This is a guest post from former collections librarian and current User Services Librarian at The University of Guelph, Jim Brett.
“Why doesn’t the Library have the Journal of (finish the title yourself)? I need it for my work!” How do I let the Library know what resources I need for my research???
Here’s the scenario: You’re a grad student working with a faculty member in an area of research that’s relatively new for your institution. You’re doing a literature review, trying to get up to speed and to build a knowledge base for yourself and perhaps a lab group. What do you do when you find that the Library doesn’t provide access to the journals or books you’ve uncovered in your searching? As a previous post noted, you can turn to your institution’s interlibrary loan service and those folks will get a copy of an article or book for you to use. While interlibrary loan is a great thing, it’s not the ideal solution if you are trying to build a resource base to support a growing area of research. What to do? Ask a librarian of course!
But, not just any librarian — you need to find out who the collection development librarians are. If you haven’t heard of those folks, they build and manage your library’s collections — they buy the stuff you use on a daily basis. They are really really important— no bias from me.
The cool thing about collections librarians is that they love to get feedback from their user community (that’s you). As an ex-collections librarian, I can say that our collections were better developed, and my job more enhanced and made much more interesting through the connections I was able to make with graduate students in our life sciences programs at the University of Guelph.
If you don’t know who your collections librarians are at your institution, find out.
JoVE provides an interesting case-in-point. While I was aware of its existence, I didn’t really start seriously investigating JoVE until I had a couple of grad students contact me and ask if the Library would purchase a subscription. I enquired further about the product, talked to faculty and other grads, got more requests from grads and was able to build up a solid case for the Library funding the subscription.
It’s important to emphasize that simply asking; using some variation of “I want . . .”, or “I need . . .” isn’t the best way to approach a collections librarian. Think about who will benefit from the product, how many researchers will use it, and how it will affect your ability to do research. You need to help them build a case for purchasing a resource.
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