Embedding Innovation for Scholarly Information & Research for the New Generation in a Top Research University

Abstract

Scholarly Information & Research (SIR) is part of an integrated Information Services (INS) division at Griffith University, one of the top ten research universities in Australia. SIR provides library services, publication support and eResearch services to over 43,000 students and staff onsite at five campuses and online. In 2011, senior managers embarked on an incremental business improvement program ("Turning a New Page") designed to embed innovation and integrate support for scholarly information & research alongside existing university library services. The focus is on the new generation of integrated services needed in three to five years for the new generation of users who use Scholarly Information & Research services at Griffith.

Existing services were unevenly delivered and resources unevenly distributed. An early outcome of the initiative is restructuring to aggregate similar capabilities in order to redistribute resources and provide a framework for developing our capability over time.

The concept is to reorganize existing teams to maximize our capacity to provide services and project support for ideas and thought experiments through to enterprise level services. Virtual teams will be formed and reformed as pilots and full-blown projects are proposed in order to bring operational expertise into the design and development efforts early. The lifecycle of projects will be considered and project management techniques applied as required.

Current teams are moving to an integrated structure with front of house academic services organized by discipline groups staffed by expert consultants for each area; library operations and library IT help desk services. Back of house services will be reorganized to include resource description; procurement; resource discovery and application support; and research development services.

This paper will report on this initiative including method and approach, and data and inputs that helped to develop the updated service offerings, delivery models and staffing structure, and progress to date.