Interdisciplinarity and Academic Libraries

Interdisciplinarity and Academic Libraries PDF

Author: Daniel C. Mack

Publisher: Assoc of College & Research Libraries

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780838986158

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This volume addresses an emerging yet largely unexamined strategic priority for academic and research libraries: interdisciplinarity in the academy. As colleges and universities chart new areas for knowledge creation, teaching, learning, outreach and service, libraries face challenges in developing their response to these transformational changes in higher education. The global networked society, the convergence of multiple areas of study, and the need to address major challenges that transcend any particular discipline are framing issues for twenty-first century institutions of higher education. Library leaders must seize this exciting opportunity to place the library at the center of the emerging interdisciplinary academy by creating and delivering a transformative suite of programs, services and collections. Libraries can lift their institutions to a higher plane of interdisciplinary activity by levering their place in higher education to become the hub of interdisciplinary activity, where librarians foster innovative models of teaching, learning, research, conversation, reflection, and engagement. This book offers multiple perspectives on transforming academic library programs, collections, and services to meet transformational challenges for higher education. Experienced librarians bring an interdisciplinary perspective to collection development, information literacy, digital projects, knowledge organization, services for research centers, and other timely and relevant topics.

Social Science Libraries

Social Science Libraries PDF

Author: Steve W. Witt

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2010-06-29

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 3110232154

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This volume focuses on practical and empirical accounts of organizational change in the social sciences and impacts upon the professional skills, collections, and services within social science libraries. Section one focuses upon the question of interdisciplinary within social science libraries and the role of libraries to both react to and facilitate paradigm shifts in research and science. Section two focuses on the rise of data as a resource to be collected and shared within social science libraries. The third section focuses on the role of librarians to facilitate the development of social organizations that develop around new technologies and research communities. Changed role of librarians within social science libraries Describes new developments of social organizations Essential for librarians

In Defense of Disciplines

In Defense of Disciplines PDF

Author: Jerry A. Jacobs

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2014-02-05

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13: 022606946X

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Calls for closer connections among disciplines can be heard throughout the world of scholarly research, from major universities to the National Institutes of Health. In Defense of Disciplines presents a fresh and daring analysis of the argument surrounding interdisciplinarity. Challenging the belief that blurring the boundaries between traditional academic fields promotes more integrated research and effective teaching, Jerry Jacobs contends that the promise of interdisciplinarity is illusory and that critiques of established disciplines are often overstated and misplaced. Drawing on diverse sources of data, Jacobs offers a new theory of liberal arts disciplines such as biology, economics, and history that identifies the organizational sources of their dynamism and breadth. Illustrating his thesis with a wide range of case studies including the diffusion of ideas between fields, the creation of interdisciplinary scholarly journals, and the rise of new fields that spin off from existing ones, Jacobs turns many of the criticisms of disciplines on their heads to mount a powerful defense of the enduring value of liberal arts disciplines. This will become one of the anchors of the case against interdisciplinarity for years to come.

Transdisciplinarity Revealed

Transdisciplinarity Revealed PDF

Author: Victoria Martin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2017-04-17

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1440843481

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An invaluable book on the emergent field of transdisciplinarity that explains how it applies to library service and collections conceptually and identifies practical strategies for supporting transdisciplinary research conducted by faculty and students. Transdisciplinarity Revealed: What Librarians Need to Know supplies pragmatic advice for academic librarians on working with faculty and students to promote the skills necessary for successful transdisciplinary research. It shows how to overcome the obstacles created by the ways that libraries have traditionally organized information in subject silos, offering librarians conceptual and practical guidance on transdisciplinarity. This information will enable them to support research that transcends disciplinary limits to help researchers answer the complex questions of our world today. Part I provides an overview of the emergent field of transdisciplinarity that introduces readers to all key concepts and issues. Part II explains how transdisciplinarity applies to library services and collections, explores new strategies for supporting transdisciplinary research conducted by faculty and students, and describes how librarians can better address the unique challenges of working in the transdisciplinary research environment. Readers will come away with a full understanding of the distinctions between the four modes of knowledge production—disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinarity—and apply this knowledge to benefit their patrons' research efforts.

