Within an increasingly competitive funding landscape and with the push toward interdisciplinary research, a unique role exists for librarians and information specialists in facilitating collaborations and research dissemination through new and traditional means of scholarly communication. Promoting the use of social media and research sharing tools to connect with potential collaborators, keeping up with new developments in ‘altmetrics’, and providing embedded services and tools for measuring research impacts for grant reporting and promotion processes are just a few ways information professionals are making a difference. This program will illustrate some of these new roles for librarians in supporting the research mission of their institutions. This will take place in the form of brief talks followed by a facilitated panel discussion. The panel will include a librarian actively involved in these activities, and the viewpoints of faculty/researchers and/or administrators will be represented. In addition, I hope to invite a representative of an altmetrics tracking tool such as Impact Story or Plum Analytics to lend a more in-depth view on the role and future of this interesting trend.
Program Take-Aways
- Participants will learn new tools of the trade for measuring research impacts and altmetrics.
- Participants will be able to better support researchers and faculty in their use of traditional and new means of scholarly communication.
