'Supporting Researchers: information, support and community' by Jenny Delasalle

This week I attended a talk by Jenny Delasalle (@JennyDelasalle) on how Warwick University Library supports their researchers.  Below are my notes from the talk itself.  I liked the focus on community and collaboration.  These are facilitated by dedicated spaces such as the Research Exchange and online services, such as Research Match.  We were also very interested in their use of student 'ambassadors'.  These are paid posts, for around 10 hours a term.  Students are trained in what the library can do, and then go into their departments to talk about this.  They also help market events, such as those going on in the Research Exchange.  They found social scientists most likely to apply so had to actively recruit for those from the scienctific disciplines.  Crucially, there was good support from their university who recognise the value of the peer support model.

I also found the integration of web 2.0 very interesting, for example a blog appears on the 'Support for research' page and also their guides (see here) aggregate blogs and other content.  I also plan to look further into their reworking of 23 things to 'Digital skills for the researcher'.

Brief notes from the talk:
What [Warwick Library] offer:

1. Space:

Research Exchange - wanting to build community, enable interdisciplinary research.

Postgraduate hub - with facilities such as 'dissertation station'.

2. Experts

Offer various workshops / courses on the usual topics: literature searching; reference management; citation management; Open access publishing ; social media etc

3. Training:

Research student skills programme has an information strand that the library delivers.

Re-branded 23 things to 'Digital skills for the researcher' (see http://digitalresearcher.wikispaces.com/Course+Outline ).  Instead of having 23 compulsory modules divide into core and optional modules.

Held publisher workshops / visits

Guides on website

They found peer support to be a very successful model.

Research exchange:

Advertised for paid posts. trained students on how to write for the the web, they produce online guides (see http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/researchexchange/ecr/resources) 

4. Disseminating research:

WRAP repository deposit.

5. Community and peer support:

PhD network, including PhD life blog.

Research match - 700 profiles, proactive matching.