Jennifer Schaffner
Program Officer
OCLC Research
A plethora of recent reports provide evidence of intensive information needs of researchers and their universities. The simultaneous evolution of discipline-based hubs and institution-based repositories has been occurring for over 10 years. Diverse international studies, however, have identified gaps in digital infrastructure and library provision of services to manage research information. In some situations, services are best delivered by national, third-party, commercial or other external sources. The authors of many reports challenge academic research libraries and their parent institutions to develop new services that will serve the needs of universities and the researchers themselves. What services are desired?
The ecology of information-related services in a wide variety of disciplines and universities will be examined in this session. There seems to be an opportunity to rethink lessons learned from institutional repositories and the open access movement. It is not clear yet whether scientists will welcome librarians and archivists, with or without necessary training in the sciences, to help manage large data sets, despite research requirements and the success of the data curation movement. It is also not yet certain what other useful information-related services librarians can offer their universities, such as assembling bibliographic metadata dispersed across an institution for a Current Research Information System (CRIS).
OCLC Research has completed a series of projects on research information management, data curation, research assessment and support for research workflows. This project briefing will synthesize the results of many related studies, conducted in Europe and North America, about managing research information and creating necessary research services within universities and libraries. Qualitative and quantitative studies of academic administrators and scholars provide a wealth of evidence about requirements for digital content and infrastructure that span the entire life cycle of the fruits of research.
http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/rim.htm
Handout (PDF)