It started with Google Scholar, and other free services such as Wikipedia. Over the past several years, libraries have found themselves challenged by their users going directly to un-vetted internet solutions rather than utilizing the library’s carefully selected products and materials. Now, the category of traditional bibliographic management products has been changing into the emerging category of research document management complete with its plethora of free and subscription-based offerings mostly available without the library’s consent or supervision. While this natural evolution is at first blush great for users as it ushers in a set of great, new web-based technologies that will enhance the research toolkit for students and staff alike, what does this mean for the library’s role as educator around topics such as copyright, creating correct bibliographies, and more? Is this a problem or an opportunity?
This session will examine these changing trends and offer multiple perspectives hoping to enable libraries to avoid being disintermediated from another key piece of the research process. This session will also present lessons learned and explore insights into how technology solutions can provide libraries with the institutional support they need in order to adapt to the changing workflows of researchers.