march07b.indd scholarly communication Georgie Donovan and Karen Estlund New librarians and scholarly communication Get involved Georgie’s story My epiphany about inequities in scholarly communication occurred in 2001, while I was teaching English language and literature at the University of Atacama in Copiapó, Chile, a year before I considered attending library school. In addition to courses in literature and trans- lation, I was trying to teach two composition and basic research methods courses with the same syllabi I used as a teaching assistant at the University of Texas-El Paso (UTEP). At UTEP I had access to five LANs and many databases, including MLA. Because other professors in Copiapó warned me that asking students to purchase additional texts might require a ma- jor fi nancial sacrifice, I sought to use online information as much as possible. I quickly realized that my university, though well equipped with computer labs and state- of-the-art computer classrooms, had access to virtually none of the scholarly databases I knew. As a substitute, I turned to fi nding scholarly information on the Internet and put my energy behind teaching students how to evaluate sources critically. At that time, how- ever, few peer-reviewed articles were available freely online in any discipline, and I experi- enced firsthand the knowledge divide—where groups of individuals have vastly different levels of access to information. In my situation, even a small subset of scholarly work would have been priceless. The open access movement has renovated the landscape of the Internet since I returned to the United States, completed library school, and started a professional career. If I were teaching in Copiapó today, my students could search journals in the Directory of Open Ac­ cess Journals, use institutional repositories to find pre- and post-prints of peer-reviewed articles, and access scholarship through several disciplinary portals. Regardless of whether the majority of scholarly publications ever become freely accessible online, the movement to advance the flow of information using the Internet affects not just university researchers here, but students, researchers, and thinkers around the world. My experience in Chile convinced me that increasing access and experimenting with new publishing models make a significant impact on scholarship and promote faster developments in research throughout the world. Karen’s story In 2001, I obtained my bachelor of arts from a small liberal arts college in the Pacifi c North- west and accepted a job there as a copyrights assistant. A major responsibility entailed evaluating fair use and obtaining copyright permissions for library reserve, classroom handouts, and coursepacks. Thus, I entered the murky world of contracts, license agree- ments, and copyright law. In this setting, I first experienced how relevant the scholarly communication crisis was for education. I saw three significant problems while working with the current publication system. Professors cut Georgie Donovan is assistant professor and collection d e v e l o p m e n t l i b r a r i a n fo r t h e h u m a n i t i e s a t Appalachian State University and a member of the ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee, e-mail: donovangl@appstate.edu; Karen Estlund is the interim head of digital technologies at the University of Utah, e-mail: karen.estlund@utah © 2007 Georgie Donovan and Karen Estlund March 2007 155 C&RL News mailto:karen.estlund@utah mailto:donovangl@appstate.edu readings from their syllabi so that students could afford to purchase coursepacks, frustrat- ing their attempts to provide the education they wanted for their students. On one occa- sion, a faculty member was shocked when he learned that he had signed away the rights to his work, which was no longer his own to use for teaching. Lastly, the cost of affording these permissions was increasing at a rapid per-page rate, which cut deeply into the library budget. Permission fees averaged $0.05 a page/copy in the 1990s but had risen by the year 2000 to an average of $0.10 a page/copy. In my second year of library school, I at- tended the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston. Unsure of which programs to attend, I found my interest piqued by a session from ACRL and SPARC on taxpayer access to information. The presentation addressed the problems of discovering the latest medical information and was followed by a very lively discussion from the audience and panelists. I learned that the typical U.S. citizen or U.S. doctor does not have access to the latest research results, a situation that can prove crippling to families with an ill family member. This session alerted me to ef- forts to require public access for publications from researchers who had received funding from the National Institutes of Health. Like Georgie, access to information and quality education drove my interests in scholarly communication. Now, after fewer than two years as a professional librarian, I coordinate the University of Utah’s institutional repository with the medical and law libraries and serve on a faculty subcommittee on schol- arly communication. I believe that new models of scholarly communication will improve the current situation, but help is needed to bring about change. Why get involved? What is academic librarianship about? Included in the mission statement of many aca- demic libraries is a phrase similar to this: “The library supports the research and instruction of the university.” Scholarly communication is essential to this mission and it is critical that the problem of the lack of resources and access to scholarship be solved. This problem is impor- tant for new librarians who will be promoting the relevancy of their library to the university and beyond for many years to come. Budgets One of the first things we learn about schol- arly communication is that the prices of journals—particularly those in science, tech- nology, engineering, and medicine —have forced academic libraries across the country to reduce their expenditures for collections across all disciplines. The most recent statistics published by Association of Research Librar- ies1 