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 | ACRL Issues "Call for Engagement" on Scholarly Communication
Officials at the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) yesterday released a report calling for research and engagement by academic librarians on issues in scholarly communication. The report, "Establishing a Research Agenda for Scholarly Communication: A Call for Community Engagement," is based on a July 21, 2007 meeting of the ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee. It identifies eight "themes" for librarians and stakeholders in scholarly communication, and frames "a far-reaching agenda" for further research and comments.
The eight themes that emerged in discussions are: the impact and implications of cyberinfrastructure; changing organizational models; how scholars work; authorship and scholarly publication; value and value metrics in scholarly communication; the adoption of successful innovations; preservation of critical materials; and public policy and legal matters. The report acknowledges that each theme offers research challenges that "vary in their scale and relative complexity" and stresses that stakeholders do not need to restrict their comments to the eight themes presented. Instead, the themes represent topics to "engage consideration" rather than an "exhaustive, prioritized, or definitive list." Specific research possibilities, the report notes, can be pursued through "individual or collective efforts."
The report presents an eye-opening primer on the thorny issues facing academic libraries in an increasingly technological age, with one overarching theme: getting the most out of resources and funding. This includes everything from a call to document libraries' "investments in and management of cyberinfrastructure" to the need to develop "new tools" and new and emerging "business models" in scholarly publishing, including open access and institutional repositories. "We need to better understand the full necessary costs of access-controlled models of publication as compared to a truly equivalent open access model to reveal where costs savings are possible and under what conditions," the report notes. "While we know that disciplinary repositories, open-access peer-reviewed journals, and community-supported reference sources can find content and audiences, we do not yet know, for example, how to distribute the cost."
Notably, the report also cites the much-needed involvement of libraries in public policy and legal matters, including copyright in the digital age, ventures like Google Book Search, and in pursuing policy objectives like the recently-passed NIH public access policy. With regard to copyright, the report notes that stakeholders can maximize and protect fair use and how "rights boundaries and ownership affect the informal and new forms of communication such as blogs, gray literature and commentary."
The report is accessible here.
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University of Minnesota Press to Pioneer New Interdisciplinary Publishing Effort
The University of Minnesota Press (UMP), in partnership with the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota has landed a $672,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to launch "Quadrant," a program designed to promote "interdisciplinary research and publication." The program, UMP officials said, represents "the beginning of a new model" for university/university press partnerships by bringing scholars in the humanities and social sciences "into dialogue" with those in the sciences and professional schools. The program will focus on emerging areas of interdisciplinary scholarship, initially establishing four "collaborative" groups: Design and Architecture, Environmental Sustainability, Global Cultures, and Health and Society.
The venture kicks off an exciting—and busy—time for UMP. "The idea is that the press will publish authored books by scholars who participate in the collaboratives," UMP director Douglas Armato told the LJ Academic Newswire. In the first phase, which the Mellon Foundation has funded, the plan is to publish at least two books per collaborative per year with the first titles tentatively scheduled for spring 2009. "But there are more aggressive contract signing goals in the proposal, and the total, five-year project goal is to do 20 total Quadrant titles per year, four to six in each area," Armato noted. That would mark a significant expansion for UMP, a roughly 20 percent increase in annual title output, Armato added, effectively launching four new editorial series.
In addition to books, UMP will also create web archives for each of the collaboratives to hold materials such as working papers and conference transcripts/proceedings created by the groups, as well as datasets, maps, graphic materials, bibliographies, and other research materials that scholars in the program wish to share. "The goal is for these web archives to create rich source materials that other scholars around the world can draw upon for their own research," Armato said.
The plan will draw from scholars at the University of Minnesota and worldwide. Grant funding will be used to bring scholars from outside the University of Minnesota to campus to work with the collaboratives, Armato explained. Those relationships will take the form of "a limited number of fellowships" for outside scholars, as well as "workshop sessions" in which scholars would travel to Minnesota to present chapters or early drafts of the work to the collaboratives and participate in public events such as symposia and lectures. "We will also establish editors-in-residence at the Institute for Advanced Study who will work directly with scholars to develop their projects for publication," he said.
University president Robert H. Bruininks said the project is part of an ambitious plan to use the university press to help further raise UM's profile as a top research institution. "We believe the 'Minnesota Model' of interdisciplinary research and publication will make a strong case for what can be achieved when a research institution draws its press into the center of its academic priorities and ambitions and makes dissemination a vital part of its strategy for excellence," Bruininks said in a statement.
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| Johns Hopkins Establishes Digital Research and Curation Center
The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) Sheridan Libraries have created a new unit dubbed the Digital Research and Curation Center (DRCC) to "manage, preserve, and provide access to the mounting digital scholarship generated by faculty and researchers at the university." Library officials said the creation of the center stems from the need for JHU to move beyond simply supporting and preserving the digital output of faculty and students to more actively assisting in their application and use.
"The new center is a key element of the Libraries' digital program, looking beyond merely preserving immense digital data sets," noted Sayeed Choudhury, recently promoted to associate dean of university libraries at Johns Hopkins and the Hodson Director of the DRCC. Choudhury will oversee a team with an array of experience at the DRCC, including librarians, programmers, engineers, and scientists. Together, they will work with other campus departments, to support projects and services not only in the sciences but increasingly in the humanities and social sciences.
An example of the kinds of projects to be curated by the DRCC is JHU's Roman de la Rose digital initiative. A collaborative effort between the libraries and French and humanities professor Stephen G. Nichols, the decade-old project now includes a number of medieval scholars, librarians, and technical specialists at Johns Hopkins as well other research institutions around the world. It offers 20 digitized versions of the popular Middle Ages romance as well as teaching tools that make 149 of the 250 existing manuscripts worldwide available online for research.
The DRCC builds upon the efforts of JHU's former Digital Knowledge Center, established in 1997, noted library spokesperson Pamela Higgins. The DRCC, she added, was a natural progression from that venture and "the culmination of ten years of digital library research and development activity" at JHU. While a number of schools have configured library units to better handle digital output at their institutions, the DRCC was not modeled on other libraries, Higgins said, but was designed to support the "research intensive environment" unique to Hopkins. "We believe that it is likely to serve as a model for other academic research libraries," Higgins added.
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| Nomination Deadline Extended for LJ's Movers & Shakers 2008
The editors of Library Journal need your help in identifying the emerging leaders in the library world. Our seventh annual Movers & Shakers supplement will profile 50-plus up-and-coming individuals from across the United States and Canada who are innovative, creative, and making a difference.
Because of a technical problem, nominations submitted before November 5 were not captured. Please resubmit! Deadline for submissions has been extended to November 28, 2007! You can nominate someone here, (scroll down the page) or, if you wish to print out and submit the form, you can fax it to 646-746-6734, or send an email to fialkoff@reedbusiness.com.
Profiling innovators from librarians to vendors to others who work in the library field, our Movers & Shakers 2008 will celebrate the new professionals who are moving our libraries ahead. Movers & Shakers 2008 will be distributed with the March 15 issue of Library Journal.
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Library Journal Academic Newswire
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