Mapping the academic cultural response to networks: The TAPin experience

Abstract

TAPin (Training and Awareness Programme in Networks) was an eLib project which ran from 1995 to 1998. Its aim was to provide planned, targeted support in using networked resources to academic staff in Education, Law, and Life Sciences in six West Midland universities. The support was delivered by subject librarians using a model agreed by all participating institutions. Initial training was provided for these librarians, some by other eLib projects. The effects of the project were examined in an impact study, which repeated audits of network infrastructure, and of certain characteristics of academic staff and librarians carried out at the project's inception. Particular attention is given in this article to the impact of the project in respect of networked resources on academic staff attitudes and behaviour; on library and information staff perceptions and behaviour, and on library and information services themselves. The importance of cultural factors in successful institutional exploitation of networked information emerged throughout the audit data.

End‐users in academia: meeting the information needs of university researchers in an electronic age

“…For example, in theTAPin (Training and Awareness Programme in Networks) experience, the changes occurring in the IT culture among academic sta¡ in education, law, and life sciences in six UK universities in the course of 1995-1997 were traced back to changes in the information environment. This included the growth in desktop access to the Internet, the signi¢cant increase in the use of e-mail and the Web, and the planned, targeted support in using networked resources provided in the project (Reid et al, 1998). Be that as it may, what can be said in all certainty is that there is a natural relevance between information and university teaching and research, which ensures that academics will always be central players in the information arena.…”

From trainees to backers and agents: a programme of electronic information searching skills training for academic staff in health care

“…Academics teaching in health care clearly need good bibliographic searching skills both to inform their own research and practice, and to bring the most current knowledge to their teaching. Recently, the eLib TAPin project (Reid et al, 1998), in which librarians provided one-to-one training in networked resources to academics in the latter's offices, investigated the effects of training both on academic staff and on library services. However, searches on LISA, ERIC and CINAHL while researching this article revealed relatively little other writing on the importance of training in information searching skills for academic staff, except for Internet tutorials (Wills, 1997;Nugent, 1998), particularly in health care.…”