the research portfolio:
1. Monitoring developments, best practice, and innovations in research locally, nationally, and internationally.
2. Identifying opportunities for development of research support services and innovation.
3. Developing an understanding of the client needs.
4. Developing activities to promote and communicate research support and services, including training sessions for staff and students.
5. Gathering and analysing statistics and feedback to ensure key objectives are being met.
6. Identifying research support skills needed by Library staff and coordinating training to meet these needs.
7. Ensuring research support procedures are documented and current.
8. Partnering with relevant areas across the University to ensure research support services delivered from the Library are complimentary and support wider goals of the University
9. Developing and maintaining relevant webpages, signage, and publications related to research support.
10. Making recommendations on policy to the Library executive. 
11. Monitoring progress of operational planning projects relating to research support."

That is really a lot of responsibility, but I think it is necessary to push development and make sure that library services are aligned with the university's strategies and goals.

I hope that our library can establish cross-functional teams again, so that we can ensure that all branch libraries and all staff offer the same services and support, and also to be able to focus on the development of our services!!!

Jill, Scott and I also discussed the work on the Library Strategy.  
At UWA Library they establish different groups for the different strategic directions (five in the newest plan). These groups then write a paper about the topic (i.e. internationally-renowned research) and send it to all staff for feedback and ideas. In this way the management ensures a proper involvement of all staff in the strategic plan!
Afterwards there is the process of operational planning and all staff can come up with proposals for projects!

Isn't this fantastic???

Here you have the University Library Strategic Directions 2015-2010:
http://www.library.uwa.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2778114/University-Library-Strategic-Directions-2015-2020.pdf
I also have a print version and I think we can learn a lot from this strategy (layout and phrasing).

The University of Western Australia (UWA) in Perth and its library: pictures, facts and figures

The Homepage of UWA states:
"The University of Western Australia, the State’s first university, was established in 1911 and opened two years later with 184 students. Today the university enrols over 24,000 students, in eight faculties: Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts; Arts; Business School; Education; Engineering, Computing and Mathematics; Law; Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences; and Science." 

In 2015, there were 3,677 staff (full time equivalent) working at the university. UWA is also very proud of its Nobel prize winners: Professor Barry Marshall and Emeritus Professor Robin Warren were awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of the bacterium Helicobacter pylori and its role in gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. 

The main campus of the UWA is just very beautiful.
You only need to walk a few minutes and then you are right at the very broad Swan river.
There are lots of green areas on the campus and all the facilities you need, including lots of sports facilities, residential homes and cafés and restaurants.

The UWA Library was established in 1964 and celebrated its 50th anniversary two years ago. Above you can see a part of the outside area of the Reid Library, one of the branch libraries. Today UWA Library has about 100 staff and six sites (branch libraries), in addition to the Special Collections. 

Some years ago the process of refurbishing the library spaces started. 

"The Reid Library refurbishment project has transformed the ground-floor of the library with a state-of-the-art design, where it has become open and light and makes the most of its beautiful and central location on campus. The number of student spaces for collaborative and informal learning has increased from 350 to 700. There has been improved access to wifi, power points and locker space, increased and upgraded bathrooms and the new Quobba Gnarning café. Other highlights of the refurbishment include:

• A new entrance off Saw Promenade
• A range of collaborative learning spaces to meet different learning styles
• A learning suite for interactive tutorial style teaching for up to 60 students which can also be booked and used by students when not being used for teaching
• Relocation of the resource room from the first-floor to the ground-floor of the library to improve accessibility
• A dedicated space for WriteSmart (a daily help service for students delivered collaboratively by Student Services and the library)
• Full refurbishment including new furniture, carpet and paint."

After the refurbishment of the ground floor, Reid Library has received up to 80% more visits daily than at the same time the year before. It really has become a central space for learning.

Research Skill Development Framework and Work Skills Development Framework at Monash University

As I have already mentioned in another blog post, Monash University has adopted the Research Skill Development Framework as the backbone for the University's educational strategies.
I had a meeting with Lyn Torres, Information Research Skills Manager at the library, and she explained the framework and told me about how the library and university are using it. I was incredibly impressed about Lyn's skills and enthusiasm and I wished we would have someone like her at our library.  

