A library guide to support transdisciplinarity

By ANU Library Guide Working Group.

What tools can libraries develop to support transdisciplinary education and research? What are the challenges and requirements to make such tool development happen? 

Here we describe a library guide (commonly abbreviated to LibGuide), a tool often developed by individual libraries to showcase their resources on a particular subject and to provide a consistent pedagogical approach to such subject-specific resources.

The library guide that we developed focused on transdisciplinary problem solving and aims to provide introductory materials for students and academic staff across our university (The Australian National University). In particular, it supports the introduction of a university-wide educational program to ensure that all undergraduates develop skills allowing them to work with others to understand and creatively address amorphous and complex problems. The university has formally adopted the “Capability to Employ Discipline-based Knowledge in Transdisciplinary Problem Solving” as an attribute that all undergraduates must acquire through their education.

This educational program, especially the framework underpinning it, has been described previously in an i2Insights contribution: A framework for building transdisciplinary expertise.

The library guide was also structured around this framework, with the core elements being that transdisciplinary problem solving is:

• change-oriented (requiring an understanding of four topics, namely change, decision making, research implementation and unknowns),
• systemic,
• context-based,
• pluralistic,
• interactive (requiring an understanding of three topics, namely teamwork, stakeholder engagement, and communication),
• integrative.

In addition, introductions to transdisciplinarity as a whole were covered by adding “General Resources.”

We recognised that, although books and journals are the mainstay of academic work, some students and academic staff might be more attracted to blogs, videos, and popular articles, so we included such resource types, which are now also commonly incorporated into library holdings. We restricted the resources in any category to 20 or less, seeking to balance the provision of multiple entry points (to allow users from any of the university’s disciplines or fields to find materials they can relate to) with keeping the library guide manageable for users. Journals, however, were an exception to this highly selective process, in that we sought to identify all major relevant journals, largely because there are still relatively few of them.

The structure of the library guide is shown in the screenshot below and it is available at https://libguides.anu.edu.au/transdisciplinary-problem-solving. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first-ever library guide on transdisciplinarity.

Challenges in developing the library guide to transdisciplinary problem solving

In developing the library guide, we had to tackle three major challenges.

1. Libraries are designed around disciplines, not transdisciplinarity.
   The organisation of libraries matches that of their academic institutions, and, despite the growing interest in transdisciplinarity, those institutions are still typically structured around specific disciplines and faculties. This means that library collections, and the categories and catalogues they use, are discipline-based. Furthermore, most librarians in academic institutions specialise in particular discipline- or field-based subjects, which influences the in-depth support and resources they are equipped to provide.
   This challenge required modification of the usual library-led development of library guides, as well as an expansion of the library’s collection of resources on transdisciplinarity. To get in-depth insights into transdisciplinarity and university-wide coverage of entry-points into transdisicplinarity, we established a unique, and very productive, library–academic partnership. In addition, the library very willingly expanded its collection, adding 23 newly purchased books and 12 new editions or e-books of existing holdings for the 114 books among the 449 resources in the library guide.
2. Information science has not yet addressed transdisicplinarity.
   The field of information science, which underpins the work of libraries and librarians, has not yet taken much interest in transdisciplinary approaches in academic research and education. Even if there was scope in libraries for subject specialists focused on transdisciplinarity, it would be hard for them to work out where to start and what to concentrate on, which is further exacerbated by the third challenge.
3. Transdisciplinarity is a murky concept and is not the only approach relevant to addressing complex societal and environmental problems.

   In particular:

   • there is no single agreed definition of transdisciplinarity, which is often a hurdle to its acceptance
   • there are at least four different ways in which transdisciplinarity manifests, which Julie Thompson Klein (2017, p. 29-30) called trendlines. In brief they are the 1) “systematic integration of knowledge,” 2) the development of “synthetic paradigms” such as general systems and sustainability, 3) “anti-disciplinarity” coupled with a quest for “sociopolitical justice,” and 4) problem solving with multiple disciplines and stakeholders “realized through mutual learning and a recursive approach to integration.” These trendlines are also described in this i2Insights contribution: https://i2insights.org/2024/06/11/defining-inter-and-transdisciplinarity/
   • Multiple overlapping approaches have been developed to cross disciplinary boundaries, work with affected communities, and seek to make a difference by engaging policy makers and practitioners, including transdisciplinarity, convergence research, systems thinking, action research, post-normal science and more, as described in this i2Insights contribution: see https://i2insights.org/2020/05/19/finding-integration-and-implementation-expertise/.

In developing the library guide, we mostly concentrated on the problem solving trendline for transdisciplinarity, but also included key references for the other trendlines. In addition, being mindful of other approaches to tackling complex problems, we included their key references, especially from convergence research, systems thinking, action research, and post-normal science.

Conclusion

Our experience highlighted that for transdisciplinary and other approaches to complex societal and environmental problems to become institutionalised and thrive:

• transdisciplinary academics need to more fully recognise the importance of libraries and information science in building transdisciplinary expertise and
• libraries and the field of information science need to pay greater attention to codifying and making accessible transdisciplinary and other approaches to tackling complex problems.

