A travelling librarian: lessons learnt from a study visit to libraries serving research-intensive universities in the USA

The Travelling Librarian award, generously provided by the English-Speaking Union and CILIP (Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals), made possible for me a two-week visit to eight university libraries in New England and North Carolina. The universities visited were: Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Tufts, Boston University, Brown, Brandeis, Dartmouth College, North Carolina State and Duke. These universities all scored very highly for research intensity on the Carnegie Foundation website.1 My role at Loughborough carries responsibility for research support. Since I had previously benchmarked levels of research support offered in some UK institutions,2 the Travelling Librarian award offered me an opportunity to see how the libraries of prestigious, well-funded research universities in the US serve researchers and to identify best practice. The findings are now informing service provision at Loughborough University library.