Showcasing Institutional Research: Curating Library Exhibits to Support Scholarly Communication

Authors : Devina Dandar, Jaime Clifton-Ross, Ann Dale, Rosie Croft

INTRODUCTION

To support faculty in communicating their research outcomes to the academic community and the wider public, the Royal Roads University (RRU) Library established Showcase, a physical venue in the library designed to promote institutional research.

While professional literature mainly focuses on the use of library exhibits for outreach and community engagement, more literature is needed on applying museum interpretation practices to the development of library exhibits, and the use of library exhibits for knowledge mobilization of research outcomes and promotion of institutional scholarship to the wider community.

DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE

This article discusses the Royal Roads University Library’s practices to develop the ‘Showcase’ brand by curating research-based exhibits as a scholarly communication initiative to support institutional research dissemination.

It provides a brief description of the Showcase venue and infrastructure. It then describes the processes, challenges, and lessons learned in developing three research exhibits, that is, 1) cultivating faculty partnerships; 2) reformatting academic research to multimedia formats; and 3) integrating technology to showcase scholarship.

NEXT STEPS

It concludes by outlining the next steps for developing this initiative and the practice of curating academic research exhibits.

URL : Showcasing Institutional Research: Curating Library Exhibits to Support Scholarly Communication

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2335

Social media: A guide for researchers : …

Social media: A guide for researchers :

“Social media is an important technological trend that has big implications for how researchers (and people in general) communicate and collaborate. Researchers have a huge amount to gain from engaging with social media in various aspects of their work.

This guide has been produced by the International Centre for Guidance Studies, and aims to provide the information needed to make an informed decision about using social media and select from the vast range of tools that are available.

One of the most important things that researchers do is to find, use and disseminate information, and social media offers a range of tools which can facilitate this. The guide discusses the use of social media for research and academic purposes and will not be examining the many other uses that social media is put to across society.

Social media can change the way in which you undertake research, and can also open up new forms of communication and dissemination. It has the power to enable researchers to engage in a wide range of dissemination in a highly efficient way.”

URL : http://www.rin.ac.uk/our-work/communicating-and-disseminating-research/social-media-guide-researchers

Improving the Value of Transport Researc…

Improving the Value of Transport Research using Advanced Web Tools to Improve Research Dissemination :

“This paper aims to measure the impact of a thematic digital research repository on spreading new knowledge research into the professional transport community using user survey findings for the SORT (Social Research in Transport) Clearinghouse (www.sortclearinghouse.info) website and a review of previous research.

Research dissemination, the circulation of research findings, has been identified as the easiest way to distribute new knowledge and thematic research clearinghouses such as SORT have been seen as a means to „reinvigorate professional values‟ by providing quick access to quality research whilst also maintaining copyright protections to authors and publishers. SORT was developed out of the concern that social research findings in transport were not reaching the wider non-academic professional community. Some 1,777 separate users from 69 countries accessed the site on 3,282 visits in the first 11 months of 2009 for an average visit length of 5 minutes.

The user survey of SORT identified that policy/practitioners and consultants were the primary users of the web site (66%) with academics (27%). Most site users apply the research content accessed from SORT for „conceptual‟ applications (i.e. to keep informed). A very high share of users cite research evidence in their own published work (27% of academics) supporting previous research suggesting that research clearinghouses add much value to authors, journal editors and publishers. „Instrumental‟ use of research (to implement a transport plan, policy or service) represented a minority of uses (20% on average) nevertheless this is considered quite a reasonable outcome from a targeted dissemination approach. Some 40% of policy/practitioners used the research from SORT for „instrumental‟ purposes and this group represents half of the user base suggesting a strong real world application of the
research content in SORT. Support for this conclusion is provided from user ratings of the importance
of SORT to user occupational activities. Overall 56% of all users (65% of professional/practitioners)
considered SORT essential/very essential to their work.

Overall the findings provide some strong support for the view that thematic research clearinghouses might have an important role to play in bridging the gap between quality academic research published in research journals and professional practitioners planning and operating transport systems.”

URL : http://www.civil.ist.utl.pt/wctr12_lisboa/WCTR_General/documents/01342.pdf