The Research Skill Development Framework "presents a conceptual, non-prescriptive model for curriculum and assessment design that explicitly and coherently develops students' research skills within disciplinary content, at the course and unit levels."  Subject/liaison librarians and learning skills advisers are applying the framework and working very closely together with teachers and academics when designing curricula/courses.
The Research Skills Development Framework looks similar to the skills frameworks or information literacy frameworks at other universities/libraries. However at Monash University Library they decided to stay very close to the original framework by John Willison and Kerry O'Regan (I have been talking about it in earlier blog posts).
That means the framework includes six facets of research: a) Embark & Clarify,  b) Find & Generate,  c) Evaluate & Reflect,  d) Organise & Manage,  e) Analyse & Synthesise and  f) Communicate & Apply.  There are five levels of students' autonomy or research levels: Level 1: Prescribed Research, Level 2: Bounded Research, Level 3: Scaffolded Research, Level 4: Self-actuated Research and Level 5: Open Research.

Colleagues, please have a look at the framework and think about how we can use it in our library and teaching!  http://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/156760/research-skills-development.pdf

It was also interesting to learn that the library teaches academic staff to understand and use the framework. This teaching happens in collaboration with the department that teaches new staff about how to teach.

The Australian government and the Australian universities have been focusing more and more on students' employability skills during the last years. Therefore Monash University Library has adopted the so-called Work Skills Development Framework that was developed by Sue Bandaranaike (James Cook University) and John Willison (University of Adelaide). It addresses work-readiness as part of the Higher Education teaching and learning agenda, and enables the interpretation and articulation of students’ work skills gained through study and participation at the university.
The library offers to help with the design and incorporation of employment skills within curricula.
Have a look at the Work Skills Development Framework here:  http://www.adelaide.edu.au/rsd/framework/frameworks/WSD-2009_2014.pdf

It really was impressive at Monash University Library and I realised that staff at NTNU University Library (including me!) need to get up-skilled a lot!!!

Monash University and its library: organisational chart, some facts and figures, and my presentation

Monash University was established in Melbourne in 1958. Today Monash University has seven locations, five in Australia, one in Malaysia and one in South Africa. In 2015, the number of students was 70,071 and 37% of them were international students.
The total number of staff is 14,869 (8,423 full-time equivalent). 764 staff work in Malaysia and 252 in South Africa.

The Monash University Library was established in 1960, and today it falls within the portfolio of the Provost & Senior Vice President of the university. The Library is represented in the Academic Board, the Education Committee and the Research Committee.

Under the University Librarian there are four directors:
Director, Resources
Director, Research
Director, Excellence and Engagement
Director, Education

Under the Director, Education you have some Faculty team leaders, the Manager for the Caulfield Library, the Manager for the Law Library, the Manager for Information Research Skills, the Manager for Learning Skills, the eLearning Coordinator, and the Copyright Adviser.

I wished we would have some of these positions in our library!

Under the Director, Excellence and Engagement you have the Manager for the Sir Louis Matheson Library, the Communications Manager, the Manager for Strategy and Planning, and the Operations Manager.

Under the Director, Resources you have the Information Resources Manager, the Information Systems Manager, the Rare Books Librarian, the Document Delivery Librarian, the Lending Services Librarian.

Under the Director, Research you have the Director for Monash University Publishing, the Research Data Management Coordinator, the Manager for the Monash University Research Repository, some Faculty team leaders, the Manager for Berwick and Peninsula Libraries, the Manager for the Hargrave-Andrew Library and the Manager for CL Butchers Pharmacy Library.

Here you have the organisational chart:  http://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/594278/library-organisational-structure-aug2016.pdf 

The library has a physical collection of 3.1 million items and an electronic collection of 1.1 million items. In 2015, the library conducted 1,571 Information Research and Learning programmes (courses) with a total of 59,578 participants. There were 6,372 enquiries at the Research and Learning Service Points, 9,259 enquiries by telephone, 1,258 enquiries via email (ask.monash) and the ask.monash FAQs were accessed 14,092 times.

Most interesting is that the library tries to avoid the use of the words " services" and "support". Instead it prefers the words "collaboration" and "partnership".  And the library has really achieved being a partner of teachers and researchers and not only a service provider. 

