Taking the librarian out of the library: lessons learned along the way

1. Taking the Librarian out of the Library
Lessons learned along the way
Elizabeth Gadd, Loughborough University

2. Overview
• Before – life in the Library
• Becoming T-shaped
• The journey – making a change
• After – life in the Research Office
• General lessons & thoughts

3. Before: Life in the Library
• Managed Academic Services Team (job share)
• Research Support Coordinator
• Structure of Academic Services Team

4. Library wide responsibility for research support

5. The birth of bibliometrics at Loughborough
• Web pages & training
• Publication strategy session for
academic staff
• Publication & visibility strategy
for PGRs
• Enquiry and stats provision
service for academics
• Feeding in to discussions around
relevant metrics for PDR

6. Developing a specialism
• See a gap and fill it
• 1996 – interest in copyright
clearance
• No UK-wide forum to discuss
• Set up Lis-Copyseek
• 2010 - interest in bibliometrics
• No UK wide forum to discuss
• Set up Lis-Bibliometrics
• 5th Bibliometrics in Universities
event coming up on 27 June

7. Understanding the bigger picture
• Professional responsibilities
• Bid for research funding
• Bid for bursaries or travel
awards
• Training courses –
Certificates & Diplomas
• Internal secondments
• Job shadowing

8. Ranking troubles
• Poor citation performance
• Been knocking on doors about this for
some time
• Consultancy work
• Reported the results to high level staff
• Coincided with poor REF results
• Recognised that there was a need for
someone to take this forward in the
institution
• Publication Policy job created in
Research Office…
•

9. After: Life on the other side
Similarities Differences
Same research support topics:
Publication strategy and
visibility
Bibliometrics
Open access
RDM
Social media
Still sit on the Library Research
Support Group
Still provide training
Different perspective on those
topics:
Monitoring
Reporting
Compliance
Policy development
Consultation response
Smaller team
Less line mgt responsibility
More time to think strategically
Greater access and visibiity

10. A day in the life…
• Provision of citation data for Research Quality
Enhancement Committee
• Responding the requests for advice about Journal Lists by
Associate Deans for Research
• Working with Schools as to how they can benchmark their
altmetric data
• Delivering training on publication strategy
• Developing policy messages around what, when and how
people might make their research visible
• Planning a Change Project in this area

11. You next?

12. The beauty of being new to a field
• Have a different perspective
• Able to ask stupid questions
• Learn a lot
• Have time to think strategically
• Have energy for the challenge!

13. The beauty of having been a librarian
• Understanding of the scholarly
communication process
• Researchers, publishers, services and tools
• A service focus
• Seen the other side of joint agendas
• A recognition that it’s not all about
research

14. The beauty of having been a researcher
• Understand the
research process
• Bidding for funding,
• Doing the research
• Writing it up
• Getting published
• Having a publication
profile

15. Research projects –big…
Project RoMEO
Rights&RewardsProject

16. …and small

17. The Matthew Effect…
• ARMA Metrics SIG
Champion
• SciVal User Group
Steering Committee
member
• Expert Reference Group
for a Jisc project on
Research Data Metrics for
Usage

18. General lessons
• Take your place at the table – you have a right to be there
• Opportunities are rarely offered – they are seized
• Go for roles where you have the potential to succeed, rather
than where you are already fully/over-qualified
• Face down “Imposter syndrome”
• Geographical / time constraints needn’t hold you back
• You can have (bits of) it all…
• What do you actually want?

19. Why you?
• Where do you want to be in
5 years time?
• What opportunities can you
seize to make it a reality?
• Why you?

20. Contact details
Elizabeth Gadd
Research Policy Manager (Publications)
Research Office
Loughborough University
Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU
Tel: 01509 228594
Skype: lizziegadd
Twitter: @lizziegadd
Email: e.a.gadd@lboro.ac.uk
Google Scholar Citation Profile
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4509-7785
http://about.me/elizabeth.gadd