NASIG 2013

Taylor & Francis would like to present on the challenges librarians face in helping their users to understand and realize the value of the increasing quantity of content that is freely available to read, including open access journals, repositories, blogs and wikis. On helping users to navigate this content, librarians often have no ‘ownership’ in the traditional sense of library acquisition and often no usage statistics by which to gauge relevance. The basis of this presentation would be a white paper, currently in progress, that investigates the issues and challenges that libraries have in realizing the value of the content that they do not purchase. The hypothesis of the research is that users are increasingly overwhelmed with content and find it difficult to navigate effectively through what is available and then apply it in their research, studies or teaching. We want to start a debate on next generation publishing activities to start solving some problems by, for example, providing content in more navigable, flexible, digestible formats. As a publisher, we want to provide help and support for librarians in the challenges that they face navigating non-purchased content.