I also gave a presentation to some of the library staff and got lots of questions again. It is so good to be able to give something back!

See the next blog post for more information about the Research Skill development Framework that is included in the university's educational plan!!!
  

Teaching@Library, Scholarly Literacy Framework and Bibliometrics at The University of Melbourne

Teaching@Library, Scholarly Literacy Framework and a bit about Liaison Librarians

All teaching and learning support services and information is available under the "logo" Teaching@Library. See  http://library.unimelb.edu.au/teaching
Under Teaching Resources you can find information about how to use and find Course Materials, about Request a Custom Research Skills Program (the library works with teachers to develop customised classes to improve the students' research skills), about the Use of Existing Online Resources (i.e. research skills video tutorials and subject guides to embed in the Learning Management System) and about Other Help with Teaching.
Under the link Scholarly Literacy you can find information about the document called Scholarly Literacy @ Melbourne that explains the recommended approach to developing students' research skills. You also find information about the Scholarly Literacy Framework and how to integrate it into the curriculum, and about examples of how teachers and librarians have used the framework to improve the students' performance.
In addition, there is a link to Speak to a Librarian. So academics, researchers and students can send subject-specific enquiries to the various Subject Liaison Librarians. See below for more information about the role and tasks of subject liaison librarians.

Scholarly Literacy Framework

As the library webpage states "The Scholarly Literacy Framework forms the basis of all scholarly literacy programs at the University of Melbourne. Used by academics, librarians and other teaching and learning specialists, it provides common standards and learning outcomes that are core to embedding the development of scholarly literacy into curriculum. The Framework has been successfully used in all academic disciplines and can be tailored to meet the specific requirements of a subject or course. Talk with a Subject Liaison Librarian about how you can use the Framework to embed scholarly literacy into your curriculum, prepare your students for assessment tasks, improve student performance, address specific problems that your students are encountering, and more."

Like in other Australian university libraries, the Scholarly Literacy Framework is based on the Australian and New Zealand Information Literacy Framework (ANZIL, 2004), the Research Skill Development Framework by Willison&O'Regan (2006, 2013) and JISC's 7 Elements of Digital Literacy (2014). There are five core capibilities: Search, Evaluate, Organise, Create, and Connect, and three research levels: Directed Research, Guided Research and Independent Research.
Please, have a look at the pdf file of the framework:  http://library.unimelb.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/1620504/SLF_2016_Final.pdf

Faculty and Subject Liaison Librarians

Some years ago there has been a review of the roles of liaison librarians (among others by doing a literature review).
Now each of the university's Faculty/School has a team of librarians dedicated to working with academics, researchers and students to achieve their research, learning and teaching goals. Each team has a manager and several Subject Liaison Librarians. Each liaison librarian has specialist knowledge in either research support or learning/teaching support. There are also liaison support librarians who work on desks and who support the liaison librarians.
Faculty and Subject Liaison Librarians functions are:

• Provide individual, tailored research consultations to academics, researchers and graduate/ honours students
• Partner with academics on curriculum design to embed scholarly literacy and achieve strong student research performance
• Develop and deliver curriculum-based scholarly literacy modules for classes (both face to face and online)
• Provide advice on measuring citation impact, managing researcher profiles and publishing strategically
• Build library collections inline with the teaching and research priorities for their faculty, and
  take suggestions on new titles or collection areas

It was interesting to hear that the library tries to recruit more people with a degree in a university subject to support.

One of the most interesting things was that library staff, in particular the liaison librarians, would take a course/programme called "Digital Learning Design Programme" in order to develop learning design skills. On the programme's webpage you can read the following:
"The Digital Learning Design programme was written, developed and is delivered by one of the UK’s leading learning and development specialists, Clive Shepherd. Designed for learning professionals and subject specialists, the Digital Learning Design programme provides you with both the competence and the confidence to create engaging digital learning content. You’ll develop the skills you need to analyse learning requirements and audience characteristics, select the most appropriate forms of content, and then work individually or with specialists to design, develop and deploy your content." See more: http://shop.cipd.co.uk/shop/cipd-training/courses-qualifications/learning-talent/learning-technology/digital-learning-design-programme

Since most of our staff at NTNU University Library doesn't have learning design skills, this is a must do programme for all our subject/research librarians and teaching staff, and we should explore how to be able to do this!

