‘Making a Difference in the Research Community’: South Africa's Library Academy Experience and the Researcher–Librarian Relationship by Colin Darch and Karin de Jager Available online 10 May 2012 The paper analyzes problems of theorizing and evaluating a short series of ‘Library Academy’ events within a Carnegie Corporation-funded project to improve library service to researchers in six South African universities. Colin Darch, African Studies Library, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa <colin.darch@gmail.com>; Karin de Jager, Department of Information and Library Science, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa <karin.dejager@uct.ac.za>. Keywords: Continuing professional education; South Africa; Research libraries; Performance evaluation; Library assessment; Subject librarianship For a librarian to become mired in a non- or even anti-intellectual environment with no avenues for learning is a crime. The worst of all crimes is for the librarian himself [sic] to have lost interest, or hope, in working out of the mire. 1 INTRODUCTION:THE LIBRARY ACADEMIES, 2007–2011 The Research Libraries Consortium of South Africa (hereafter RLC) was founded in mid-2006. This ambitious project, generously funded over two three-year cycles by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, was designed to improve university library service to post-graduate students and faculty members in South Africa's leading research universities. A key component of the RLC concept was the improve- ment of librarians' research skills and domain knowledge, as librarians in South Africa frequently hold undergraduate degrees in librarian- ship, do not have much subject expertise and are not well-equipped to provide specialized support to researchers. At the time of writing in mid-2011, the RLC had held four ‘Library Academies’, in September 2007, October 2008, April 2010 and October 2010, with the fifth and last of the series scheduled for October 2011. These events were two- week residential courses for mid-career professional librarians. This paper describes the development and implementation of the Library Academy concept in South Africa, and analyzes some of the problems involved in developing rigorous—as opposed to anecdotal—evaluation criteria both for the Academy as an intervention and for the performance of individual participants. Other components of the RLC project included the building of dedicated physical spaces, the Research Commons, already reported in the literature 2 ; a virtual Research Portal, which was under con- tinuous development from 2006 when the project began; and a program to create Africa-oriented digital content. Three universities (the University of Cape Town, the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of the Witwatersrand) took part in the first phase of the project from 2006 to 2009. In the second phase, starting in mid- 2009, three more institutions joined the RLC as full members (Rhodes University, Stellenbosch University and the University of Pretoria). The University of Johannesburg, although it was not a member of the Consortium, sent four staff members as participants to two of the Academies, and earlier Rhodes University sent two librarians at its own expense to the first Academy in 2007, before becoming a full RLC member in mid-2009. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Volume 38, Number 3, pages 145–152 May 2012 145