How our AD teams are supporting librarians

Author: Diana Petrowicz

The whole world is in the grip of an unprecedented crisis impacting the way we go about our daily lives. For the time being, universities and schools are switching to online learning, and professionals around the world are working from home whilst juggling child care and other responsibilities.

As a global company, we at Springer Nature are incredibly used to remote working; however, this changes a lot for us as well. We are working with institutions worldwide to provide access to latest COVID-19 research and additional support for remote access to our content, as well as ensuring we provide our customers with the best service possible. However, we understand that often the most effective conversations you have are in person. So, what do you do, if this is no longer possible? We have talked to some of our colleagues from the global Account Development team to hear about their challenges and solutions; making sure we help librarians where we can.

After COVID-19 hit China at the end of 2019, our Account Development team on location were the first ones that had to adjust to new ways of living and working. In order to be able to support the librarian community during this difficult time, our team organized a number of webinars during end of February and March around topics such as publishing in high-impact journals, how get the best use out of Springer Nature Experiments, content and functions of Springer Nature Link and nature.com as well as trainings for Springer Materials and Nano.

Institutional Marketing Manager Dazhi Liang, has been working across teams in China to set up the trainings.

“The webinars were held by members of the Account Development, Solution Specialist, Database, Magazines and Partners Services teams. They were well received by the librarian community, with a total of 872 attendees.”

Due to the success of these webinars in China, the Account Development teams are now working on expanding our webinar offering for all regions such as Europe and the Americas and will also continue the series of online training sessions across Asia.

Denis Duran, Senior Account Development Manager, is coordinating upcoming webinars across regions:

“We will start with a practical webinar for librarians with information on how researchers and students can access Springer Nature content from home. There will be several dates and times available, so customers worldwide can listen to it at a time that is suitable for them.”

Heloisa Tiberio, Account Development Manager for LATAM countries is touching base with the librarian community online and has recently seen a high demand for trainings across Latin America. The team received 1,211 registrations for their Springer Nature Link platform training, which usually receives about 60 sign ups. And there are many more trainings for Springer Nature Link and nature.com platforms and webinars about SeamlessAccess, Librarian Portal and MARC records in the pipeline, as well as a real-time, virtual chat room, taking place every Friday during April.

"I am creating a special service for my customers in Latin America. Throughout April, I will open my GTM virtual room for one hour every Friday, where customers can ask questions in real-time regarding remote access, Librarian Portal or any other questions they might have."

Find latest information on our webinars here. The Account Development teams are also providing platform trainings as well as trainings for our databases and solutions for institutions worldwide.
Webinars are not the only form of support our Account Development team can provide to make our librarians’ lives a bit easier. We also offer free research around COVID-19, which is available on this website containing latest content from across our Springer Nature journal portfolios. We have also contributed to the authoritative research site by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) called LitCovid. 

How are our local teams supporting institutions?

Our local teams are available for any questions you might have at this time, in particular regarding latest research or to assist with remote access set-up, reports and trainings for our platforms, databases, solutions and more. We are turning all scheduled face-to-face meetings with customers into online meetings and are working on providing virtual replacements for our summits.

Our Account Development teams in Europe and the US around the world have received a number of requests to establish remote access for users without VPN. Among the institutions were NASA Ames, where we have been able to assist admins with the setup, as well as the University of Buffalo where our team helped to set up the university’s single sign-on to expand access methods for remote students and faculty to Springer Nature Link and Nature.com during the pandemic.

We provided usage reports to institutions such as NERL Consortium to analyze usage of Springer and Nature journals, as well as eBooks and can also help with research projects. For example, was our team happy to support a Text & Data Mining (TDM) researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory who asked for help on a project using Springer Nature Link content together with Oak Ridge and Argonne National Lab. If you would like to find out more about how to remotely access Springer Nature content, then have a look at this page and also check out the blog post by our Digital Product Manager Laird Barrett about Federated access, RA21, SeamlessAccess and GetFTR.

As a response to the increased need for remote access in the US, Robert Boissy, Account Development Director, is working on keeping librarians informed about federal access and other ways of access to our content.

“We are working closely with our Institutional Marketing team on the creation of a new federated access page, to support easier remote access during the pandemic. Furthermore, we are making our eBooks available for higher education online courses, to support e-learning at institutions.”

Springer Nature offers a wide range of online course materials, as well as our video-based online learning platform iversity.org to support e-learning initiatives at institutions. Some customers, such as the California Institute of Technology, have expressed interest in more eBook content to support new fully online classes in the fall. If you would like to find out more, have a look at our eBook collections.

In the light of the current situation we created this website containing information and links to resources for librarians. Read our latest industry and company news or listen to our podcasts. We are also keeping you informed through our social media channels and you can find tips around social media in this blog post. Our Account Development team is making every effort to stay connected with our customers during this time.

If you have questions about any of the mentioned topics above, please contact our Account Development representative for your region. Find out more about activities from our European, US, LATAM and Asian Account Development teams in the next blog in this series.