The Academic Librarian as Blended Professional

The Academic Librarian as Blended Professional PDF

Author: Michael Perini

Publisher: Chandos Publishing

Published: 2016-04-06

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 008101015X

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The Academic Librarian as Blended Professional employs a model that allows for individual and managerial reconceptualization of the librarian's role, also helping to mitigate obstacles to professional development both internal and external to the library. Using traditional and personal narrative, the book extends Whitchurch’s blended professional model, designed to consider the merging of academicians’ roles across several spheres of professional and academic influence in a higher education setting, to academic librarians. The book is significant due to its use of higher education theory to examine the professional identity of academic librarians and the issues impacting librarian professional development. The work offers a constructive, replicable research design appropriate for the analysis of librarians in other academic settings, providing additional insights into how these professionals might perceive their roles within the larger context of a higher education environment. Following the application of the blended professional model, this book contends that academic librarians have similar roles concerning research, instruction, and service when compared to an institution’s tenure-track faculty. The scope of professional productivity and the expectation of the librarians, though, are much less regimented. Consequently, the academic librarians find themselves in a tenuous working space where their blended role is inhibited by real and perceived barriers. Uses a model from the discipline of higher education in order to better conceptualize and understand the academic librarian's role in the institution Allows for the analysis and understanding of the librarian's identity and role in a context familiar to those outside of the academic library system Provides a unique understanding of both the library system and its librarians, explaining the nuances of the greater higher education collective

The Internationalization of the Academic Library

The Internationalization of the Academic Library PDF

Author: Emmett Lombard

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-11-28

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 1000476073

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The Internationalization of the Academic Library presents a theoretically informed, empirically grounded analysis of the process of academic library internationalization. Drawing on interviews with library personnel from around the world, Lombard analyzes internationalization at the departmental level of an academic library. Demonstrating that college and library personnel have positive intentions when it comes to internationalization, the research presented nevertheless reveals little commitment to an intentional, holistic role in the libraries studied. Drawing on internationalization expertise and models of prominent scholars, the book argues that libraries need to be more deliberate in their internationalization efforts and collaborate with other college personnel and departments outside the library. Lombard asserts that internationalization can facilitate a better understanding of the potential for transformation of a library’s mission, vision, and policy. The Internationalization of the Academic Library cuts across the fields of library science and higher education administration, ensuring that the book will appeal to researchers and students working in these disciplines. Library professionals around the world will also find much to interest them within the book.

Being an Interdisciplinary Academic

Being an Interdisciplinary Academic PDF

Author: Catherine Lyall

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-06-29

Total Pages: 134

ISBN-13: 3030186598

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This book highlights the importance of interdisciplinarity in the academic landscape, and examines how it is understood in the context of the modern university. While interdisciplinarity is encouraged by research funders, academics themselves receive mixed messages about how, when and whether to follow this route. Building upon a series of career history interviews with established interdisciplinary researchers, the author reveals fundamental misunderstandings about the nature of interdisciplinary knowledge, how this is shared, and the skills these researchers bring. The book addresses these issues on both a personal and systemic level, identifying how a resilient researcher can craft their own research trajectory to view interdisciplinarity as a truly embedded approach.

Centers for Learning

Centers for Learning PDF

Author: James K. Elmborg

Publisher: Assoc of Cllge & Rsrch Libr

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0838983359

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This collection examines the potential inherent in partnerships between libraries and writing centers and suggests that such partnerships might respond more effectively to student needs than separate efforts. The essays consist primarily of case studies of collaborations in institutions throughout the US. The concluding chapter reflects on the impl

Promoting Interdisciplinarity in Knowledge Generation and Problem Solving

Promoting Interdisciplinarity in Knowledge Generation and Problem Solving PDF

Author: Al-Suqri, Mohammed Nasser

Publisher: IGI Global

Published: 2017-10-31

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 1522538798

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Interdisciplinary research is a method that has become efficient in accelerating scientific discovery. The integration of such processes in problem solving and knowledge generation is a vital part of learning and instruction. Promoting Interdisciplinarity in Knowledge Generation and Problem Solving is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly research on interdisciplinary projects from around the world, highlighting the broad range of circumstances in which this approach can be effectively used to solve problems and generate new knowledge. Featuring coverage on a number of topics and perspectives such as industrial design, ethnographic methods, and methodological pluralism, this publication is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and students seeking current research on the promotion of interdisciplinarity for knowledge production.

ACRL Publications in Librarianship

ACRL Publications in Librarianship PDF

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1975

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780838986158

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This volume addresses an emerging yet largely unexamined strategic priority for academic and research libraries: interdisciplinarity in the academy. As colleges and universities chart new areas for knowledge creation, teaching, learning, outreach and service, libraries face challenges in developing their response to these transformational changes in higher education. The global networked society, the convergence of multiple areas of study, and the need to address major challenges that transcend any particular discipline are framing issues for twenty-first century institutions of higher education. Library leaders must seize this exciting opportunity to place the library at the center of the emerging interdisciplinary academy by creating and delivering a transformative suite of programs, services and collections. Libraries can lift their institutions to a higher plane of interdisciplinary activity by levering their place in higher education to become the hub of interdisciplinary activity, where librarians foster innovative models of teaching, learning, research, conversation, reflection, and engagement. This book offers multiple perspectives on transforming academic library programs, collections, and services to meet transformational challenges for higher education. Experienced librarians bring an interdisciplinary perspective to collection development, information literacy, digital projects, knowledge organization, services for research centers, and other timely and relevant topics.