Information and analytical support: Current goals and pathways

Abstract

User information support is among the functions of academic libraries. The authors attempt to reveal the potential of this activity vector. They characterize in brief the academic libraries’ performance in the external environment, reveal the changes in digital environment and social demands due to advancing IT: using Open Access, Semantic Web, Big Data and Data Analytics technologies in handling science data, the most recent phenomenon of Data Science, etc. The authors argue that the origins of further transformations will be the migration of communications, including scientific ones, toward the cyberspace, preferential generation and use of e-documents, supercomputer technologies, cloud computing, end-to-end technologies, multimodal interaction, science IT-services, etc. These transformations have been changing primarily the academic library users – who are high-end professionals with increasingly complex and unique information needs which the libraries are supposed to satisfy. This purpose can be fulfilled through prompt knowledge update, processing enormous flows of fast-aging information, delivery of resulting knowledge, comparative analytical data, range of solutions, etc. The current trends in the information support in academic libraries are discussed based on the information tail content analysis and observations: support of grant management, support of expert examination of academic papers, generation of analytical bibliographies, and organization of scientific communications, researchers, papers and ideas promotion in the global information space. In the professional literature, the information needs to determine the user services vectors for scientific libraries and their bibliographers are revealed, namely, IT-services support, virtual learning laboratory, e-science, knowledge and learning commons, library involvement in scientific data curation, expert analysis of generated information and preliminary quality appraisal, recommending publications and publishers to researchers, related administration and mediation, visual analytics, etc. The primary role of bibliographers in the libraries of the future is emphasized.