Northern Collaboration Conference 2016 Parallel session 3: Eddy Verbaan, Paul Ashwell, Dan Grace, Pete Smith, Bea Turpin, Sheffield Hallam University

1. Research the researcher
Informing the development of library research support

2. Today's presentation
• Institutional context
• What the literature says
• One way to understand our academics
• Preliminary conclusions

3. Sheffield Hallam University
• Largest modern university with
31,530 students
• Academic staff
– 8% dedicated to research
– 24% spends 1 day/week or more on
research
• VC Prof Chris Husbands is Chair
of the TEF panel
• Ambition to be "the leading
applied university" by 2030
– employability
– practitioner-academics
– key societal issues, international
impact and connected with the
region

4. Research at Hallam
RCUK
7%
EU
35%
Contract
research
41%
Other
17%
REF 2014
65% of outputs 3* and 4* quality
In top 5 of modern universities
Strengths in Arts and Design,
Planning, Education, and Sport
Ambitions
Improve REF ranking but
emphasising external income
generation

5. Research support - Learning
Centre
Learning
&Teaching
team
Library
Resources
team
OA
repository
(2008)
RDM
(2014)
HEFCE
and OA
(2015)
Some
PGR and
staff
teaching

6. Library restructure
• A new Library Research Support
team
– to contribute more effectively to the
University's aim to build on strengths
in research, innovation and
knowledge transfer
– to respond adequately to external
requirements such as REF, RDM
and OA
– to better understand and meet the
information needs of SHU research
students and research-active staff
• 4 FTE with both a functional and a
faculty-based liaison role
Research data
management
Scholarly
communications
Information skills
Communication
and special
collection

7. Informing our service offer
The institutional and wider
landscape
• the emerging literature on
research support in LIS
• benchmarking with other
institutions
• the external agendas of OA,
RDM and REF
Understanding user
needs
• continuous listening exercise
• targeted conversations to
gauge self perceived support
needs
• surveys to gauge awareness
and understand research
behaviours

8. Direction of travel
• Advent of open
research practices
(OA, RDM) is driving
change
• New funder policies
(EPSRC, HEFCE)
versus good practice
• Changing behaviour

9. Literature review: areas of support
Needs
led?
Scholarly
comms
OA
RDM
Metrics
Info Lit
Publishing

10. Literature review: means of support
Experienced
researchers
PGRs and
ECRs
specific,
quick, low
intensity
structured
sessions
library?
faculty
space?

11. Literature review: barriers to support
Librarians Researchers
perspective
of academics
capacity to
find info
without us
skill set number
visibility perspective
of librarians

12. Literature review: bridges to support
Collaboration RepositoriesCompliance
Researcher-
librarian

13. Our project
• Purpose
– understand the self-
perceived support needs of
our academics
– inform our service
development
– understand the research
process
• Semi-structured
interviews
– research background
– support experience
– library support experience
– support expectations
• Participants
– from PhD to senior
researchers
– Regulated funding,
contract-based, and self-

14. Barriers - awareness
• There was very little about RIO very
little about Library support service [at
staff induction]
• The library, yeah, ok, I suppose I
have a little bit of ignorance when it
comes to what the library actually
offers...

15. Barriers - experience
• I think I'm probably OK but as I say I've got
a lot of experience
• So for me, it's been fine but I think that's
because I know what to do

16. Barriers - habits / 'competition'
• I mean I'm a big fan of Google and
Google Scholar
• But I think things like Google Scholar
the advent of things like that have
meant you're less likely to come in
here

17. Barriers - culture
• I think it's more us working out the
interconnection between the library
service and [research centre and
departments]
• So there might be some resistance to
getting people on board but again I think
that has got to do perhaps with the
culture of the research team you have

18. Barriers - time
• Time is always against me
• So my experience is the drop-in
sessions you end up never going
to them because life happens

19. Bridges - compliance
• Doing the data management form
because there were so many
examples of what you could put in
it was laborious and dull but not
difficult.

20. Bridges / areas of support -
RDM
• The resources that we get in
terms of the DMP Online the help
with that...the contact with you
guys and just asking questions,
unreal fantastic

21. Bridges / areas of support-
RDM
• So in that I've used Eddy quite a
lot to comment on data
management plans and he's
really thorough and really helpful

22. Bridges / areas of support -
tools
• I did a brilliant course in here on
Refworks with somebody called
Bea

23. Bridges - doctoral support
• I find the library really really
useful with my doctoral students

24. Means of support
• One-to-one discussion is much more
valuable so you can say introduce all
the factors that impact on that
decision
• When you are dealing with a specific
particular task or a particular project
then one to one support would be
really helpful

25. Preliminary conclusions
One size doesn't
fit all
discipline
academic perspective
subject
academic culture
experience
role / career stage
knowledge
contractual obligations

26. Preliminary conclusions
Supporting the right areas
Indications are that our
functional focus areas
meet our researchers'
self-perceived needs
Research data
management
Scholarly
communications
Information
skills
Communication
and special
collection

27. Preliminary conclusions:
Offering appropriate means of support
• Research support
web pages
• Variety of sessions
• One-to-one support
• Named person
• Communication through a variety of means
• Target supervisors

28. Preliminary conclusions:
Overcoming barriers to support
Promote the team
and what we can offer
Try to get the timing right

29. Preliminary conclusions:
Bridges to support
Central research support -
Research Information Office (RIO)
Funder and HEFCE requirements

30. SHU Library research support
We pages: http://research.shu.ac.uk/library/
Email: library-research-support@shu.ac.uk
Head of Library Research Support: Dr Eddy Verbaan
Research Support Librarians:
Paul Ashwell, Dan Grace, Pete Smith, Bea Turpin

31. Bibliography
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and enhancing service provision (pp. 135-141). Cambridge, MA: Chandos Publishing. doi:10.1016/B978-0-12-802105-7.00013-0
• Brewerton, A. (2012). Re-skilling for research: Investigating the needs of researchers and how library staff can best support them. New Review of
Academic Librarianship, 18(1), 96-110. doi:10.1080/13614533.2012.665718
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271.
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