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Research Practice and Research Libraries: Working toward High-Impact Information Services

Carole L. Palmer

Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library & Information Science (GSLIS)
Director, Center for Informatics Research in Science & Scholarship (CIRSS)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Thursday, 19 June 2008

10:30 - 11:00 a.m.
Coffee & Pastries

11:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Presentation and Q&A

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
Kilgour Building—Auditorium
6565 Kilgour Place (formerly Frantz Road)
Dublin, OH 43017-3395

This presentation is free and open to the public.

Research practices are rapidly changing in the digital environment, and utopian e-research scenarios promoted decades ago now seem, to many, like realistic expectations and obtainable goals. In this dynamic environment it becomes very difficult to set priorities for developing information services for the active base of scholars and scientists.

  • Do we strive to support what they are currently doing or what they would like to be doing?
  • Do we concentrate on improving some aspects of information work over others?
  • Alternatively, should we invest in more novel ventures that seem promising for improving research capabilities but risk low adoption by scholarly communities?

The choices hinge in a general way on how we view the mission of research librarianship.

At the practical level, informed decisions require deep knowledge of scholarly and scientific research practices and potentials. For instance, studies have shown scientists are reading more and that information users of all kinds are searching in new ways by "bouncing" on the Web.

Palmer will discuss what findings like these tell us, and don't tell us, about the value future information services can afford scholars in their research work. Drawing from our studies of scientific and scholarly practices, she will then illustrate the importance of extending information use studies beyond investigations of information discovery, access, and use to how researchers manage and manipulate their own data and create their own digital resources.

This wider base of scholarly activities harbors key indicators of how research library services can make high-impact contributions to the scholarly enterprise in the decades ahead.

Background information

Carole L. Palmer is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Director of the GSLIS Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS).

Her current funded projects include

  • investigations of data curation needs across sciences,
  • criteria for context-rich digital collections,
  • models of institutional repository development, and
  • new educational programs for training the next generation of research librarians in the areas of data curation and biological informatics.

She teaches courses on

  • Use and Users of Information,
  • Design of Information Use Studies, and
  • Scientific Information and Collaboration.

Additional Information

Carole L. Palmer
http://people.lis.uiuc.edu/~clpalmer/

GSLIS Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS)
http://cirss.lis.uiuc.edu/

Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://www.lis.uiuc.edu/

Distinguished Seminar Series lectures generally are available online as PowerPoint and MP3 files shortly after the lecture at http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/dss/ . Additional information about the Distinguished Seminar Series can also be found there.

A printable version of this announcement is available at: http://www.oclc.org/programsandresearch/dss/pdf/palmer.pdf (.pdf: 125KB/1 p.)