The Scholar's Role in the Future of Academic Library Collections

Scholars are creating and amassing increasingly complex personal collections of information over the course of their careers. These personal research collections vary widely depending on the discipline and take many forms, including digitized archival materials, numeric data sets from experiments, audio recordings of interviews, field notes from research sites, and visual materials. While these collections often hold content of considerable research value, this potential is often not fully harnessed because the majority of scholars are not managing their collections optimally, whether for their own research needs, sharing with the community, to meet funding requirements, or the long-term preservation of the research. This presentation shares research on scholars’ experiences building their own collections in order to consider how this relates to the future of research support services in academic libraries. The data that forms the basis of this presentation is drawn from original comparative research by the presenter on scholars’ research activities in a broad array of disciplines (art history, history, chemistry, religious studies, agriculture, public health, Asian studies, Indigenous studies, language and literature, civil and environmental engineering). The presentation will highlight how scholars’ collecting activities and support needs vary, and, explore how academic libraries can develop responsive support service strategies accordingly. As academic libraries consider the most effective ways to respond to considerable budget pressures and evolving expectations from campus stakeholders, the future of the collection is at a crossroads. This presentation will consider how supporting scholars as collectors is a potential avenue for developing new research support services that also align with academic libraries’ mandates as collecting institutions. By helping scholars make their own collections more usable and accessible, academic libraries can ensure that these collections have much greater impact for research and education to society-at-large