| Jennifer Rutner Senior Analyst Ithaka S&R | Roger Schonfeld Director of Research Ithaka S&R |
Rapidly evolving research methods and practices across disciplines are changing the nature of scholars’ interactions with service providers such as libraries, computing support centers, humanities centers, scholarly societies, and publishers. As a result, many scholars have become less dependent on traditional library information services, and research support service providers would like to better understand the evolving research practices of their users, in order to transform their services in parallel. Ithaka S+R has launched the Research Support Services for Scholars program to engage scholars and research support professionals in building a deeper understanding of the needs of researchers, the support landscape, current and evolving practices, and the challenges both communities face in conducting and facilitating innovative research. The first disciplines to be covered in this new Ithaka S+R program are history and chemistry.
This session will provide an overview of the Ithaka S+R Research Support Services for Scholars History Project. Presenters will share preliminary research findings, including data gathered through interviews with twenty research support professionals and forty academic historians. In this session, presenters will facilitate discussion about the user research needs of the information services community, organizational challenges that research support organizations face in meeting evolving needs, and effective ways to consider research findings in the ongoing transformation of research support service environments.
http://www.researchsupportservices.net/