Digital Skills Working Group

Case Studies on European Open Science Skilling and Training Initiatives

Posted: 24-06-2019 Topics: Strategy

In a rapidly changing digital world, libraries are regularly re-assessing existing services and offering new ones to support research evolutions.

Librarians with up-to-date digital skills can provide invaluable support to library users, and will personally benefit from better career prospects: this is why LIBER’s Digital Skills for Library Staff and Researchers Working Group is working on digital skilling and training practices available for library staff and researchers, with particular attention to those focused on Open Science.

The Working Group’s aim is to create a ‘starter’s guide’ for Open Science-oriented library services. In this perspective, the following activities are being carried out:

  • Sharing the many existing approaches for building Open Science skills sets with library staff and researchers across Europe through case studies
  • Identifying and learning about the most relevant Open Science training programmes and initiatives in the current academic landscape, and share best practices with our community
  • Working on an entry point for developing digital skilling and training amongst library staff and researchers
  • Publishing all workshops and webinar materials CC-BY on LIBER’s Zenodo communities (LIBER Publications and LIBER Europe Slide Presentations)
  • Sharing useful references on https://www.zotero.org/groups/2340674/liber_digital_skills_for_open_science 

The “Open Science skilling and training initiatives in Europe” Project

Open Science skills for both research librarians and researchers are at the center of all evolutions towards “openness”. The Digital Skills for Library Staff and Researchers LIBER Working Group conducted a selection process in 2018 in order to identify Open Science training programmes relying on skills identification.

In April 2019, questionnaires were sent out in 28 countries, and complementary interviews were conducted for the production of country-specific case studies on Open Science skilling and training initiatives in Europe. The first results of this combined approach is going to be presented during the 2019 LIBER Conference workshop “Open Science Essentials: Towards a Skill Set and Showcases”, and the publication of the cases will be followed by a factsheet and analysis in 2020.

The objective of this activity is to offer the research library community a selective landscape of inspiring methods, practices, contacts and words of wisdom, covering institutional cases, national initiatives as well as European project approaches.

The Digital Skills LIBER Working Group is aiming at spreading a more open culture and positioning libraries as key-partners in skills training for the complex and forward-thinking concept of Open Science. This project displays the richness and diversity of European approaches towards Open Science skilling and training in both libraries and researchers’ communities, from mature programmes to emerging initiatives.

This initiative is complementary with the 2018 LIBER/FOSTER+ workshop “Let’s build the skills!” and the EOSCpilot & LIBER Webinar “Skills and Training in Open Science and the EOSC ecosystem”.

Results

In June 2019, the first answers were collected and six case studies have now been published from Denmark, Hungary, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland and Switzerland.

If you wish to contribute to this initiative, don’t hesitate to contact Cecile Swiatek, Chair of the LIBER Digital Skills for Library Staff and Researchers Working Group.

Other Working Group Outcomes

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