Working together: evolving value for academic libraries

Abstract

This study investigated the value of academic libraries for teaching and research staff. The\nacademic library community has been dealing with the issue of how best to demonstrate its value\nfor years, especially value to students. Yet although a good deal of evidence is collected, much of\nthis is evidence of activity rather than evidence of value and impact, especially value to and impact\non teaching and research staff.\nThe study showed that libraries are struggling to find appropriate, and systematic, ways to capture\nevidence of their value for teaching and research staff. Much work is needed to build an evidence\nbase in this area. Libraries can show their value to teaching and research staff most effectively\nby describing this in terms of benefits, for example, staff time saved, increased quality of student\nassignments, increased contact hours.\nThe study found that librarians generally understood the needs of their users in very broad terms,\nand provided services to meet these needs. Embedded information literacy instruction is highly\nvalued by teaching staff. Increasingly, this is developing into integrated teaching and curriculum\ndevelopment activities. Support for research appeared less well embedded, but there is evidence\nof successful partnerships between librarians and research staff in the areas of literature reviewing\nand data curation, in particular. Meeting research staff one-to-one and targeting services to meet\nspecific needs was an effective, albeit time-intensive, way for librarians to raise their profile and\nvalue.\nThere are concerns that not all teaching and research staff appreciate the level and extent of\nthe support available from the modern academic library. Working in partnership with teaching\nand research staff was found to be an effective way to promote the library, and to increase the\nperception of value.