Emerging roles and collaborations in research support for academic health librarians

This conference paper reviews the role faculty librarians in the Health Sciences Team have played in responding to this new agenda, with participation in workshops, planning consultations with researchers, whilst simultaneously aligning and redeveloping services to meet this emerging need. The services include research consultations; researcher training (includes literature searching, bibliometrics, social media and more) the new customised search service (provides customised literature searching to support grant proposals and funded projects), and the research impact advisory service. Another important aspect that has impacted on service provision has been the interdisciplinary nature of the University’s research agenda. Faculty librarians are required to work across all disciplines in collaboration within Learning and Research Services in the Library and with researchers in the Faculties. Within each Research Focus Area, there are multiple rounds of funding allocated and the customised search service has been heavily utilized. This paper reviews how librarians from the Health Team have become involved in quite complex negotiations with researchers as they scope out the requirements of each request, work within the team to ensure timely delivery of often quite multifaceted search requests. Evaluation of this response to La Trobe University’s research agenda will be reviewed and results analysed to ensure continuing sustainability and excellence in practice.