The Role of Libraries in Emerging Models of Scholarly Communication

Jottkandt, Sigi, Willinsky, John and Kimball, Shana The Role of Libraries in Emerging Models of Scholarly Communication., 2009 . In LIANZA Conference 2009: "He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata", Christchurch, New Zealand, 12-14 October, 2009. (Unpublished) [Conference paper]

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English abstract

Will transformations in technology, media and scholarly cultures lead to the declining importance or ‘irrelevance’ of the university library, or can these changes be envisioned in terms of what cultural critic Ajit Pyati has called a greater “democratic participation of libraries”?1 By this, Pyati has in mind the library as an “active shaper” of technology for the progressive end of increased information access for all. Integral to this vision is an expansion rather than contraction in library roles, particularly in the arena of knowledge dissemination. In this view, shared by Karla Hahn, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication for the ARL, libraries could assume a role and responsibility further up the research chain and participate in the scholarly communication taking place during the research process itself rather than, as presently, “sitting at the end of the line.”2 In this presentation, we explore a role for university libraries as active producers of scholarly knowledge. Using a case study of a faculty-library publishing partnership, we describe how scholars, librarians and library developers of open source publishing technologies such as the Public Knowledge Project are creatively transforming the scholarly communications landscape and generating innovative solutions to the current crisis in humanities publishing. The collaborating partners are the University of Michigan's Scholarly Publishing Office (SPO), the Open Humanities Press (OHP) and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP). SPO was formed in 2001 with the goal of developing low-cost, scalable mechanisms for electronic publication and distribution of journals, monographs and other digital scholarly content. A scholar-led, virtual imprint, OHP launched in 2008 to address the growing inequality of readers' access to the scholarly literature and materials necessary for research in the humanities. Begun in 1998 by Professor John Willinsky, PKP is a research and development initiative directed toward improving the scholarly and public quality of academic research through the development of innovative online publishing and knowledge-sharing environments. The partners envision the outcome of this collaboration as an extensible and transferable model for how libraries and faculty might work together to break new ground in support of emergent new forms of the scholarly conversation.

Item type:	Conference paper
Keywords:	open access, peer publishing, scholarly communications, scholarly publishing office, open source software
Subjects:	E. Publishing and legal issues. B. Information use and sociology of information J. Technical services in libraries, archives, museum.
Depositing user:	Sigi Jottkandt
Date deposited:	14 Oct 2009
Last modified:	02 Oct 2014 12:15
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/10760/13627

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