(18 December 2018) Sponsored by OpenAthens, the research gathered information from more than 900 librarians working in different sectors across the globe in Spring 2018 and was designed to gain insight into current thinking on identity and access management.
According to the new research growing numbers of students and researchers are working from home, on mobile devices or in off-site locations, which is causing a huge surge in the demand for remote access to library resources.
98 per cent of librarians have witnessed this increased demand and nearly two thirds (62 per cent) of respondents to the survey also said they expected remote access to continue growing over the next 12 months.
Librarians cited a number of reasons for this shift including the technology-driven rise in ‘flexible’ working, the growth of distance learning and other new learning models and time pressures forcing people to limit their research to the evenings and weekends when they are at home.
This increasingly flexible mobile approach to working has seen librarians forced to adapt in order to provide digital content that can be accessed and consumed from anywhere, creating both opportunities and challenges.
Library staff require greater technical expertise than ever before to support the rise in ‘off-site’ access, according to 77 per cent of librarians.
Staff are now expected to help users with technical, access and authentication problems from remote locations, often with limited information, it was claimed. But more than half (54 per cent) said the skills implications of the changing landscape were not recognised by those in charge of hiring and training staff.
See here for the full release. For the original report, you can download from here.
