Themes:
Organizational opportunities & challenges:
- Support different types of research across the disciplines—institutional as well as individually motivated; practitioner research, as well as creative research that may not have obvious immediate impact but may lead to further work.
- Model administrative decision-making on research examples from the LIS and related fields.
- Identify ways to recognize individuals and groups and share their innovative and effective practices that contribute to strategic framework (i.e., best practices) across Library units
- Incentivize collaboration with other campus units where there is high potential for practice collaborations to evolve into research collaborations. Need internal as well as external incentives to encourage external faculty to view librarians as research partners.
- Cultural expectations that professionals are always accessible constrain creativity. Many faculty and AP’s cannot do research at their desks. AP’s need flexibility re: where and how they do their research and use investigation time.
Actions:
- Encourage faculty and AP’s to seek mentoring beyond their units
- Develop guidelines for AP’s to use investigation time outside the Library
- Establish more working groups around research topics
- Explore opportunities to hold the Research Showcase with GSLIS or other units periodically
- Encourage peer mentoring and informal feedback outside an individual’s unit
- Writing groups appreciated in spite of effort required to start up and sustain them—support the longer-term investment in them.
- Identify connections among professionals doing similar work across Library units, and with other campus units
Stakeholders (Groups):
University Librarian, Executive Committee, AUL’s, Office of Research, division coordinators and unit heads, FRC, PTAC, RPC, AP committee
Hiring Plan Impact:
Immediate (0-1 yrs.): LIS and Research Services Librarian
Adjacencies with other Topical Areas:
Organizational culture, Education & training, Outreach