The Australian Higher Education Workforce of the Future

The Australian Higher Education Workforce of the Future

Response by the Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL)

Prepared by Margie Jantti, President of CAUL

14 December 2015

Contact the CAUL Office on 02 6125 2990 or

The Council of Australian University Librarians (CAUL) is pleased to have the opportunity to

Contribute to the analysis of the Australian Higher Education Workforce of the Future.

CAUL, as the peak leadership organisation for university libraries in Australia, seeks to enhance the value and capacity of Australian university libraries and to influence scholarship, learning, and information policies and practices relevant to Australian higher education. Our members are the University Librarians or equivalent of institutions that have representation on Universities Australia.

CAUL acknowledges the important contribution university libraries make towards learning, teaching and research innovation through the provision of expert advice and tailored services as well as technology-rich spaces and facilities to the students and staff of Australian universities. The contribution made by university libraries is critical to the success of Australia’s higher education system, one of the chief components of an innovation system - essential to a prosperous and skilled society.

CAUL’s response centres on the research focus area of: Future Workforce Needs, though there are cross-references to: Student Expectations, and the Changing Nature of Work, highlighting the needed competencies and skills for the future workforce of academic libraries.

Future Workforce Needs

The nature, capability requirements, and the roles and responsibilities of the HE workforce will need to change.

CAUL acknowledges the imperative for ongoing change in the roles and responsibilities of its members in meeting the rapidly changing and increasingly complex higher education landscape. Indeed, much is being done to create and sustain a nimble, flexible and highly skilled workforce that thrives in a technology rich and enabled learning and research environment. CAUL sets out in its Strategic Directions 2014-2016 its commitment to a planned and considered approach to developing the capabilities and capacity of its members to operate in an environment influenced by:

Information, learning and teaching moving to web-scale.
Research practice affected by technological change and an increased role for compliance.
Diverse and technologically literate student population.
Changing government policies.
Increased accountability together with budget challenges.
A requirement to demonstrate the value of university libraries.

Further examples of the knowledge, skill and expertise required for future are encapsulated inThe NMC Horizon Report > 2015 Library Edition, along withprojects and publications commissioned through organisations such as Jisc and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

ASSURE THE QUALITY AND INTEGRITY OF FUTURE SCHOLARSHIP AND RESEARCH

Digital collections

The changing nature in the production of research and scholarship outputs requires the expertise of information professionals for the effective stewardship for the capture, collection, description, discovery and preservation of digital content – whether it be format shifted of born digital.

Expertise in the application of metadata, digital preservation standards, licensing, copyright as well as curation and archiving will be essential to prevent loss of content through maladministration, degradation, physical damage or technological obsolescence. Essential competencies required include:

Digital encoding
Proficiency in the application of international standards for digitisation and preservation
Expertise in the application of metadata
Expertise in intellectual property rights and with other legal and moral rights related to copying, storage, modification of content, and the use of specific digital assets
Altmetrics

Scholarly Communication and Publishing

Australia has been a vanguard in applying new models for scholarly communication – as a nation it embraced institutional repositories through government funded projects such as Australian Research Repositories Online to the World and the Australian Scheme for Higher Education Repositories.

The CAUL Publishing Advisory Committee recently surveyed CAUL members to assess the current landscape of university libraries and publishing. The information obtained through this survey suggests that a significant number of university libraries, albeit still small in total numbers, support publishing through either their university press or through the production of journals. 43 journals and 67 books have been published by these libraries and presses so far in 2015, with the number of titles published annually steadily increasing.

Major impacts of publishing in open access through the university publishing initiatives within libraries include: increased exposure and access to titles and content as measured by over 3.4 million downloads of the ~1,200 resources published by libraries including presses structurally located in libraries. This information was collected after the survey to supplement other findings. While most users are within Australia the reach to other countries is extraordinarily high.

Essential competencies required include:

Preservation and curation of content, increasingly in digital born format
Application of linked data connecting all research outputs – data and publications
Administration of information systems to support more efficient workflows and analytics
Optimisation of technologies for enhanced publications.
Expertise in intellectual property rights and with other legal and moral rights related to copying, storage, production of content, and the use of specific digital assets
Advanced information management skills to research support and innovation, including identity management
Awareness of contemporary multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research methodologies

Research Data Management

Increased emphasis is being placed on research data and its administration. The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) states that ”research data is increasingly being recognised as a valuable asset and a valid research output. Journals are starting to require that data be made available to support the research conclusions. The sharing of data is being required as a condition of research funding’. High quality data must be well managed, particularly to meet compliance requirements to make the outputs of publicly funded research openly accessible. Library and information professionals will play a vital role in the imparting of knowledge and skill to the research community on how to best perform this function.

The role of university libraries has expanded to provide greater support for research and innovation in higher education through:

provision of repositories to store, promote and preserve the digital assets and outputs of universities
management and, increasingly, creation of research resources such as datasets and digital collections
publication, especially electronic publication, of material based on research;
support for innovation in scholarly expression and communication;
provision of advice and education on data management policy and planning, metadata, standards and persistent identifiers

To assure more flexible IP regimes and open dissemination of research results to enhance translation and commercialisation of research results, further investment in the enhancement of research information systems, institutional repositories, digital storage and a policy environment that champions open access is required.

