In October 2015, the University Library at the Technical University of Munich started to offer bibliometric services to support researchers, university administration and university leadership. These services are designed to help them understand the meaning, limitations, and applications of bibliometric data as well as improve the visibility and impact of their own work and that of the university as a whole.
Sixteen months later, the University Library evaluated the newly introduced services. With more than 80 requests for bibliometric consultations between October 2015 and January 2017, they were successfully established and well accepted. However, the scope of the requests was much broader than expected, and the bibliometric team found itself becoming a point of contact for a multitude of further questions in the area of performance measurement.
A number of issues turned out to be recurrent and could be dealt with routinely, resulting in the creation of guidelines for author profile improvement as well as impact and visibility. On the other hand, many requests were one of a kind, often unexpected and challenging, and required individual approaches.
Firstly, the paper analyses the total amount of bibliometric requests at TUM during a time period of 16 months (topics, origin, subject specific issues, methodological and communicative challenges) and highlights findings and lessons learned. In the second part of the paper, the results of the evaluation, current issues, and possible next steps are discussed against the background of current bibliometric research.
