LIBER 2020 - Session #6: Libraries as Open Innovators and Leaders

These are the slides from the LIBER 2020 Session Libraries as Open Innovators and Leaders.

Session Description:

The way we access information is rapidly changing. While the library catalogue used to be the main point of contact for scholarly material, researchers and students now frequently go online to find information. This change is strengthened by movements such as Open Access (OA) and Open Science. Instead of signalling the end of the library, these developments open up a range of possibilities and new roles for research libraries and librarians.

In this session, we will look at new roles for libraries and librarians as open innovators and leaders.

Dr. Markku Roinila, Kimmo Koskinen and Kati Syvälahti will discuss the role of education in generating the cultural change needed for Open Science. They will focus on a pilot project initiated by Helsinki University Library together with a Doctoral Programme in Philosophy, Arts and Social Sciences, discussing the implementation of the Editori platform, enabling researchers, teachers and students to produce and publish OA journals. They will summarize their experiences of setting up this platform, will highlight the pedagogical and technical challenges they faced during the pilot, and will share their idea of the future application of the tool and service development.

Next, Dr. Coen Wilders and Martine Pronk will share how the Utrecht University Library in the Netherlands has a revolutionary way to support faculty who search for scientific publications. As we know for years, the importance of library catalogues decreases, as researchers and students search increasingly online for information. However, up to this day almost all university libraries promote one search engine, most likely at their homepage and often their own. Utrecht University Library has stopped doing that. Instead, it has the ambition to support faculty wherever they search for information online and focuses on delivery. We think there is an urgent need for new leadership in libraries, both outwards and inwards, to deal with a strong, almost invariably image, linked to books and buildings. But how do you make faculty aware of the new role libraries have and keep their trust? And, at least as complicated, how do you change the mind-set of your employees while doing that? In this paper we are happy to share how Utrecht University Library is shaping leadership to make this change happen.

Finally, Shane Collins and Siobhán Dunne will share insights on how Trinity College Dublin (TCD) successfully navigated the complex cultural change necessary to fully embrace Open Science. They will showcase how the Librarian and College Archivist and the Dean of Research at TCD jointly established an Open Scholarship Taskforce to explore emerging trends in Open Science at a local, national and international level, as well as provide feedback to a growing number of consultation calls. They will also highlight how a cross institutional group arrived at a collective understanding of Open Scholarship, in which a series of events called, ‘Unboxing Open Scholarship’ were central to providing a community forum to voice concerns and set a path for a shared ownership and vision of what ‘Open’ means for TCD.