Academic Librarians and Research: A Study of Canadian Library Administrator Perspectives

Selinda Adelle Berg is Librarian and Heidi LM Jacobs is Information Literacy Librarian in Leddy Library at University of Windsor; e-mail: [email protected], [email protected]; Dayna Cornwall is at Windsor Public Library, e-mail: [email protected]. © 2013 Selinda Adelle Berg, Heidi LM Jacobs, and Dayna Cornwall, Attribution-NonCommercial (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) CC BY-NC Within the literature exploring the role of research in academic librarianship, very little attention has been paid to the perspectives of upper library administrators. This perspective is critical because library administrators play a key role in hiring, evaluating, supporting, promoting, and tenuring professional librarians. As a way of bringing the administrative perspective to these discussions, our study examines how library administrators within the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) view the role of research in their own libraries and within academic librarianship, as well as how they perceive the current and future climate for librarians’ research. Our study reveals key areas in need of further research and identifies several issues that librarians and upper administrators would benefit from exploring together to advance discussions about research.