Today the ACRL releases “Establishing a Research Agenda for Scholarly Communication: A Call for Community Engagement.” But, true to what it’s calling for – a conversation – it’s not a static document. The conversation started last July and involved parties from several organizations that have been engaged in this kind of research, key players such as ACRL, ARL, CLIR, Ithaka, and SPARC. Eight key issues emerged out of that meeting, including:
–what it takes to support scholarly communication in terms of infrastructure, tools, and the sharing of technical knowledge
–what it takes to support scholarly communication financially – what alternatives are there to the current means of funding publication
–what libraries should do to preserve scholarly information that isn’t in the form of formal publication but is an evolving digital form of discourse
–what public policy issues – especially in the arena of copyright and fair use – need our attention.
Now it’s your turn. Share your thoughts or comment on ideas at the agenda’s wiki. You can also view a podcast of the committee co-chairs, or (if you’re like me, disposed toward a linear, 1.0 reading style) print off a .pdf version. What questions would you like to see addressed?
Author: Barbara Fister
I'm an academic librarian at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota. Like all librarians at our small, liberal arts institution I am involved in reference, collection development, and shared management of the library. My area of specialization is instruction, with research interests also in media literacy, popular literacy, publishing, and assessment.
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