BU’s Study Group: Partners in Learning

Abstract

Objective: Building awareness of new library services on any campus can be difficult, especially when these services are deemed “non-traditional.” To help us overcome this challenge, the Boston University Libraries’ partnered with the Mozilla Science Lab to launch a new initiative called “Study Group” on campus. This poster describes Mozilla’s community building philosophy, the initial results of this partnership, and the technologies we have used. Methods: The Mozilla Science Lab launched its Study Group initiative during the spring of 2015 to help researchers practice open science through community-led, technology-driven workshops. Group members lead each workshop in an informal, approachable way that encourages members to be both teachers and learners. This approach has created a venue for librarians to engage with graduate students as peers and has opened new two-way communication channels. Additionally, by using open technologies advocated by Mozilla, like GitHub and Gitter, the library now engages researchers on the platforms they already prefer. Results: Our first two events this spring had ten and twelve participants respectively and we have another ten events scheduled. Last fall we held six events with a total of fifty-five participants. This spring we have held nine events with a total of forty-four participants. Of note, library staff have led only two sessions. This is an important achievement because it has limited our investment in staff time while still allowing us to achieve beneficial outreach results. Less tangibly, participants are beginning to view the library as a partner in open research, as a resource for data sharing, and as a more technology-driven organization. Finally, outside of staff time our total investment (including launching bu.edu/study) has been $240 – predominantly for posters and other outreach materials. Conclusions: Partnering with the Mozilla Science Lab has helped the library engage with graduate researchers in the sciences through community building in a peer-to-peer format. This relationship has helped both the BU Libraries and Mozilla achieve their respective goals to engage researchers in open research practices in a mutually beneficial way.