1. HEAnet’s Collaboration with Academic Libraries: an ongoing happy story
Patricia Soria, HEAnet

2. Overview HEAnet’s main communication needs Librarian’s role:
Counselors, providers of information
PR allies
Evaluation of cooperation efforts
HEAnet’s main communication needs, similar to yours I guess, nothing new, and how librarians came into the equation
Librarians role
Evaluation on how the process has worked out

3. HEAnet’s communication needs
The Network
Capacity
Links
Possibilities
New value-added services
Security, Multimedia…
But also data/information related (hosting, linking, mirroring…)
Users (Computing Services, Students, Researches, Academics…), Media, Funding Bodies, World…
Need to talk to too many people and it’s always a long explanation (technical)
Need to reach people that can “spread the word” and have credibility

4. Librarians?
For many people Librarians are badly dressed people that stamp books
That’s of course not true

5. Librarians Role Counselors Experience organising information
Experience finding good information
Experience distributing information
“PR allies”
Access to researchers, students, academics
Users consider them reliable
Modern librarians are more and more computer literate and some of the famous Internet/Networking developments of our days (Google) were designed in consultation with librarians
I also realised that Librarians could be a powerful, cheap, PR TOOL

6. Organising Collaboration
LIR HEAnet User Group for Libraries
All academic libraries of HEAnet member institutions+
Regular meetings
Provide a forum for discussion on the use of electronic resources and networks by HEAnet Libraries.
Assist in development and training for their effective use
LIR had been created in 1993 by HEAnet with the idea of getting counseling for datasets to be hosted in HEAnet (Web of Science)
At least one member of the HEAnet Board of Directors is a head librarian in one of our clients
The group has evolved and changed in the past few years with a very hard working committee that was easily persuaded by us to expand the work in benefit of all

7. Organising Collaboration II
Encourage communication and co-operation between member libraries in accessing electronic resources.
Represent the views of the HEAnet Libraries on the NIS Advisory Committee and to other relevant organisations.
Recommend resources (Subject Seminars)
Increase awarenes of community
Resources – Since the mid nineties, HEAnet has hosted a collection of high quality links to resources of interest to Irish Academics and Researchers. Main objective was to collect Irish resources, but there’s also linking to international ones. Two years ago I organised a series of workshops for Academic Librarians. These had two objectives:
-Review resources in this site, suggest deletions and additions and offer evaluation of the electronic resources
-Serve as a forum for the different subject librarians to meet and learn from other people doing their same work

8. Evaluation
HEAnet site is linked to most Academic libraries websites and listed as useful resource to Students, Researchers and Academics.
Information Resources Zone; quality links that people use
Irish Academic Librarians provided with a forum for discussion under HEAnet umbrella
HEAnet approached by librarians to use the Network in further development of Electronic Libraries and VLEs.
Difficult to prove scientifically and with numbers has this collaboration worked out well. I would like to think so tho, and in Social Sciences in general and PR as well, sometimes it isn’t so easy to evaluate results
What I can tell you is that with this ongoing collaboration:

9. Questions? ?