Essential competencies required include:

Advanced information management skills to support research and innovation and the capability to impart skills to others through professional education and instructional services.

Awareness of contemporary multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research methodologies
Proficiency in the application of international standards for digitisation and preservation
Expertise in the application of metadata
Data mining
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TRANSFORMING ENGAGEMENT WITH INFORMATION

The proliferation of electronic, digital collections and materials gives rise to new, creative and innovative ways to engage with information; moving beyond the turn of a page, the view of a screen to virtual, immersive information environments.

The rapid advances in technologies offer deep-linked, multidimensional experiences with otherwise static content, promoting planned and serendipitous discovery of information and collections within and external to the university library. Library and information professionals are developing online learning objects and activities, enhancing discovery services, embracing multi-channel communications to engage with the students and staff of the university.

The New Literacies

Library and information professionals are well recognised for their expertise in the developing the information and research literacy skills of students. The emergence of digital literacies, transliteracies and media literacies requires new and different competencies for the development and promulgation of contemporary life-long learning skills. The integration of media, design and makerspace zones within library buildings promotes collaborative approaches for the delivery of technology enhanced learning within the curriculum.

Essential competencies required include:

Fluency and skill in the use and application of new and emergent technologies
Knowledge of contemporary pedagogy with emphasis on student centred learning
Capability to participate in digital networks
Capability to provide advice and, impart education on the creation, production and attribution of scholarly communications in a range of media
Expertise in intellectual property rights and with other legal and moral rights related to copying, storage, modification of content, and the use of specific digital assets

Immersive Information Environments

The relatively low cost of technologies that can be deployed to create virtual reality (VR) environments, as well as gaming technologies will promote the design and deployment of immersive information environments. The investment made in digitising university library collections will return new benefit through the application of VR technology – students and staff will be able to experience information through visual and other sensory aids.

Essential competencies required include:

Fluency and skill in the use and application of new and emergent technologies
Contemporary education and instructional skills to share knowledge expertise to members of the higher education community
Application of linked data
Administration of repositories to store, promote and preserve the digital assets and outputs of universities
Proficiency in the application of international standards for digitisation and preservation
Scripting and computational design
Expertise in intellectual property rights and with other legal and moral rights related to copying, storage, modification of content, and the use of specific digital assets

Discovery Services

Libraries continue to play a critical role in the discovery of collections and resources. The proliferation of information demands expertise in the organisation and classification of information to produce high quality, relevant search results expected of academic and research endeavour. Essential competencies required include:

Digital encoding
Proficiency in the application of international standards for collection management
Expertise in the application of metadata
Expertise in intellectual property rights and with other legal and moral rights related to copying, storage, modification of content, and the use of specific digital assets

Collection Development and Management

Deeply connected to the issue of assuring the quality and integrity of future scholarship and research. The changing nature in the production of research and scholarship outputs requires the expertise of information professionals for the effective stewardship for the capture, collection, description, discovery and preservation of the traditional print and digital content (whether it be format shifted or born digital).

Digital encoding
Proficiency in the application of international standards for digitisation and preservation
Expertise in the application of metadata
Expertise in intellectual property rights and with other legal and moral rights related to copying, storage, modification of content, and the use of specific digital assets
Altmetrics

THE NEW SOFT SKILLS

The emphasis in this response largely centres on the hard, technical skills needed as future library and information professionals. These are considered essential, however, the future workforce will need to be skilled in the ‘soft’ skills, notably the ability to engage and to build and sustain relationships. The role of the professional in delivering services in new constructs and helping others to interpret and navigate the changing higher education landscape will be further heightened.

The blog, Libraries Interact, highlights a recent research report from the Institute for the Future (IFTF) at the University of Phoenix Research Institute –Future Work Skills 2020.

This report examines key drivers of change that will change the work landscape and offers up the 10 work skills that will be required to be able to successfully work in such a landscape.

They describe the Six Drivers of Change as:

Extreme longevity – people will work until later in their lives, multiple careers will be common and lifelong learning will be a necessity
Rise of smart machines and systems – new tools will be available to use in every part of our lives, eliminating much rote type work
Computational world – huge increase in sensors and processing power giving us our world in data which can then be extrapolated in an amazing range of ways
New media ecology – a new way of communicating will become available, taking us way beyond text
Super-structured organisations – new technologies will change the way organisations produce and how things are created
Globally connected world – the world will be connected as never before and diversity and adaptability will play greater roles in design and production.

The skills that IFTF sees as being required in such a work landscape are each related to at least one of the key drivers of change(as represented using colour in the summary map above). The skills are:

Sense-making – being able to discover deeper meaning in what is being expressed
Social intelligence – being able to connect to other people more deeply and directly
Novel & adaptive thinking – being able to come up with solutions that are outside the box
Cross-cultural competency – being able to work in different cultural settings
Computational thinking – being able to make meaning out of vast amounts of data
New-media literacy – being fluent in new media forms
Transdisciplinary – being able to work in multiple disciplines
Design mindset – being able to plan our workplaces and workflows to achieve desired outcomes
Cognitive load management – being able to filter information and focus only on what is required
Virtual collaboration – being able to work effectively as part of a virtual team

The Council of Australian University Librarians acknowledges that both the hard and soft skills outlined in this response are essential to ensuring the competitiveness, innovation and value of Australian Higher Education into the future.