The current scientific landscape is characterized by the growing proliferation and intensive use of research data, giving rise to needs related to their efficient management for organization, storage, and accessibility, aiming at reusability by other researchers. Data management has become crucial in scientific research, being a criterion required by funding agencies. In this context, university libraries play a fundamental role, offering new services that support researchers in the administration of their data collections. This study aims to answer the question: What services do university libraries offer to researchers to support research data management? The methodology includes a literature review and the analysis of documents indexed in the ISTA, LISA, and BRAPCI databases, as well as consultation of the homepages of the library systems of the institutions under investigation. The results indicate that in countries of the Global North, the provision of these services is more comprehensive, while in Brazil, it is still in an early stage. In the future, the research will be continued and expanded through a more specific application, selecting other forms of information collection for a deeper understanding of the current landscape of research data management services.
Researchers in ergonomics and human factors and the academic librarians who manage and maintain database subscriptions to serve them may be curious to know, given the interdisciplinary nature of the field, whether they are better served by a relatively small and specialized disciplinary database or by larger multidisciplinary databases. The purpose of this study is first to investigate which, if any, selected multidisciplinary databases provide coverage comparable to that offered by the disciplinary database Ergonomics Abstracts. Second, the study will investigate which databases, if any, provide superior coverage of the articles recently cited in select ergonomics and human factors journals. This study hopes to guide researchers in the field in their searches for pertinent journal literature and to assist academic librarians in better allocating the subscription funds to serve their faculty and students.
This study examines online library research guides on brewing and fermentation science from 20 higher education institutions in order to identify the most frequently included resources recommended by librarians. The guides were analyzed between June–July 2025. Resources were quantified and categorized as databases, books, periodicals, professional organizations, government organizations, or other resources. Results present information on the most frequently included materials from each category. There were 865 distinct resources in the 20 guides, with the majority (54%) classified as other resources, which included websites, videos, podcasts, maps, and more. Reference and instruction librarians may find these insights valuable when evaluating and updating guides, developing new guides, and supporting collection development efforts at their institutions, as higher education institutions have continued to establish brewing and fermentation science programs through the early 2020s.
Libraries are continually seeking the most effective and sustainable ways to provide e-resources, particularly in the form of scholarly journals and books, to their researcher communities. Increasingly, librarians use a blend of strategies including changing our subscription contracts, highlighting open access sources, and relying on resource sharing networks. To learn how these approaches are impacting a specific user community’s research behaviors, we used a mixed-methods approach that paired quantitative findings from collections access data with qualitative feedback from structured searching observations. In particular, we wanted to determine if the barriers to immediately accessing the full-text of current research resulting from a reduction in access to subscription-based sources from the publisher Elsevier impacted how our researchers found, accessed, and used scholarly literature. The results of this research captured how advanced engineering researchers responded to a disruption in unmediated access to Elsevier content, how they responded to access barriers to library resources in general, and the breadth of their use of online resources and connections outside of the library. We discuss how this research may inform future considerations in collection development and management for academic libraries.
This article addresses the oft-noted gap between the amount of instruction students have received and the citation knowledge they demonstrate once they reach discipline-specific courses. Focusing on engineering, where this gap appears most prominently at the institution where this study takes place, this article explores the expectations of engineering instructors regarding undergraduate students' knowledge and skills related to citation practices. In a survey about their experience with undergraduate students in Oregon State University’s College of Engineering, the majority of engineering instructors indicated that both upper- and lower-division students were missing some key citation skills at both the general and disciplinary levels. In addition, engineering instructors believe that writing instructors should teach general citation practices, while engineering instructors should handle discipline-specific citations. The results of the survey affirm the importance of teaching for transfer when preparing students to translate general citation skills into a new discipline. The study highlights the need for adaptable citation instruction and suggests that further research is needed to assess citation education across various educational levels and institutions.
