Abstract: Access to information, the foundation of scholarly communication, has traditionally been provided through academic journals, research collections, and other print publications. Recent advances in digital technology, however, have revolutionized scholarly communication, leading to innovations in the conduct of research as well as in the conveyance of ideas to readers. Librarians have sought to inform their communities about scholarly communication issues such as author rights management, open access, and journal costs through such activities as classes, Web sites, symposia, and workshops to help create change. The purpose of this survey was to find out what kind of initiatives ARL member libraries have used or plan to use to educate faculty, researchers, administrators, students, and library staff at their institutions about scholarly communication issues.
A survey distributed to the 123 ARL member libraries in May 2007 to determine the nature of library-initiated education activities about scholarly communication issues that had taken place in their institutions in the past three years or that were expected to take place soon. Of the 73 libraries that responded to the survey, 55 (75%) indicated that the library has engaged in educational activities on scholarly communication issues; 13 (18%) have not, but indicated that planning is underway. Only three libraries indicated that they had not engaged in this activity and were not planning to do so; another two responded that this is the responsibility of another, non-library unit of the institution. This excerpt from SPEC Kit 299 contains the Executive Summary (7 pgs), the Survey Questions and Responses (64 pgs), the lists of Selected Resources (6 pgs). The excerpt does not include the Representative Documents that were submitted by the respondents (106 pgs) which included proposals for education initiatives, scholarly communication and copyright Web pages, job descriptions, and education materials.
PS: Don't confuse this with the ARL SPEC Kit 300, directly on OA, which I blogged just last week. Kit 299 is about attempts to educate faculty about scholarly communication developments, and includes some useful data and anecdotes on attempts to educate faculty about OA.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/08/2007 10:16:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
