The University Library as the Credible Place for Research Communication and Information Literacy

In these times where news and facts are challenged and the discussion of knowledge resistance is highlighted, there is an increased need for strengthening the information literacy competencies among students as well as the public in general. At the same time, universities and their researchers have a need for making their research tangible and for communicating it to the surrounding community. In this project, we meet these demands by presenting research in the form of exhibitions in the most accessible place of the University – the library. University libraries in Sweden are used daily by researchers and students as well as the public and they are a possible link in the dissemination of knowledge to society. The foundation of the project is to bridge the boundary between the work of libraries in the area of formal scholarly communication and the activities of research or science communication, i.e. communication not targeting the academic society, but being part of public involvement. The aim is to create enhanced opportunities for research communication in the library space and to bring together the two strands of information literacy work and dissemination of research results performed by librarians. The library is a place for creation and use of academic knowledge as well as an informal learning environment. The focus is this physical setting and the library as a credible place where communication of research in an exhibition is developed in close collaboration between librarians and researchers and in a format that is interactive, attractive and accessible. The idea is to develop the visitors’ (students, researchers, staff, students from other universities and residents in the city etc.) information literacy and foster a critical stance to news and presentations of research findings. The exhibitions are created to encourage continued learning, for example by connecting the theme of the exhibited research to the library collections for further reading. The key to success is the teamwork that is developed with the researchers and the librarians. The collaboration is not only part of creating the exhibitions, but gives unique opportunities and has explicit synergies in terms of furthering other collaborations among the researchers themselves as well as with the library as a whole, facilitating collection development and fostering the librarians’ knowledge of current research at the university. One concrete result of the project is a model for designing sustainable exhibitions in which the possibilities of a new role for the librarian as a curator-librarian and the library as the credible place is explored. A web-based, five-step model is made available for other libraries - of any size and type - that wish to communicate science and research to their users. The five steps include: idea formation, planning, production, exhibition period, closing. Each step includes a description of the stage in the process, a specific checklist, the reflections on insights from the project and further reading.