Academic publisher Taylor & Francis recently conducted research via focus groups, telephone interviews and a survey (eliciting over 500 responses) to explore librarians' opinions on the availability and usefulness of free online resources. The results are now being released in the form of a White Paper.
The increasing amount of free-to-view online content poses a significant challenge for today's librarian in facilitating discovery. Potentially such free resources could be of great value for education purposes - teaching, learning and research - but how do librarians determine the value of all these online resources when 'free' doesn't necessarily mean easy to find?
The research identified what librarians think about issues such as the growth and value of free content, resource challenges for librarians, identification and selection of content, the role of the library, information literacy, user needs, and the role of the publisher, in relation to facilitating discovery.
The White Paper identifies that the role of librarians relating to facilitating discovery of free online content falls into 2 key areas - evaluating and selecting resources following a clear methodology, and providing guidelines and training. It seems there is a changing perception of librarians from 'purchaser of content' to 'facilitators of discovery'.
Taylor & Francis commissioned this research as they wanted to understand the challenges that librarians face in facilitating access to free-to-view online resources, alongside the paid resources they are more traditionally used to managing.
The White Paper, this is available under a Creative Commons Attribution licence - http://www.tandf.co.uk/libsite/pdf/TF-whitepaper-free-resources.pdf.