 

Bibliometrics

I had a meeting with someone from the so-called Research Impact Library Advisory Service (RILAS) and she told me about the work on assisting researchers with academic promotion and grant applications. Because academic staff need to provide documentation about the impact of their publications and other research outputs when they apply for grants or promotion.
Usually researchers send a request to RILAS by email or they contact a liaison librarian directly. This service gets a lot of requests since the faculties' research offices refer to the library when researchers ask about measuring their impact. For example, in 2015 they provided 144 reports and in 2014 they did 163 reports.
After the request has come to the team (that comprises one liaison librarian from each liaison team) it needs to clarify a few things before starting with the report:
1. Clarify the purpose of request
2. Negotiate the time frame
3. Negotiate the level of detail an format of the report
4. Obtain the ORCID, ResearcherID and list of publications
The team also provides a lot of reports when people are about to get employed, that means the employers ask for the candidates' h-index, number of citations etc.

The RILAS team also provides some useful guides if researchers choose to do their own analysis:
A guide on Research Impact (tools for measuring and monitoring the impact of research, information on calculating citation, journal, book and researcher impact, h-indexes)
See here:  http://unimelb.libguides.com/research_impact?hs=a
A guide on Tracking Citations (citation analysis and alerting tools: Web of Science (ISI) , Scopus (Elsevier), Google Scholar)
See here:  http://unimelb.libguides.com/tracking_citations

Otherwise, there is also an altmetrics team at the library.

Research@Library at The University of Melbourne

All research support services and information is available under the "logo" Research@Library. See   http://library.unimelb.edu.au/research

The services are delivered across the research lifecycle, that means there is this online platform for the researchers/users, so that they can get what they want when they need it. Have a look at the link above to see what information and services are offered under the various stages of the research lifecycle.

The library also has a Digital Scholarship team. The library's webpage states: 

"Digital Scholarship aims to modernise scholarly practice via digital techniques with the aim of maximising the value of research data. We provide training, advice and examples of good practice in digital humanities, digital archiving and preservation and research data management."

Digital Scholarship services are:

• Research Data Forensics  (services for examining, analysing, recovering, re-using and preserving data stored in digital media in a forensically sound manner)
• Research Data Management  (supporting researchers in managing their research data)
• Research Data Curation  (ongoing, structured processes for capturing and providing stewardship for research data)
• Training and outreach  (workshops that educate on Digital Scholarship-related tools and best practices; events that equip researchers and information professionals with global knowledge of trends in the area of technology and scholarship)

Another interesting thing is SCIP, the Social and Cultural Informatics Platform, that supports research in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Education and the Visual & Performing Arts. Have a proper look here:  http://scip.unimelb.edu.au/
 
When having the conversation with Donna, the Director for Research and Collections, she also mentioned MANTRA, from the University of Edinburgh.
MANTRA is an online course designed for researchers or others planning to manage digital data as part of the research process (it was funded by JISC Managing Research Data programme).
Research Data MANTRA has developed online learning materials aiming to reflect best practice in research data management grounded in three disciplinary contexts: social science, clinical psychology, and geoscience.
In addition to web-based learning units that students can work through at their own pace, the course includes video interviews with leading academics about data management challenges, and practical exercises in handling data in four software analysis environments: SPSS, NVivo, R and ArcGIS.
The resultant materials are available on a website for anyone to use and will also be deposited with an open licence in JorumOpen, a national repository for open educational resources.
Here you have the link to the online course: http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/

Last but not least, I got to know there is a Researcher@Library Week. 
Researcher@Library Week showcases the many ways the library can support researchers through the research process. There is a range of activities, including hands-on sessions, tours, keynote speakers and presentations. Several of these events are recorded and are made available online. In 2016 there was an ePoster competition. University of Melbourne graduate researchers designed posters to showcase their research, bu they didn't do the 'classic' conference poster but an electronic version that visualised their theses. Btw, the first prize was a $1,000 Visa cash card.
Another great idea that we can adopt at NTNU, can't we???