Library futures: Queensland University of Technology, Australia | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional

"The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a multi-campus university located in Brisbane, Australia with 4,300 staff and 45,000 students. The challenge for QUT library is to support the university's dual focus of teaching and learning and research in a rapidly changing environment. For universities the significant changes are: developments in online education, competition from private training providers, the emergence of e-research, ICT developments, technological changes in accessing, using and creating information, and social media. Indeed the challenge for all libraries is to continue to add value. To do this libraries need to have imagination and the flexibility to change quickly to ensure they have the necessary skills, resources, business processes and systems in place to deliver. Integrating university services The most significant changes for QUT library in the past decade have been the expansion of the library's role and development of new services to support learning,teaching and research. In 2007, the library was made responsible for providing a central academic support service for students. The integration of the library's information literacy services and academic skills support is a logical combination from a student perceptive. The library's future focus is to collaborate with other university providers of student support at QUT to create a university-wide support for learning framework. In the research support area, the library has expanded our services to include new specialisms aligned with the university's aim of becoming a selectively intensive research institution. A research data management service (managed jointly by the library and the university's IT services), bibliometric and research impact services, and expanded research skills training to include sessions on altmetrics, and using collaborative tools and social media for research, are all new offerings. Eprints and developing the university's open access institutional repository has been a priority over the past 10 years. In 2013 we celebrated 10mdownloads. With 97% of downloads coming from outside Australia, we can safely claim that the repository has been successful in opening up the university's research to the world. Open access brings new opportunities Open access leadership is one of the most important professional imperatives for librarians now and in the future. Worldwide, governments, research funders, universities and policy makers are adopting more open policies with regard to information and data. The open access movement is transformational and presents libraries with a new opportunity to provide leadership to their host organisations and the broader community by engaging with, and shaping the change. New business models are developing and libraries can play a leading role in shaping those models for the benefit of all. Libraries have always been about providing access to information. Open access is about providing free and open access to information, a position that should sit well with all librarians. Third party online learning and teaching products from vendors such as Pearson and McGraw-Hill are a new business model for university learning and teaching. Many of these products include access to licensed scholarly content in the form of etexts embedded into the online curriculum. This is an attractive feature for students. However, there is a real risk that universities will be paying significantly more for scholarly content provided in this way than they would if the resources were licensed through the library. This is another opportunity for university libraries to provide expertise to their universities when these products are under consideration ..."