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As any library strives to improve services and make them increasingly relevant, planning for change has become routine. During 2011, the University of Arizona's Libraries undertook extensive assessments in order to develop and improve services in support of research and grant services so that campus-wide achievements in research, scholarship, and creative works could improve. A project explored ways for the library to become more effective at increasing research and grant support to faculty, researchers, and graduate students in a scalable way, and to help the campus increase achievements in research, scholarship, and creative works. The project defined the library's role in research and grant activities and explored ways for the library to be involved at optimal points in these cycles. This chapter discusses the process developed for assessing what new research and grant support services the library might want to develop. This involved interviewing peer university libraries and surveying faculty and graduate students at the University of Arizona about their research and grant needs. The chapter also describes how results were analyzed to identify potential new library services. The project team recommended new services which were presented to the library for inclusion in its Strategic Plan. The methodology presented in this chapter can be used by any type of library for developing new services to include in their strategic plans.

The purpose of this study was to establish the current skills base of librarians working in research data management services in academic and research libraries in South Africa. The purpose was also to determine the relevance of courses and programmes that are currently being offered by library and information studies programmes in response to the needs of research data management services and make recommendations on curriculum improvement.

About 13 institutions which were considered early adopters of research data management services were identified as participants in an online survey. In addition, a review of Web pages of existing library and information studies schools was carried to establish courses that would support research data management services. Data collected through the two approaches were analysed and presented quantitatively and qualitatively.

The findings reveal an environment in a developmental stage, with limited skilled personnel to run research data management services. The findings also show an absence of specific data librarianship courses within existing library and information studies programmes and a very limited scope for the full range of data management courses within professional development programmes.

The paper provides information on approaches to further develop existing curriculum and contribute to the data management needs and support governments, funders and publishers' requirements for the discoverability and re-use of research data across research domains.

Collection content is no longer the primary distinctive signifier of excellence in the present libraries. In an information market where technology has increased access to content, thereby providing resources at one’s fingertips, the provision of services is increasingly becoming a distinctive signifier of excellence and quality. In such an open/service-oriented marketplace, what are the services that are signifiers of excellence and consequently distinguish a library? This paper aims to review select literature within the USA to identify the services that are signifiers of excellence and that will consequently distinguish a library in the current era and investigate the extent to which said services identified in the review of the literature are provided by the University of the West Indies (UWI) Mona library, but focus specifically on only those that meet the additional criteria of placing the UWI Mona library as either the first to introduce the service in Jamaica or as the only library in Jamaica with the particular service offering. These two additional criteria provide the added signature or uniqueness essential to being distinguished.

Through the use of a mixed methods research, this paper highlights library service offerings considered as distinctive signifiers of excellence within the American literature and also within the UWI Mona Library – that will distinguish a library.

This paper reveals services incorporating technology, the library as a place/space, teaching and research and personal attention to users as distinctive signifiers of excellence. In this regard, within the UWI Mona Library, services offered such as the Virtual Reference Service, Extended Opening Service, Halls of Residence Librarian Service, Information Commons Service, Information Literacy Service and the West Indies and Special Collection Research Service were found to incorporate the aforementioned service themes and placed the UWI Mona library as either the first to introduce the service in Jamaica or as the only library in Jamaica with the particular service offering, consequently distinguishing the UWI Mona Library from other academic libraries in Jamaica.

This paper is of value, as it provides the library and information community with an outline of services that distinguish a library; it offers library managers in Jamaica and the rest of the world the opportunity to compare services in their libraries with that of other libraries as outlined within the literature review as well as within the UWI Mona library; it highlights how the UWI Mona library, an academic library in the Caribbean, compares on the international library scene, with particular reference to the USA; it informs current and potential library users of how the UWI Mona library is trending in service culture and a focus on distinctive services can promote a community of academic library service best practice.

The purpose of this paper is to present exciting and innovative research questions in service operations that are aligned with eight key themes and related topics determined by the Journal of Service Management (JOSM) Service Operations Expert Research Panel. By offering a good number of such research questions, this paper provides a broad range of ideas to spur conceptual and empirical research related to service operations and encourage the continued creation of deep knowledge within the field, as well as collaborative research across disciplines that develops and incorporates insights from service operations.

Based on a Delphi study, described in the companion article, “Service Operations: What Have We Learned?,” the panel identified eight key research themes in service operations where leading-edge research is being done or has yet to be done (Victorino et al., 2018). In this paper, three or four topics within each theme are selected and multiple questions for each topic are proposed to guide research efforts. The topics and questions, while wide-ranging, are only representative of the many ongoing research opportunities related to service operations.