show that serials expenditures are up by 302 percent over figures from 20 years ago, rising almost four times faster than the infl a- tion rate (the Consumer Price Index rose 78 percent over the same period). While the unit cost for serials has dropped over the past six years because of journal packages and bun- dling, the cost of serials title-by-title is still 167 percent more than it was in 1986. Monograph expenditures are also up by 59 percent over the same time period, and the unit cost of the average monograph is up 81 percent. Library budgets are not increasing at a rate that comes close to matching the rising prices of journal subscriptions, and the disparity between funding and prices has created a perpetual problem for libraries that cannot be treated solely within the confines of collection development. Changing nature of research While much of the conversation about schol- arly communication in the 1990s centered on budgets, other factors have fueled the develop- ment of new publishing models and advocacy for a more balanced intellectual property and scholarly communication landscape. Notably, scholars are becoming highly digital in their work methods and interactions with col- leagues. The changing nature of research in disciplines across the board has prompted researchers, instructors, and students to look for improved ways of sharing information. Some factors stimulating the need to rethink our communications models include: 156C&RL News March 2007 • increased reliance on reproduced materi- als for courses and study; • the continued development of the free Web as a prime source for research; • the integration of digital technologies into teaching and research; • the growth of Web-based data and pub- lications; and • globalization and the intense need to do collaborative work with colleagues around the world. The new practices of researchers, scholars, and students are driving many of the changes in the scholarly communication and publish- ing landscape. What new librarians should know Knowledge divide When both of us were in library school quite recently, attention was given to the digital divide: the hardware and networking that separated the haves from the have-nots. It is increasingly apparent that there is not only a digital divide, but a knowledge divide between those who can access the best, most recent information and those who confront constant barriers to access. This inequity plays out even with information to which many people have equal claim, such as taxpayer-funded research. It plays out when a state-supported His- torically Black College or University cannot afford the journals that another state-supported college down the road can afford, when com- munity college faculty members are contribut- ing to journals to which their school cannot subscribe, and when a faculty member cannot reprint her own writing for her students. New models of scholarly communication Much progress has certainly been made in the last 20 years to devise solutions to the scholarly communication crisis, including: • the open access movement to provide scholarly information freely on the Internet; • new publishing models like BioOne, which is a cost-effective model for access to biological literature; • institutional repositories that offer ac- cess to scholarly works produced at specifi c institutions and other works that otherwise may not be published, such as data and sup- porting material; • education for faculty about retaining the rights to their works; and • legislation to ensure public access to research results funded by taxpayers. Although the impact of these efforts is growing, this arena needs imagination, creativ- ity, and energy to produce additional results. Taking the step from awareness to action For a new librarian, cultivating the skills to follow important issues in scholarly publish- ing and to articulate them to others can be challenging. Learning about the intricacies of copyright, mergers in the publishing world, and pending legislation takes time, but fortu- nately, many good resources exist to become familiar with the issues. The November 2006 C&RL News article by Karla Hahn gives an excellent introduction to the tools available for librarians.2 Programs at the ACRL National Conference and the ALA meetings, as well as other venues such as Charleston Conference, deeply explore the issues and cover exciting new developments. You can encourage your library to send a team to the ACRL/ARL Scholarly Communication Institute, which will lead to an action plan for the institution. Librarians can write letters to legislators supporting legislation related to scholarly communication and ask library and university administrators to do the same. Meeting with legislators during the legislative day sponsored by your university or library organization, perhaps in partnership with the institution’s government relations staff, is a productive way to make a difference. Faculty colleagues involved with faculty governance bodies and library committees on campus can be urged to pass resolutions supporting the tenets of these bills and local initiatives. If there are no initiatives underway at an institution, even a new member of the library staff, freshly graduated from library school, can spearhead a brown bag series, where library March 2007 157 C&RL News staff discuss an article together or interact with a speaker to raise the collective awareness of salient issues. For library school students, fi nding enough information on these topics in the curriculum may be challenging. Some schools offer a course on scholarly communication, while others may cover relevant topics in a broader course on academic librarianship, subject- based resources, or collection management. Establish contact with the person in your program or campus library who specializes in this area, and try to gain as much background as possible. Better yet, seek an internship or hands-on experience with your campus library. Through student organizations, you may be able to host a speaker or program to address these issues outside of the classroom. Understanding something about the open ac- cess movement, copyright, and new models of publishing will