Please note that this working group has ended. Feel free to still take a look at the relevant information on this topic and published by the working group.
Introduction
Which new skills are needed by library professionals? What training is required in order to better support research activities?
These and other skills-related questions are being examined by this working group. The group operates as part of LIBER’s Strategic Direction on Digital Skills & Services, which in turn is one of the key pillars of our 2018-2022 Strategy. We’re developing research libraries as hubs for Digital Skills and Services in both physical and virtual research environments.
In a rapidly changing digital world, libraries are regularly re-assessing existing services and offering new ones to support the work of both faculty (research) and students (education).
The advance of Open Science in particular has meant a reinvention of models, ways of working and techniques. This is, in itself, positive but the knock-on effect is a serious skills gap. Library staff and researchers need more training in order to be able to cope with a myriad of topics: electronic resource management, data access, blockchains, and text and data mining, to name a few.
This raises a number of questions related to careers and competencies:
- What should we expect from new professionals emerging from library and information science schools?
- How do we include non-librarian professionals such as researchers, computer science or data visualization engineers in library services?
- How can we train research librarians in order to establish and share new skills, and to support research activities more efficiently?
Librarians with up-to-date digital skills can provide invaluable support to library users, and will personally benefit from better career prospects.