The field of service operations has many interesting research topics and questions that are largely unexplored. Furthermore, these research areas are not only increasingly integrative across multiple themes within operations but often transcend functional disciplines. This creates opportunities for ever more impactful research with a greater reach throughout the service system and suggests that service researchers, regardless of functional affiliation, can contribute to the ongoing conversation on the role of service operations in value creation.

Leveraging the collective knowledge of the JOSM Service Operations Expert Research Panel to expand on the research themes generated from the Delphi study, novel questions for future study are put forward. Recognizing that the number of potential research questions is virtually unlimited, summary questions by theme and topic are also provided. These questions represent a synopsis of the individual questions and can serve as a quick reference guide for researchers interested in pursuing new directions in conceptual and empirical research in service operations. This summary also serves as a framework to facilitate the formulation of additional research topics and questions.

The purpose of this paper is to challenge service researchers to design for service inclusion, with an overall goal of achieving inclusion by 2050. The authors present service inclusion as an egalitarian system that provides customers with fair access to a service, fair treatment during a service and fair opportunity to exit a service.

Building on transformative service research, a transformative, human-centered approach to service design is proposed to foster service inclusion and to provide a platform for managerial action. This conceptual study explores the history of service exclusion and examines contemporary demographic trends that suggest the possibility of worsening service exclusion for consumers worldwide.

Service inclusion represents a paradigm shift to higher levels of understanding of service systems and their fundamental role in human well-being. The authors argue that focused design for service inclusion is necessary to make service systems more egalitarian.

The authors propose four pillars of service inclusion: enabling opportunity, offering choice, relieving suffering and fostering happiness.

Service organizations are encouraged to design their offerings in a manner that promotes inclusion and permits customers to realize value.

This comprehensive research agenda challenges service scholars to use design to create inclusive service systems worldwide by the year 2050. The authors establish the moral imperative of design for service inclusion.

The proliferation of (big) data provides numerous opportunities for service advances in practice, yet research on using data to advance service is at a nascent stage in the literature. Many studies have discussed phenomenological benefits of data to service. However, limited research describes managerial issues behind such benefits, although a holistic understanding of the issues is essential in using data to advance service in practice and provides a basis for future research. The purpose of this paper is to address this research gap.

“Using data to advance service” is about change in organizations. Thus, this study uses action research methods of creating real change in organizations together with practitioners, thereby adding to scientific knowledge about practice. The authors participated in five service design projects with industry and government that used different data sets to design new services.

Drawing on lessons learned from the five projects, this study empirically identifies 11 managerial issues that should be considered in data-use for advancing service. In addition, by integrating the issues and relevant literature, this study offers theoretical implications for future research.

“Using data to advance service” is a research topic that emerged originally from practice. Action research or case studies on this topic are valuable in understanding practice and in identifying research priorities by discovering the gap between theory and practice. This study used action research over many years to observe real-world challenges and to make academic research relevant to the challenges. The authors believe that the empirical findings will help improve service practices of data-use and stimulate future research.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the humanitarian service management categories that influence long-term transformation within complex community-based service ecosystems.

This study utilizes mixed methods to present a dynamic model that provides insight into the complexities of supplying, distributing and transporting charitable resources to underserved communities. The interdisciplinary study draws on the theory of service-dominant logic and service science, presents critical elements of transformative service research and uses system dynamics approach to propose a visual causal loop model.

This study develops a dynamic model for studying humanitarian service and value propositions in underserved communities. This paper combines the extant literature to emphasize key humanitarian service categories that influence, and are influenced by, service exchanges within community-based contexts.

This paper is limited in providing quantitative methods in analyzing the case study data. However, the research is still helpful in providing acumen via the causal loop diagram to specifically look into each variable and see their cause and effect relationships in the community-based ecosystem. The research represents an opportunity to model the humanitarian aid and relief scenarios to help make more effective decision-making interventions.

The model serves as a managerial tool to determine critical services that optimize resource utilization within the community-based service ecosystems. Insights from this research are broadly applicable to the contexts of humanitarian logistics and supply chain management (HLSCM) solutions for community-based ventures.

This paper conceptualizes how the management of service-for-service exchanges, logistics services and charitable donation management provides transformational humanitarian services and value propositions within underserved communities. This study further provides fundamental contributions by addressing research gaps in the HLSCM domain by supporting service research and the community-based context.

Research support services (RSS) is an emerging and popular area in university libraries, whose increasing importance has been well documented since the early 2010s. This study aims to identify the status of RSS provided in the university libraries of Pakistan and to compare the results with relevant international studies. The research also reports on the perception of librarians regarding the application of RSS in Pakistani university libraries.

