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In the prevailing competitive environment, libraries seem difficult to survive with traditional information services. Many of business organizations seem to practice multidimensional businesses and expand their profit potentials through diversification. Getting experience from business sector organizations, university libraries need to strategize the service delivery and retain the users through diversification of the product/service. Diversification can be implemented through innovation of directly related library services, indirectly related services and additional services probably not related to the typical library service but would be possible to provide by the library (out of the box). This paper investigates the Sri Lankan university librarians' perspective towards the implementation of such services in their libraries. The study also examines the possible barriers for the diversification. The paper involved the conceptual analysis and sample survey with library practitioners. Findings indicate that university libraries in Sri Lanka are providing diversity of services and have made many attempts to diversify them through 'direct library services', 'indirect library services' and 'additional services'. Relatively higher potential is shown with regard to directly and indirectly related services but the diversification through additional services indicated very low. The librarians face challenges for diversification stretching out through administrative factors, knowledge deficiencies, organizational environment and attitudinal issues of library managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Academic libraries have an innovative service called 'Research Support Service' to support institutional research. Under the research support service, the worldwide academic libraries provide a range of services. The library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka provides research support services since 2014. This paper investigates the research support service model of the library of Eastern University, Sri Lanka (EUSL). This investigation analysed the documents such as official correspondence, pamphlets, library home page and students' feedback. The research support service of EUSL library focused more on training the undergraduates in research related aspects by organising a series of sessions on students' requests. As an extension of the research support service, the library also has introduced the individual research consultation service, where the researchers as an individual or group meets the library professionals to get personal assistance on research. The feedback analysis showed that the undergraduates highly appreciated the service on its usefulness. Moreover, the service was commended by programme review of the university grants commission of Sri Lanka. There are challenges to implementing this service, such as lack of skills and capacity among library professionals, lack of human resources and physical facilities, the conventional mindset of library professionals and lack of proper marketing of library services. However, this was a successful service, and increased the recognition of the library and library professionals among students and faculty. In turn, library professionals were invited to higher-level committees to contribute to the institutional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper identifies the existing promotional avenues for university librarians in Sri Lanka, the basic requirements needed for these avenues, the obstacles and obstacle mitigating strategies. The research design of the study comprised of three steps, viz., literature analysis, survey based on telephonic interviews, and finally, the opinion modeling. It was found that the major problems that hinder career advancement prospects among librarians are a combination of professional duties with research and publication requirements, inadequate opportunities to reach the rank of librarian and lack of higher educational qualification requirements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]