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Seeking And Finding Research Collaborators: An Exploratory Study Of Librarian Motivations, Strategies, And Success Rates, Ngoc-Yen Tran, Emily Chan

Faculty and Staff Publications

Library and information science research is increasingly conducted in collaboration; a phenomenon that has been observed, but there is a lack of clarity on the factors that motivate librarians to seek research collaborators. This exploratory study presents librarians’ motivations, strategies, and their relative success rates for finding collaborations. Survey results indicate that the most prevalent motivators for seeking a collaborator were to acquire expertise that one lacked, sustain research interest, and obtain a sounding board. Workplaces, being open to collaborations, and attending conferences and meetings were the top selected strategies for finding research collaborators with the highest relative success rates.