Faculty-librarian Collaborative Culture and Current Development in the Colleges and Universities of Taiwan

Abstract

This study explored the concept of faculty-librarian collaboration from the perspective of culture. Five research purposes are proposed in this study. They are: 1. to discover the elements that can be utilized to construct the concept of faculty-librarian collaborative culture; 2. to explore the value levels of faculty-librarian collaborative culture in the colleges and universities of Taiwan; 3. to measure the differences in the value levels of faculty-librarian collaborative culture between faculty members and librarians; 4. to understand the current development of faculty-librarian collaboration in the colleges and universities of Taiwan; and 5. to examine the impact relationship between faculty-librarian collaborative culture and the current development of faculty-librarian collaboration. This study adopted Schein’s three-level model of organizational culture as the conceptual structure to explore the dimensions and factors that are utilized to construct collaborative culture between librarians and faculty members and to develop a questionnaire. An online survey tool, Survey Monkey, was used to collect data via internet in this study. In order to obtain as many replies as possible, the researchers adopted the purposive sampling approach and the snowball sampling approach to actively ask colleagues, friends and friends’ friends for helping to distribute the questionnaires. As a result, 279 respondents answered the online questionnaire in total from December 2015 to May 2016. However, 88 responses were highly incomplete. This resulted in 191 valid responses, for an overall valid response rate of 68.5%. This study finally explored seven key elements that can represent and construct the content and concept of faculty-librarian collaborative culture of Taiwan. The seven elements are: 1. Organizational Collaborative Environment, 2. Mutual Benefit and Responsibility in Collaboration, 3. Mutual Understanding and Communication, 4. Collaborative Commitment, 5. Collaborative Leadership, 6. Mutual Respect and Trust, and 7. Collaborative Relationship and Interaction.

Keywords

• Faculty
• Librarian
• Collaboration
• Collaborative culture
• Colleges and universities
• Taiwan