Library and Information Science Commons^™

A Needs-Driven And Responsive Approach To Supporting The Research Endeavours Of Academic Librarians, Ken N. Meadows, Selinda Berg, Kristin Hoffmann, Margaret Martin Gardiner, Nazi Torabi

Western Libraries Publications

In this article, the authors describe a grassroots model for research support and explore the success and evolving directions of this model based on three iterative needs assessments administered by the Librarian and Archivist Research Support Network (LARSN) Steering Committee at The University of Western Ontario. Needs assessments were identified as a critical tool to ensure that LARSN programming is relevant to librarians’ and archivists’ changing research needs. In the first four years of LARSN, three needs assessments were administered: in fall 2007, fall 2009, and spring 2011. The iterative needs assessments aimed to capture how the environment and research …