The Digital Transformation of Research Support - Northern Collaboration Workshop Presentation

Andy Tattersall

Myself and Alison McNab (University of Huddersfield) delivered a workshop of the Northern Collaboration Conference held at The University of York. The conference is a regular joint event between 27 northern based university libraries. Our workshop explored the potential for the creation of a specialist role that helped support research that was very much aligned to the library and information community.

The workshop was an opportunity to ask attendees what digital, research and library competencies they already had that could contribute to the role of an academic/research technologist. We asked them to suggest other attributes form our list and then chose which ones they would most like to focus on. It was a really good opportunity to discuss these embryonic ideas at the conference. The findings from this workshop will form more presentations and writing as we explore this idea further. Our slides and abstract are below.  

Abstract 
This session will provide delegates with an overview of the digital research landscape, an introduction to tools and resources to tame the landscape, the opportunity to consider the skillsets required in the context of their own workplace, and an introduction to the research technologist manifesto. Please bring a mobile device (and your Eduroam password) to contribute to this interactive session.

Alison McNab

Researchers increasingly need to understand a multitude of topics including digital copyright, impact, altmetrics, communications, social media, research data management and sharing, open access, infographics, video, animation and mobile apps. Yet all too often they have little time, support or encouragement to explore these topics and have they need to make informed judgements on the most appropriate technologies. 

For decades skilled LIS professionals have provided researchers with excellent services around collection management, content curation and discovery, critical appraisal and reference management. More recently they have stepped into new areas of support and applied their knowledge around social media, metrics, scholarly communications and research data management. Given that the modern LIS professional is adept of working across platforms, good at problem solving and the use of new technologies, are they positioned to guide and work alongside researchers as research technologists?

The Digital Transformation of Research Support from Andy Tattersall