The Information Professional

Libraries are losing out to the Internet as the new generation of researchers is switching over to social network technologies to gather, create and share information, according to an expert. Addressing the National Conference on Reaching Out to Users Through Technology (ROUTE 2013) – Enhancing Innovative Library Services in Open Environment recently, R R Hirwani, director of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Unit for Research and Development of Information Products, said the need of the hour is that libraries should plan for and build services that fit the work habits of new researchers, with an emphasis on the flexibility and remixing of content and services.

Inna K(o)uper:

CLIR blog has recently posted a piece on re-skilling for librarians by Christa Williford, focusing on digital humanities librarianship. What kind of skills do librarians need in order to be relevant in contemporary research environments? The list can be pretty long, moreover, there might be multiple lists.

Another list was proposed in a report that Christa mentioned, “Re-skilling for research” by Research Libraries UK (RLUK). The report contains results of a series of studies that aimed to map the needs of researchers onto tasks to be undertaken by subject librarians.

The report is long, but the message is the same over and over: librarians’ roles and skills are quite limited and traditional; they do not match the needs. Subject librarians are not involved at the early stages of research that involve conceptualization and planning. Most of the services are still offered in the areas of literature search and information management (how to store and organize everything). Services that are related to data collection, management, analysis and preservation are in their infancy at best.