Taking the Librarian out of the LibraryLessons learned along the way

Elizabeth Gadd, Loughborough University

Overview

• Before – life in the Library

• Becoming T-shaped

• The journey – making a change

• After – life in the Research Office

• General lessons & thoughts

Before: Life in the Library

• Managed Academic Services Team (job share)

• Research Support Coordinator

• Structure of Academic Services Team

Library wide responsibility for research support

The birth of bibliometrics at Loughborough

• Web pages & training

• Publication strategy session for

academic staff

• Publication & visibility strategy

for PGRs

• Enquiry and stats provision

service for academics

• Feeding in to discussions around

relevant metrics for PDR

Developing a specialism

• See a gap and fill it

• 1996 – interest in copyright

clearance

• No UK-wide forum to discuss

• Set up Lis-Copyseek

• 2010 - interest in bibliometrics

• No UK wide forum to discuss

• Set up Lis-Bibliometrics

• 5th Bibliometrics in Universities

event coming up on 27 June

Understanding the bigger picture

• Professional responsibilities

• Bid for research funding

• Bid for bursaries or travel

awards

• Training courses –

Certificates & Diplomas

• Internal secondments

• Job shadowing

Ranking troubles

• Poor citation performance

• Been knocking on doors about this for

some time

• Consultancy work

• Reported the results to high level staff

• Coincided with poor REF results

• Recognised that there was a need for

someone to take this forward in the

institution

• Publication Policy job created in

Research Office…

•

After: Life on the other side

Similarities Differences

Same research support topics:

Publication strategy and

visibility

Bibliometrics

Open access

RDM

Social media

Still sit on the Library Research

Support Group

Still provide training

Different perspective on those

topics:

Monitoring

Reporting

Compliance

Policy development

Consultation response

Smaller team

Less line mgt responsibility

More time to think strategically

Greater access and visibiity

A day in the life…

• Provision of citation data for Research Quality

Enhancement Committee

• Responding the requests for advice about Journal Lists by

Associate Deans for Research

• Working with Schools as to how they can benchmark their

altmetric data

• Delivering training on publication strategy

• Developing policy messages around what, when and how

people might make their research visible

• Planning a Change Project in this area

You next?

The beauty of being new to a field

• Have a different perspective

• Able to ask stupid questions

• Learn a lot

• Have time to think strategically

• Have energy for the challenge!

The beauty of having been a librarian

• Understanding of the scholarly

communication process• Researchers, publishers, services and tools

• A service focus

• Seen the other side of joint agendas

• A recognition that it’s not all about

research

The beauty of having been a researcher

• Understand the

research process

• Bidding for funding,

• Doing the research

• Writing it up

• Getting published

• Having a publication

profile

Research projects –big…

Project RoMEO

Rig

hts

& R

ew

ard

s P

roje

ct

…and small

The Matthew Effect…

• ARMA Metrics SIG

Champion

• SciVal User Group

Steering Committee

member

• Expert Reference Group

for a Jisc project on

Research Data Metrics for

Usage

General lessons

• Take your place at the table – you have a right to be there

• Opportunities are rarely offered – they are seized

• Go for roles where you have the potential to succeed, rather

than where you are already fully/over-qualified

• Face down “Imposter syndrome”

• Geographical / time constraints needn’t hold you back

• You can have (bits of) it all…

• What do you actually want?

Why you?

• Where do you want to be in

5 years time?

• What opportunities can you

seize to make it a reality?

• Why you?

Contact details

Elizabeth Gadd

Research Policy Manager (Publications)

Research Office

Loughborough University

Loughborough, Leicestershire, LE11 3TU

Tel: 01509 228594

Skype: lizziegadd

Twitter: @lizziegadd

Email: e.a.gadd@lboro.ac.uk

Google Scholar Citation Profile

http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4509-7785

http://about.me/elizabeth.gadd