UKSG, with the support of Jisc, announced today they have partnered with LISU to carry out the research project. Entitled Assessing the Impact of Library Discovery Technology on Content Usage
the project will be carried out by LISU at Loughborough University, in collaboration with the Department of Information Science, Loughborough University and Evidence Base, Birmingham City University and aims to:
• evaluate the impact that library discovery technologies (such as link resolvers and web-scale resource discovery services) have on the usage of academic resources
• provide evidence to determine if there is a case for (a) investment in discovery technologies by libraries and (b) engagement with library discovery technologies by publishers and others in the academic information supply chain (unless no positive impact is found, in which case to provide evidence to this effect)
• to provide recommendations for actions that libraries, publishers and others in the academic information supply chain should take to engage with such technologies to best support the discovery of resources for teaching, learning and research
• to identify additional research, data, discussion, initiatives or other activities required that will support the implementation of the findings of this study.
Ed Pentz, Research Officer for UKSG and Executive Director of CrossRef said “the use of library discovery technologies has grown enormously over the last couple of years. However, there still is very little publicly available information evidencing the impact of such technology. We are delighted to be working with LISU to help give publishers, libraries and other content providers the means to assess the impact of these technologies on usage of their content”.
Claire Creaser, Director, LISU said “we are excited to be working in this new and emerging area. We have a number of highly experienced researchers including Angela Conyers, Ann O’Brien and Valérie Spezi working on the project and look forward to presenting our results to UKSG and Jisc as well as the information community in the autumn”.
Preliminary results will be presented at the UKSG Global Forum on 15th November in London.
More information and the tender document can be found at www.uksg.org/researchstudy
About UKSG – www.uksg.org
The UKSG mission is to connect the information community and encourage the exchange of ideas on scholarly communication. We are the only organisation spanning the wide range of interests and activities across the scholarly information community of librarians, publishers, intermediaries and technology vendors.
About LISU – www.lboro.ac.uk/lisu
LISU is an internationally renowned research and information centre for library and information services, based in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University. LISU collects, analyses, interprets, and publishes statistical information for and about the library domain in the UK, and undertakes research and consultancy projects for a wide range of organisations.
Loughborough is one of the country’s leading universities, with an international reputation for research that matters, excellence in teaching, strong links with industry, and unrivalled achievement in sport and its underpinning academic disciplines. –
