Enabling academic excellence in African universities
Demonstrating the value and impact of academic libraries to university leadership
A joint ACU/INASP publication for African vice chancellors, rectors and university leaders
CALL FOR ABSTRACTS
African universities must deliver on an ambitious and expansive agenda – meeting the growing demand for higher education, addressing the expectations of new generations of students, undertaking high quality research, contributing to national scientific capacity, and helping to address local and regional development needs through research, teaching and skills development.
Libraries and information services have a critical role to play in enabling and supporting their universities to meet these varied needs, but this role and potential is often not well understood at senior level.
The ACU and INASP are seeking contributions to a special supplement for African vice chancellors, rectors and deputy vice chancellors, to be distributed to the 110 universities in ACU membership.
The aim of this supplement will be to profile what African libraries are already doing to advance the research and teaching missions of their universities, and to demonstrate how they can support this into the future.
We are therefore seeking articles from African librarians and information professionals (including IT professionals) which address any of the key themes set out below.
Articles should profile examples of specific services or initiatives which your library is delivering or developing. They should not simply describe the service or initiative, but should explicitly explain how and why this is helping to address the needs of the university. They may take either an institutional view, or present a national or regional library and information initiative.
Interested writers should submit a brief abstract of around 300 words which sets out clearly (bullet points are acceptable) the key arguments which they would wish to make in their piece.
1. Marketing & advocacy
• Making the case for the library
• Raising awareness of resources and services
• Reaching different types of students and faculty users
2. The library’s contribution to academic excellence
• Return on library investment
• Judging and demonstrating quality
• The library’s role in course planning
• The library’s role in supporting research.
3. Strategic planning
• Linking library planning to institutional planning and objectives
4. New roles for university librarians
• Re-skilling librarians to supporting research
• Librarians as researchers / evidence based librarianship
• Integrating IL into the curriculum
• Library leadership
• The digital librarian
5. Enhancing the visibility and accessibility of research
• Institutional repositories and online publishing
• Supporting researchers to get published (open access, copyright etc)
• Open access – demystifying and promoting OA
6. Rethinking library space
• The continuing importance of libraries as teaching and learning spaces
The supplement will be an opportunity for librarians to represent themselves and their profession, and to profile their changing responsibilities and the new expertise which libraries are developing in the process.
The deadline for receipt of abstracts is Friday 15th June 2012. Dates for final submission of articles will be agreed with selected writers in due course. Any queries should be addressed to the ACU and INASP: Jonathan Harle (j.harle@acu.ac.uk) or Peter Burnett (pburnett@inasp.info)