Supporting Research in Area Studies

Lesley Pitman is Librarian and Director of Information Services at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies Library in London, a research collection of international importance dating back to 1915. She is currently responsible for devising and implementing UCL Library Services’ strategy for research support across the institution, and has also been involved in managing a number of externally funded digitisation projects, including most recently the EuropeanaTravel project funded by the EU. She was Chair of COSEELIS for nine years, and is one of the founding managers of the CoFoR collaborative collection management partnership for Russian and East European Studies in the UK. Her professional interests and writings range from library buildings to digitisation and the digital humanities

• Area studies: The academic landscape: Its history, its controversies and the nature of contemporary area studies research Research support and area studies librarianship Area studies librarianship as a specialist skill with its own training needs and distinct place in the university library; Its place in supporting the new agenda in research support Acquisitions: The continuing challenges of acquiring material in multiple formats and languages from across the world Collection Management; What collections do area studies scholars use? How are they arranged, managed, defined? The national research collection and the role of collaborative collection management Resource discovery and problems with systems: The challenge of providing access to resources in multiple languages across multiple systems, from specialist databases and library catalogues to Google Digital projects and the digital humanities: New opportunities for specialist librarians in creating and curating content, and adding their skills to academic projects Information skills and user support: User-centred skills and services