Librarian journey from research support to research partner
ACADEMIC Libraries are demonstrating their values from research support services to the research partnership. In the past, librarians were confined to the four walls of libraries.
Today’s librarians are involved with research faculty in the research journey of academic libraries. This collaboration is resulting in their value as co-authorship.
Such partnership increases its value and helps them in its emerging role of embedded librarianship.
Collaborative research with faculty members is one possible way to demonstrate the alignment of the library with the institutional mission.
Involving them with faculty members in research activities helps them in improving skills. Academic librarianship has now been demonstrated as embedded librarianship.
Such kind of role helps them in institutional research output. The librarians have made a significant contribution to the research partnership.
Innovative role of librarians in the sustained state of providing their contributions to the academic mission has emerged them as the next part in academia’s changing perspective and student learning activities.
The modern day’s embedded librarianship has proved them as recommend the approach to showcase the value of academic librarians outside the library wall.
The Education Advisory Board (EAB) recommends a new role for librarians to facilitate their faculty members in the new courses, research teams.
The question, however, arises in mind. How does the library contribute to faculty research productivity (or tenure and promotion decisions? Librarian’s role from research supporters is now changing to research partners.
In this role, Librarians have been involved in placing, inserting and non-library departments to actively disseminate, organize and preserve library material.
Apart from this, librarians are now active mediation in the visibility and management of institutional affairs.
In identifying the most appropriate combination of database searching, the role of librarians becomes more potential because he knows how to explore them for literature review.
In the future scenario of librarians, it will be increasingly important for the working librarians to participate in institutional goals beyond historical core library services actively.
Information literacy, collection development, reference services that still adhere to the traditional library services.
The current role of Librarianship is based on embedded Librarianship and liaison programs.
This demonstrative activity can illustrate how librarians become more visible and integrated to faculty members to achieve the institutional goals.
The last few decades have brought fundamental changes regarding research in a different discipline. Collaborative research is taking place among diverse disciplines, institutions and countries.
To mastering the basic tools for research activities, researchers and librarians face numerous challenges in this era of technology. There are key challenges for academia to facilitate researchers, research and libraries.
In such circumstances, academia around the world prepares a team to add new values to its present research.
Academic institutions want the librarian to answer the question: How do librarians add value to the research process to achieve their mission and goals. A close relationship between librarians and research can be beneficial to the work of both.
Librarians bear sound knowledge in reviewing the latest research; nevertheless, faculty always have good skills in writing but finding quality research couldn’t be possible without librarians’ help.
Librarians know that which is the best and most relevant research that could fulfil the research needs of their scholars.
Apart from this, librarians should abreast researchers with greater knowledge and help them browse quality research.
When the librarians perform their routine works as done in a traditional setup, they will never grow in their respective organizations.
Librarians should come out from their traditional services and should actively participate in other activities beyond traditional services.
In this case, their role should not be passive. They ought to promote their learning capabilities about the new tools, which are highly helpful in the research growth of organizations.
Many librarians have been engaged in Plagiarism software; this is undoubtedly a good gesture for the editorial team of the organization, but learning more tools will make them more capable by involving them in research tools.
Modern days librarians are well-prepared for organizational changes. They should learn new tools and skills to facilitate their researchers.
Many statics softwares like Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), Statistical Analysis Software (SAS), STATA, etc. The new context of academia shows great potential for the librarian’s expertise.
Leading to the new role, they should adopt new ways of working. Librarians should think beyond the four walls of their libraries.
Outside the library services, they should engage themselves in research activities; this will help them more close to the authority and will bring the librarian closers to the users.
—The writer is working as Library Officer in Institute of Strategic Studies, a think-think based in Islamabad.