A quantitative survey was conducted of the chief librarians/head librarians working in the 175 university libraries of Pakistan. A structured questionnaire was designed and pre-tested with national and international research experts, faculty members and library professionals. SPSS was used to calculate descriptive statistics. Results of the study were compared with previous literature from an international perspective.

Results of the study indicated that most of the university libraries are providing basic RSS and that they have good collections of both general and subject-specific works to meet the needs of researchers. Most respondents not only were interested in providing RSS but also emphasized that libraries should upgrade their collection to meet researchers’ requirements. However, results of the study also indicated that there was noticeably less support for both the more advanced and newer research support services.

Because the delivery of RSS enables libraries to help meet a university’s strategic research goals, the findings will be of interest to university library and information science executives, policymakers and administration. The suggested recommendations highlight those service areas which are most in need of improvement.

This research provides an updated perspective on the delivery of research support services by university libraries in Pakistan.

This paper aims to find the current situation of research data services by academic libraries and summarize some strategies for university libraries to reference. Recent years have seen an increasing number of university libraries extended their traditional roles and provided research data services.

This paper selected 87 libraries of the top 100 universities listed in the World’s Best Universities released by the USA News in October 2012 as samples and conducted a Web site investigation to check if there were any research data services provided. In addition, it made an interview with the Wuhan University Library’s Research Data Service Workgroup to understand the procedure, difficulties and experiences of their research data service. Based on the survey and interview, it analyzed the current status and difficulties of research data services in university libraries and proposed some strategies for others to reference.

Of the 87 university libraries investigated, 50 libraries have offered research data services. Most of the services can be divided into six aspects: research data introduction, data management guideline, data curation and storage service, data management training, data management reference and resource recommendation. Among these services, research data introduction is the most frequently provided (47.13 per cent), followed by data curation and storage services (43.68 per cent), data management guideline (42.53 per cent), data management reference (41.38 per cent), resource recommendation (41.38 per cent) and data management training (24.14 per cent). The difficulties met by research data service of Chinese academic libraries are also concluded.

Through Web site investigation and interview with the Wuhan University Library’s Research Data Service, this paper presented an overall picture of research data services in university libraries and identified the difficulties and experiences of research data services of the Wuhan University Library. Based on some successful examples, it put forward some strategies for university libraries to reference. This study is very useful for academic libraries to promote their research data services.

The purpose of this paper is to study the difference of subject service between Chinese and German libraries. Subject service is the key direction of user-oriented service in libraries at home and abroad, especially in university libraries. It is an innovative measure to provide service for teaching, learning and research in libraries under the information environment. Subject service has strong practicality, and with the increasing demand of users and the continuous change of external information environment, the service content and mode are gradually improved.

By investigating the selected websites of University Libraries between China and Germany, the specific practice status of subject services between these two countries was known, and the study provided a basis for the comparative analysis of the practice status of subject services between China and Germany. By using the elastic analysis model, the library services in foreign countries and China can be quantitatively analyzed to find out the matching situation between resources and reader’s needs, and then formulate the countermeasures for the allocation of literature resources. In this way, readers can find out the hotspot topics which are more in line with their needs, as well as in the field of inquiry. It is also helpful for readers to further study and analyze the knowledge background and subject distribution in this field.

The results show that there are still some deficiencies in China’s participation in international scientific research cooperation. By mapping high-frequency keyword co-occurrence network and clustering knowledge map, it is seen that there are differences in user research, information search, subject service platform and other aspects between Chinese and German library subject services. There are also some gaps in such aspects as location, disciplines service website revealing mode, resources support, disciplines service platform and so on.

Although this study compares the status of scientific research and practice of discipline services between China and Germany, due to the limited capacity, the paper only selects a number of key points for comparative analysis of discipline services at home and abroad. Due to the limited range of data collected by WOS and Chinese Social Sciences Index, there are some deviations in data processing in the software used, which makes the theoretical research and comparison results have certain limitations.

By investigating and analyzing the current situation of subject service in university libraries between China and Germany, this paper points out the shortcomings of subject service in university libraries in China on the basis of comparative analysis and draws on the advanced experience of German subject service to provide guidance for improving the problems in subject service in China.

The innovation of this study lies in the comparative analysis of Chinese and German subject services from the perspective of subject service research and work practice and puts forward some strategies to improve the development of domestic subject services. At present, there are few domestic literatures comparing the research status of subject services between China and Germany by using visualization method. This study quantitatively compares the time distribution, knowledge evolution direction, research hotspots and topics of subject services at home and abroad by using visualization technology and summarizes the evolution direction of subject services between China and Germany.