American University of Central Asia
Research Needs of the AUCA Faculty and
Their Vision of an “Ideal” Library – the Result of
Social Research
Safia Rafikova,
Director of the Library
Galina Gorborukova,
Chair of Sociology Department
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
AUCA Background Information
http://www.auca.kg/
 Established in 1993.
 An international University and the first higher education institution
in Central Asia based on the American liberal arts college
model.
 Private University.
 11 Degree Programs (undergraduate) and MBA.
 1100 students (40% of men and 60% of women) from 17 countries.
 In March 2010, AUCA established an official partnership with Bard
College located in the state of New York, the United States that
allows students in 9 academic disciplines to receive liberal arts
degrees fully accredited in the US.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
AUCA Library Overview
http://library.auca.kg
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Founded in 1993.
Located on the ground floor of the smaller building of the University.
Two Reading Halls (West Hall and East Hall) with more than 100 seat capacity.
Collections.
- over 70 thousand volumes in 15 different languages covering a wide variety of
subject areas.
- 80,000 titles of full-text e-books (EBRARY database), more than 2 000 000 ebooks (World eBook Library).
- subscription to 24 research databases.
- subscription to 40 native and foreign printed periodical titles annually.
- more than 2000 multimedia resources (DVDs, CD, audios)
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Services & Technology
- on-campus and off-campus access to information, resources and
services.
- web-based catalogue.
- e-Reserve system.
- AUCA Digital Library.
- Subjects Guidelines.
- virtual services “Chat with a Librarian” & “Ask a Librarian”.
- six workstations (West Hall) and 15 computers, 1 scanner, and 1 printer
(East Hall) are available for students to study and work with databases.
- WI-FI area for laptops is available throughout the Library.
- trainings on Information Literacy.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
Methodology of the Research
Goal
The research is aimed at identifying the range of AUCA Faculty research projects and
understanding how Faculty members use library resources doing research.
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Tasks
To identify most recent and current AUCA Faculty research projects;
To find out which libraries and library resources have been used and how AUCA Faculty
members use them;
To determine benefits and shortcomings of the libraries and library resources used by
AUCA Faculty in their most recent and current research projects;
To find out if AUCA Faculty practice research-based teaching of their courses;
To understand AUCA Faculty vision of an ‘Ideal’ Library.
Methodology
In total 13 Faculty members out of 120 were interviewed: per 1 interviewee from the
departments of Anthropology, American Studies, International and Comparative Politics,
Journalism and Mass Communication, International and Business Law, Software Engineering,
Psychology, Economics, and 2 interviewees from the departments of Business
Administration and Sociology.
A pilot interview was held to improve the Questionnaire. A digital audio recorder was used
to record the interviews. Each interview was presumably last for 60 or more minutes.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
Recent and on-going AUCA Faculty
research projects
• All the research studies conducted by the local Faculty
members of AUCA focus on analysis of local contexts or
problems, for instance, «Gender assessment of vulnerable
groups' access to public and municipal services in the Kyrgyz
Republic», «The study of mining towns of Kyrgyzstan», «Forms
of depression of Asian population». Journalists participated in
media-camp, within which lectures and discussions were held
to build understanding of the phenomena, such as xenophobia,
chauvinism, nationalism in mass media.
• Foreign faculty members are focused on their research interests
that are not linked to Kyrgyzstan.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
Libraries and resources have been used
AUCA Faculty members
The most popular databases - JSTOR, EBSCO,
EBRARY, and East View
However, Faculty members mentioned that EBSCO and JSTOR didn't
always enable access to recent articles: "The articles published in
2012 and 2013, the ones I am interested in, are not available. Some
reports can be found on the internet, fine, but in the databases –
you cannot do that. That is why I start with Google and search for
all the concepts I need for my research and focus only on those
documents" (Respondent #1, Sociology).
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
Additional resources
English language
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LexisNexis,
ScienceDirect,
Google scholar,
Questia,
World Bank
web-site
 UMDB web-site
Russian language
 MGU web-site,
 Ecsocman.edu.ru,
 Graduate School of Business, Saint
Petersburg,
 Web-site of the Russian Academy of
Sciences,
 Web-site of the Kharkiv center for
gender studies,
 Аlpinabook.ru,
 Web-site of the Novosibirsk
University where faculty members
launched own profiles where they
upload and share own lectures,
textbooks and articles.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
• Among the libraries in the city, only the OSCE library
obtained a positive assessment of our respondents.
• The University professors have opportunities to
experience trainings, capacity building courses,
conduct research projects in other world
universities and they spoke in praise of the libraries
where they had a chance to work, such as the
libraries of the CEU, Ball University, University of
Washington and others. Many faculty members
mentioned that working in the libraries abroad they
were using Interlibrary Loan service which was very
helpful in their research.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
Benefits and shortcomings of the libraries and library
resources used by AUCA Faculty
Three professors mentioned that while conducting their
research they had to work in libraries because some
libraries (e.g. the National Library of the Kyrgyz Republic)
did not have a literature loan service and they could not
borrow literature. As a result, they had to do most part of
their research being physically in the building of the library.
The advantage of the situation was that they had access to
library documents archived digitally, the on-going help and
support of librarians and silence. The disadvantages,
however, were connected with much time spent on
literature search and not finding the necessary materials
fairly often.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
AUCA Faculty practice research-based
teaching of their courses
• All of the professors noted that they use
results of their studies in their teaching.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
AMICAL collaboration
Out of 13 respondents, only 4 were aware or cooperated with
AMICAL
 Sociology Department Professor participated in collaborative
interactive teaching of AUCA students and students of American
University in Afghanistan using equipment for videoconferences.
 International & Business Law Professor cooperated with CEU in
terms of curriculum and resources development.
 International & Comparative Politics Professor collaborated with
AUC, Smolny College, and CEU in terms of an on-line
videoconference and Career Studies
 Journalism Department Professor collaborated with CEU in terms
of AFP scholarship and heard about AMICAL.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
AUCA Faculty Vision of an “Ideal” Library
- Well equipped working place for researches
Huge,
comfortable, light,
quiet, ventilated
physical space
- Individual/isolated booth or desks for individual studies
- Room for group classes
- Comfortable furniture
- Cafeteria next to the Library
- Constantly increasing of research databases
Access to
various electronic - Rich book collections
and
- Get advance/preprint of textbooks for free from publishers
print resources - Provide ILL service
- Assistance of a Librarian who understands subject matter
Librarian’s
assistance
- Assistance a researcher in terms of resources
- Assistance of a Librarian who knows how to get what a researcher
needs
Organization of
cultural and
thematic events
to know about
- Events related to literature/art/music
- Audio parties
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
Value for Research Team
• Clear insight of a researcher's information needs. Received
outcomes will help us to improve resources and services in
the Library.
• Collaboration “Library-Faculty” became more close.
• Received data is an excellent source of information that can
be realized in the new campus.
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy
American University of Central Asia
Thank you for your attention!
AMICAL Conference, 12-15 June, 2013, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy