Lab-Integrated Librarians: A Model for Research Engagement

Abstract

To gain firsthand insights into the daily workflows of researchers and to create opportunities to engage in the full research life cycle, engineering librarians at North Carolina State (NC State) University launched a pilot project to embed themselves into campus research groups by attending weekly lab meetings. This article provides details on the program's implementation, the ethnographic assessment methods used to capture the activities of researchers during weekly lab meetings, and an analysis of the data collected. Based on these findings, the authors provide potential implications for professional practice, offering suggestions for how this pilot program could be expanded into an enterprise-level service as well as areas for further research.

Thinking and Reading like a Scientist: Librarians as Facilitators of Primary Literature Literacy

“…Crucially, librarians also exist outside the hierarchical lines of authority and often fraught powerdynamics that graduate students must navigate, making a librarian's office a safer place for students to ask what they may perceive as vulnerable questions. 58…”

Implementing Data Management Workflows in Research Groups Through Integrated Library Consultancy

“…Trust between librarians and faculty must be established before faculty will consider integrating librarians into the research process. In previous work, interactions like this have been initiated by advertising consultancy services to faculty and students using online applications and appointments (Carroll et al, 2020;Si et al, 2019). However, it is generally a good idea to take an active approach by contacting faculty that have already shown an interest in improving their data management practices or those that have a good professional relationship with the specific librarians that will be working with their groups.…”

“…One promising method in research support services is the consultative leadership model, which encourages researchers to consult librarians at each stage of the research data lifecycle (Yu, Deuble, & Morgan, 2017). Lab-integration takes this model a step further by encouraging researchers to consider librarians as part of their lab groups (Carroll, Eskridge, & Chang, 2020). Scientific reliability and openness can thus be improved by encouraging a new type of interaction between existing departments in academia.…”

Roles for Health Sciences Librarians at College and University Libraries

“…Bychowski et al (2010) suggested that in addition to considering listed qualifications and education requirements, future researchers analyze the explicitly identified roles and responsibilities listed within position descriptions in order to detect trends that might not be reflected elsewhere in the listing. Previous studies have examined areas of overlap between research support services designed for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) researchers and those designed for health sciences professionals (Carroll et al 2020). While obvious physical differences exist between basic science laboratories and clinical settings, the literature suggests that these ostensibly dissimilar user communities share a number of relevant characteristics, including their information seeking behaviors (Leckie et al 1996) and their need to manage and interact with research data (Reed & Butkovich 2017).…”