Transcript Libraries and the Communication of Scholarship

Libraries and the
Communication of
Scholarship: Changing
Times, Changing Roles
David Ruddy
Scholarly communication
“The creation, transformation, dissemination and
preservation of knowledge related to teaching,
research and scholarly endeavors”
--Wikipedia
Functions of scholarly communication*
• Registration
– Establishes claims of priority for scholarly research
• Certification
– Validates the registered scholarly research claim
• Awareness
– Promotes the communication of new scholarly research
• Archive
– Preserves the record of scholarly research
* Roosendaal & Geurts. Forces and functions in scientific
communication: an analysis of their interplay (1997).
Traditional scholarly comm. chain
• Registration
– Publishers
• Certification
– Researchers (through a process managed by publishers)
• Awareness
– Publishers, libraries, and readers (researchers)
• Archive
– Publishers and libraries
Recent disruptions in scholarly comm.
• Increasing cost of scholarship
– Diminished access to scholarship
– Increased financial stress on libraries
• Development and growth of a worldwide networked
communication system (the Web)
– Opens new ways in which the functions of the scholarly
communication system can be met
– Allows for new distribution and business models
– Complicates archiving/preservation
Libraries and publishing
• Increasing library interest in offering publishing
services
• Library strengths
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Technology
Knowledge organization and management
Service orientation
Willingness to experiment
Preservation focus
• Challenges
– Narrowly focused
– Content evaluation
– Marketing experience
Library Publishing Coalition
• Mission:
The Library Publishing Coalition promotes the development of
innovative, sustainable publishing services in academic and
research libraries to support scholars as they create, advance,
and disseminate knowledge.
• The Coalition’s current focus is on building and
sharing knowledge
– http://www.librarypublishing.org
• Library Publishing Toolkit
– http://www.publishingtoolkit.org/
Libraries and university presses
• Many productive collaborations, based on
combining distinct expertise toward a common goal
• Many university presses:
– Struggle with technology
– Have limited resources
– Are risk adverse
• And yet have skills in:
– Selecting content
– Building respectable credentialing status
– Marketing
Case study: Project Euclid
• Aggregator of content, with disciplinary focus
(mathematics & statistics)
• Joint library / press operation
– Cornell University Library & Duke University Press
• Cost recovery operation
• Over 65 journals, 1.7 million pages, and maintaining
approximately 70% of its content open
• Primary innovations:
– Collaborative operation
– Business model
Institutional repositories
• Important activities and issues for academic libraries
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Capture, preserve, and deliver theses and dissertations
Supporting mandatory faculty deposits of scholarship
Data curation
IR policy development
Additional new roles for librarians
• Managing alternative scholarly communication
systems
– For example: arXiv.org
• Participating in the adjudication of publication
quality
– For example: Jeffrey Beall's list of predatory publishers
• Copyright advice for faculty
• Educating faculty about publishing options
In conclusion
• The scholarly communication system is undergoing
change
• The four functions of scholarly communication must
still be met (at least in the long-term)
• Librarians will play an increasingly active role in the
new ways in which these functions are carried out