Information Literacy & Scholarly Communication Alignments & Disconnects

Several instances converge with the intersection of Information Literacy & Scholarly Communications:

1. Intersections of job assignments - the dual services, Research Librarian model where librarian is responsible for instructional activities and collection intensive assignments such as building and maintaining collections in specific subject areas, establishing liaison relationships with faculty and graduate students and sharing trends in scholarly publishing
2. Distance Education - with traditional coursework increasingly adding an online component, the opportunities to engage in scholarly communications are more plentiful
3. Many institutions have established Institutional Repositories to park, share and promote campus intellectual outputs
4. Movement towards a greater electronic footprint in collections for both journals and books creating a more digital library environment
5. Libraries are increasingly engaged in publishing activities not only with an Institutional Repository but with closer relationships with the University Presses if there is one and in joint publishing activities
6. Information Technology and academic libraries have pioneered joint associations at many institutions under leadership of Chief Information Officers
7. The role of consortia continues to expand with many libraries members of multiple consortia to explore sharing of resources, assignments and services
8. Due to more digital delivery of resources instruction can accommodate more use of mixed media, media streaming and the benefits of emerging technologies
9. New Library collections develop more as a result of an on-demand or user initiated program than as a staff generated effort
10. Role of the textbook is readily changing.

Each Research Librarian is expected to serve a liaison constituency with full services including:

• being responsible for developing a relevant information literacy program for educational outreach in and outside of the classroom and to support camput instruction
• participate in collection development by selecting and managing information resources to support instruction and research
• participate in fuil range of eference services - Reference Desk, electronic reference and research consultations
• keeps abreast of publishing trends and scholarly communication developments in general and specifically in the assigned subject areas
• data curation & data management playing more central role in knowledge generation

The landscape for Collection Development & Management, including Special Collections & Archives is a moving target.  Several reasons suggest why a shift is occuring:

• Increased role of technology in publishing with swift emergence of eJournal and more recently the eBook
• Changes in the publishing realm
• Emerging maturity of Institutional Repository and Disciplinary Repository
• Explore whether it is in best interests to develop standards & competencies for Scholarly Communication as was done for Information Literacy