Library–academic partnerships are essential to both.

What’s your experience been of library–academic collaborations around transdisciplinarity and related approaches? Are there other useful tools, apart from library guides, that individual libraries could produce? Have you identified other challenges to producing useful tools or institutionalising transdisciplinary and other approaches to complex societal and environmental problems?

To find out more:

Bammer, G., Foley, T., Chitravas, N., Richardson, A. P., Valter, K., Nabavi, E., Johns-Boast, L., Browne, C., Nurmikko-Fuller, T. and Jones, J. (2025). Advancing transdisciplinarity through library–academic collaboration. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12: article 1326 (Online – open access) (DOI): https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-025-05492-6 or https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-025-05492-6.pdf (PDF 794KB).

Reference:

Klein J. T. (2017). Typologies of interdisciplinarity: The boundary work of definition. In, R. Frodeman (editor-in-chief), J. T. Klein (associate editor) and R. C. S. Pacheco (associate editor), The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity, 2^nd Edition, Oxford University Press: Oxford, United Kingdom: 21-34.

Author biographies:

Open the combined image of all the authors (JPEG 258KB).

Top row (left to right): Gabriele Bammer, Tom Foley, Nithiwadee Chitravas
Second row (left to right): Alex Richardson, Krisztina Valter, Ehsan Nabavi, Lynette Johns-Boast
Last row (left to right): Chris Browne, Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller, Judith Jones

6 November 2025: the combined image of all authors was updated, as one of the authors had been inadvertently omitted.

Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) Statement: Generative artificial intelligence was not used in the development of this i2Insights contribution. (For i2Insights policy on generative artificial intelligence please see https://i2insights.org/contributing-to-i2insights/guidelines-for-authors/#artificial-intelligence.)

Biography: Gabriele Bammer PhD is Professor of Integration and Implementation Sciences (i2S) at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University in Canberra. i2S provides theory and methods for tackling complex societal and environmental problems, especially for developing a more comprehensive understanding in order to generate fresh insights and ideas for action, supporting improved policy and practice responses by government, business and civil society, and effective interactions between disciplinary and stakeholder experts. She is the inaugural President of the Global Alliance for Inter- and Transdisciplinarity.

Biography: Tom Foley GradDip SFHEA is Associate Director, Libraries at The Australian National University in Canberra. His focus is enabling scholarly information services infrastructure to support and enhance research, teaching, and student learning.

Biography: Nithiwadee (Wan) Chitravas MA is Information Access Coordinator (South Asia, Southeast Asia and the Middle East) at the ANU library, The Australian National University in Canberra. She prioritises collaboration and engagement with academics, staff, and students, in order to strengthen the value of the university’s education.

Biography: Alex Richardson PhD is an Associate Professor in Business Information Systems, and Deputy Director (Education) for the Research School of Management at The Australian National University in Canberra. He has a broad range of interests in areas such as user-centred design, business analytics, human-computer interaction, systems modelling, and building decision support capability.

Biography: Krisztina Valter MD PhD is Associate Professor and academic lead of Anatomy, Chair of Medical Science Theme, and Program Convenor of the Bachelor of Health Science Program, ANU School of Medicine and Psychology at The Australian National University in Canberra. Her research focuses on degenerative diseases of the retina, from the molecular and cellular level, to the clinical, and medical and health education. She teaches a successful interdisciplinary course with colleagues at the School of Art and Design on “Exquisite Corpse—Insight into the Human Body.”
Photo credit: Tracy Nearmy

Biography: Ehsan Nabavi PhD is a Senior Lecturer in Technology and Society and Head of the Responsible Innovation Lab at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at The Australian National University in Canberra. His research focuses on responsible computing and modeling, responsible AI (artificial intelligence), and developing responsible thinking and engagement about innovations proposed for wicked problems.

Biography: Lynette Johns-Boast PhD is Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing at The Australian National University in Canberra. Her research area is engineering education and curriculum design and development in higher education.

Biography: Chris A. Browne PhD is Associate Professor (Curriculum Transformation) in the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) and Academic Convenor of the SoCIETIE (Social, Change, Impact, Engagement, Transformation, Inclusion and Equity) Initiative at the McCusker Institute at The Australian National University in Canberra. His research and teaching focus is on building literacy in systems approaches in transdisciplinary contexts.

Biography: Terhi Nurmikko-Fuller PhD is an associate professor at POLIS: The Centre for Social Policy Research at The Australian National University in Canberra. Her research interests focus on the potential of Linked Open Data to support and diversify scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Biography: Judith Jones LLB is an Associate Professor at the ANU Law School at The Australian National University in Canberra. Her core research interest is informing environmental regulation for the assessment of environmental risk. This includes consideration of regulatory theory, comparative administrative law and problems of regulatory design for environmental impact assessment, risk assessment, uncertainty and precautionary approaches.