Speaker
Description
In the past few years, the role of academic libraries has been changing. From being the aggregators of information, libraries have been challenged to be increasingly embedembedded in institutional research activities, namely implementing tools, delivering services and supporting recognition mechanisms that promote excellence in the current scientific environment.
Libraries are now placed to play distinctive new roles in research pipeline, providing support communication of scientific research activities to the general public, among others. That’s what we do, aAt FEUP’s Library, with an emphasis on exhibitions, research support services also include opening communication to broader publics.
Regarded as a key strategy, evidences show that exhibitions can play an important role in establishing stronger links with researchers and enhancing the value of library’s services and assets. Assuming the purropose of scientific communication, exhibitions promote sense of community belonging, communicate research (impact) to a broader public and can constitute starting points to new research (both aggregating past research and pointing new research directions).
This paper will examines exhibitions as participatory experiences within FEUP’s academic community and will explores how interaction between library services and researchers can be outlined in practice. From the Library’s point of view, the different goals and the exhibition creation processes are examined. Finally, factors contributing to the success of the experiences and the obstacles that challenged these participatory processes, demanding new structures and skills, are discussed.
