Industry 4.0 and the Evolving Role of Librarians

Mdm. Zaharah binti Abd Samad, Chief Librarian, UTHM, shares her insights on the evolving role of the librarian in today’s era of digital transformation and how their library is supporting broader teaching and learning initiatives.

The role of librarian has certainly evolved over the years. The responsibilities have moved beyond acquiring and curating collections of books and other resources to becoming custodians of knowledge and data in this era of digitalisation.

In UTHM, we play an active role in the University’s digital transformation plan, particularly in the aspect of blended learning. Our office provides insight on how to connect students and staff to information needed for their research work. We provide the tools that help students and lecturers manage their way through information overload and fake news prevalent online. We help to cut through the noise so that our students and lecturers can focus on what matters most to them. In addition, as virtual learning gains ground, we play an active role in making sure that the faculty have the necessary content and resources needed to support the curriculum.

We wanted to provide our students and faculty with a one-stop portal for all their research work. It was important that we provide the means to access authoritative scholarly literature to support them in various stages of the research lifecycle. Even though the students use tools such as Google in their research work, there is vast amount of misleading information online which can potentially affect the quality of their research work.

Embracing ScienceDirect eBooks at UTHM

By having ScienceDirect as a one-stop portal for all our research needs, students can easily find relevant information from various credible interdisciplinary sources. They can also reduce the amount of time spend researching for information. ScienceDirect was supportive of our virtual learning environment goals and we that believe that the portal provides premium quality.

ScienceDirect is Elsevier’s platform for eBooks and peer-reviewed journals in the areas of physical sciences and engineering, life sciences, health sciences, and social sciences and humanities. It contains indexing, abstracts, and tables of contents for over 2,500 journals and over 35,000 eBooks.

Students and faculty can access thousands of scholarly literatures across a broad and diverse range of scientific disciplines in one convenient access point, whether they are in school or any remote location. Lecturers are using ScienceDirect’s multidisciplinary collection of eBooks for their classroom teaching and improving of their course materials. Students are also using ScienceDirect as a trusted, and reliable source of information for their assignments and project writing.

Accessibility – ScienceDirect eBooks' Winning Factor

When we undertook a trial in late March, we saw that the usage increased by 1184% and 1100% in March and April 2022 respectively. This showed that the content provided via ScienceDirect were well utilized by both lecturers and students in their classroom teaching and learning. We believe that accessibility is one of the biggest factors driving the high usage of eBooks. Based on a survey conducted, about 78% of our lecturers and 85% of our students find eBooks more accessible compared to printed eBooks.

In addition, Elsevier provided valuable support by training our lecturers to adopt the content in the curriculum and teach them how they can maximise their use of ScienceDirect eBooks. As the nation move towards a post-pandemic recovery, there is a consensus within our academic community that the virtual learning is going to be the new norm, hence why we underscore the value of eBooks in both teaching and learning.