USTLG meeting - the role of libraries in the research process



Keble College, Oxford.
Photo by Robert Hextall

 On a cold November morning, I made the trip to Oxford to attend this USTLG meeting. The topic, supporting researchers, was very timely as I have recently delivered my first two library sessions for researchers at Westminster. These forms a compulsory part of their initial PhD. They has previously been delivered by just a few of my colleagues, but this year we all had the opportunity to get involved, which meant we could tailor the second session to individual schools. Although the feedback we received was generally very positive, I felt slightly out of my depth at times, and unsure about whether what we were telling them was really the most useful for their needs. Therefore, when I saw the USTLG meeting advertised, I was very keen to attend!

Slides from the meeting are available on the USTLG website. I've put some of my thoughts from the day below.


The first talk was from an academic, Prof. Richard Darton, which provided some useful insights, although not in the way I'd expected. He gave his perspective on how the librarian has evolved since the start of his academic career, from curator to supplier to web manager. He seemed to concentrate a bit too much on the physical collection managing aspect, rather than the other work we do e.g. training people how to locate and use information effectively.

Kimberley Hackett gave an overview and update on the Research Excellence Framework (REF).

Research metrics is quite a complex topic to talk about in 30 minutes but Anne Costigan explained it very well and made many of us realise that it's something we need to have good knowledge of when talking to researchers. This is certainly an FAQ and as information professionals we should be able to discuss this with confidence. Along with the well-known ISI metrics, useful tools mentioned were Researcher ID (to avoid disambiguation), Scopus, Scimago, CiteRank and MESUR.

Yvonne Nobis gave an interesting talk about finding the known unknowns and the unknown knowns. She was planning to show us the http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/scienceportal/ portal but unfortunately there was no internet available. I've had a look at it since though and like the look of it.

After lunch, we heard the bibliometrics training that Cardiff Uni offers from Kate Bradbury. They have staff sessions on the training calendar, have arranged a lunchtime seminar programme, and even managed to secure a slot at the Computer Science away day. Kate advised that the best attendance comes from sessions arranged with the school.

Alexa Dugan from Wiley (who had kindly sponsored the excellent lunch!) spoke to us about Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIRES). The idea for these stemmed from an American academic who felt that articles in reference publications don't give the writers any real credit. Interdisciplinary Reviews aims to address this by being a sort of cross between a journal article and a reference work article, with the content being the key factor. Several titles are available already and more are due to be published next year. Access is free for two years, then you can subscribe.

The final session of the day, given by Katy Sidwell, was very interactive and practical, which went down very well. It focused on us becoming a part of the research process and made us consider where we currently catch researchers in this cycle and where we could do better. The new researcher development framework was mentioned and it was suggested that we should map library support to this.

The day ended with a tour of the Radcliffe Science Library, which had some beautiful interior architecture.