ABSTRACT
The last decade or two has witnessed the rise in the setting up of private tertiary education in Ghana, most of which are set up in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. These private institutions are attached to their respective academic libraries which support the teaching, learning and research need of the institutions. Since these institutions are that of higher learning, it is imperative that their librarians develop high level of knowledge and skills in the major areas of scholarly communication so that they can contribute meaningfully to the research processes and activities in their respective institutions.
This study adopted both exploratory and quantitative methods. In all, thirty academic librarians from various private universities were selected as the population of the study. The instrument used to collect data was the questionnaire. The questionnaires were personally distributed to the respondents by the researcher. The Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyze the data collected from the study.
The study revealed that academic librarians of the Private Universities play critical roles in academic research which include increasing access to information, promoting information literacy, institutional repository management, ensuring copyright compliance among others. It was also discovered that librarians of the private universities have intermediate level knowledge on the various practices under research data management. Formal education was found to be the most effective mode of training librarians.
Recommendations made based on the findings of the study include advocacy and training of librarians, development of robust and sustainable methods of identifying training needs of librarians and the formation of a proactive and collaborative unit by the librarians to exchange knowledge and expertise.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY
The advent of computers and its associated technologies in the 21st century have gone a long way to affect all aspects of the existence of man. The pace at which technology has been deployed has led to massive changes in the traditional ways of doing things.
In academia and other fields as well, the nature of conducting research have also changed drastically as the use of technology has been employed. Auckland (2012) opines that, not only has research environments become very competitive, but much higher quantities of data are being generated than previously. Auckland (2012) further stipulates that as research evolves, so must research support. This according to Sanjeeva and Powdwal (2018:1) is due to the fact that digital technologies have thrown up a “plethora of novel options for communicating and establishing scholarship”. Sanjeeva and Powdwal (2018) further stated that, along the enormous options that technology provide comes the challenge of researchers to cope with the rapid pace of these changes.
The term ‘scholarly communication’ has been defined in various ways. A single definition of the term has therefore become very difficult (Mukherjee, 2009). According to Rowland, Nichols and Huntington (2004), the term is most often than not, explained to include only literature which have been peer-reviewed and published upon completion of a research. Borgman (2000) offers a very simple definition of the term. He states that scholarly communication refers to “the study of how scholars in any field use and disseminate information through formal and informal channels”. According to the Association of Research Libraries (2014), scholarly communication
“is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community and preserved for future use”. UNESCO (2015:6), also defines scholarly communication as “the process of sharing, disseminating and publishing research findings of academics and researchers so that the generated academic contents are made available to the global academic communities”.
Libraries play a very important role in the research process and as a result, provide proactive solutions to changing trends in the field. In the case of academic and research libraries it has even become imperative for developing trends to be given optimum priority so that appropriate responses can be given to them (Sanjeeva and Powdwal, 2018). These developments have become very important as user needs and expectations continue to grow.
According to Christensen – Dalsgaard, Grim, Berg, Hortsmann, Jansen, Pollard, Roos (2012), for academic libraries to ensure that they continue to stay relevant, rigorous attempts must be made at diversifying into what they term as ‘dedicated research support’. Schmidt, Kutchma, Calarco, Shearer (2016) subsequently opine that there is an urgent need for a new type of workforce. They continue to add that competencies and skills of emerging staff must therefore be put under intense scrutiny in order to ensure that they measure up to the standards required to adequately serve the information needs of various academic libraries.
The term competency has been defined by various authorities in different ways. The European e- Competence Framework (2014), defines competence as a “demonstrated ability to apply knowledge, skills, and attitudes to achieve observable results”. Per this definition, it will suffice to say that skills are embedded in competencies. Whiles skills are precise abilities, competencies are rather holistic. According to Okoye (2013), the skills, understanding, knowledge and
attitudes which enable a person to effectively perform a task are considered competencies. UNICEF (2018), define competencies “as a package of behaviors that is necessary to deliver the benchmark outcomes”. Simply put, competency is the ability to proficiently and effectively accomplish a task
Acquisition of digital skills by librarians have therefore become imperative in the quest for development of scholarly communication. Digital skills have been defined differently by different authors. Trepanier (2012), defined it as a person’s ability to use computer hardware and software as well as other digital information systems to appropriately apply security measures and safeguard digital information. Chinien and Boutin (2011), also associate digital skills with a person’s ability to employ digital tools and also work in a computerized environment.
Moreover, according to Sanjeeva and Powdwal (2018:2), digital scholarship in modern times demands that researchers dive deep into a very sophisticated research and publication world. They state that research and academic libraries have been prompted to take a look again at their roles in the midst of the altered and complex nature of the research environment they find themselves in. In order for these librarians to be at the helm of affairs in this research process, then there is the ever – pressing need for them to take up new roles which “require developing new skills and competencies”.
STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
Rapid technological changes and advancement in modern times have immensely impacted the way research and scholarly communication is done. The roles of various libraries have therefore been affected as a result of the aforementioned changes. For instance, various libraries all over the world in order to properly serve the diverse needs of their patrons, have had to adopt new and
improved services which hitherto was not the case. According to Schmidt et al (2016), some of the changes which libraries worldwide have had to make include but not limited to the following “development of research data management plans, hosting collaborative virtual research environments, managing institutional repositories and disseminating research outputs through open access mechanisms”