assist a job search and serve you well in a new position. As publish- ing changes to match the evolving nature of scholarship, scholarly communication issues will continue to have premier importance for the rest of our careers. Most importantly, connecting with col- leagues who are interested in these issues can help early-career librarians form a network of partners for action. When a library is already conducting scholarly communication initiatives, you might join the efforts in designing program- ming and outreach for the campus, assist with the institutional repository, or instigate new actions. Here are some exciting examples of early-career librarians engaged in activism: • Molly Kleinman (MSI expected 2007) organized and conducted a series of focus groups with faculty and doctoral students throughout the University of Michigan to discern their attitudes and behaviors towards copyright, publishing agreements, and intel- lectual property. The groups identifi ed com- munity needs related to copyright and contract education, shaping the library’s next steps in reaching faculty and students on scholarly communication issues. • Ada Emmett (MLIS 2002) in collaboration with Holly Mercer (MLS 1998) at the University of Kansas developed the RoMEO Green project to test a staff-mediated method to encourage faculty to deposit their scholarly works in the university’s institutional repository. Citations to faculty-authored papers published by journals whose policies allow author self-archiving were sent to respective faculty, requesting per- mission to deposit the articles in the repository. The project sparked interest and conversation with faculty members and advanced the goal to develop well-informed faculty. • Cat McDowell (M. Archival Science 2001), the University of North Carolina (UNC)- Greensboro, has been researching institutional repositories across the country. She has collect- ed and analyzed data about their deployment and has given presentations at conferences that recommend strategies for establishing and managing these repositories. • KT Vaughan (MSLS 2001) at UNC-Cha- pel Hill and Stefanie Warlick (MSLS 2006) at the University of Maryland have been asking health sciences faculty at UNC and Duke Uni- versity why they choose to publish in open access journals. Their project should reveal important factors that influence a scholar and thereby inform our tools for promoting open access publishing. • Steven Folsom (MSLIS 2006) and Meghan Banach (MSLIS 2006), University of Massachu- setts-Amherst, have been working with faculty to provide open access to their scholarly re- search through ScholarWorks, the campus in- stitutional repository (IR). Through these activi- ties and the development of guidelines, the IR team, including Folsom and Banach, educates faculty about the importance of retaining their rights as authors and advocates for the use of an author’s addendum for future publications when signing publisher agreements. • Eric Larson (MLS 2005) at the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison’s Wendt Library (Engineering) has helped launch the new Of- fice of Scholarly Communication and Publish- ing and is leading efforts to develop an online institutional bibliography. The bibliography will assist in adding materials to the institu- tional repository and will provide personalized (continues on page 162) 158C&RL News March 2007 the Kresge Library auditorium at WSU, while their poems were simultaneously projected from the Digital Commons Chapbook site onto a large screen behind them. The WSU team decided to go all out and invite the students’ teachers and families and the dean of WSU Libraries, as well as WSU colleagues and WSU students to the poetry slam. With a solid audience, the poetry slam went into full swing, first with a computer lab demonstration in the library’s TRC, and later with the student’s poetry readings in the auditorium. The demonstration of the Digital Commons was of especially high interest to WSU librarian colleagues. Everyone was impressed by the quality of creative verse written by the young authors. Some in the audience said they were drawn to tears by the depth, sincerity, and serious nature of the students’ work. Both the read- ings and the Digital Commons demonstrations were video-recorded and added as a link to the repository and are Google searchable under “Murray-Wright High School.” Already the WSU Libraries team is pre- paring to introduce the technology to an elementary school and to two other Detroit high schools. The Digital Commons technol- ogy provides an exciting opportunity to reach out to the local community, interface with future students, and help build assets of the institutional depository. Notes 1. Heather S. Murray and Marisa Conte, Word Basics. 2006. Available at www. lib.wayne.edu/resources/digital_library /digitalcommons/chapbooks/WordBasic.pdf and Heather S. Murray and Marisa Conte, Fun with Formatting in MS Word. 2006. Available at www.lib.wayne.edu/resources /digital_library/digitalcommons/chapbooks /FunwithFormatting.pdf. 2. Matthew A. Martin, Digital Images. 2006. Available at www.lib.wayne.edu /resources/digital_library/digitalcommons /chapbooks/DigitalImageHandout.pdf. 3. Matthew A. Martin, Adding to the Murray Wright Chapbook. 2006. Avail- able at www.lib.wayne.edu/resources /digital_library/digitalcommons/chapbooks / a d d i n g t o t h e m u r r a y w r i g h t c h a p b o o k . pdf. (“New librarians . . .” cont. from page 158) archival rights analysis for researchers at UW- Madison. With increased collaboration among librar- ians and others across campus, we can effect a transformation in the landscape of scholarship. Leadership and activism are needed from the newest members of the library profession; to make a difference, we urge you to contribute new ideas and enthusiasm to help change the system for the better. Notes 1. Association of Research Libraries, ARL Statistics 2004–05. Washington, D.C.: Associa- tion of Research Libraries, 2005: 11. 2. Karla Hahn, “New Tools for New Times: Remodeling the Scholarly Communication System,” C&RL News 67, no. 10 (November 2006): 608–14. 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