For immediate release:
May 13, 2008

For more information, contact:
Lee Anne George
Publications Program Officer
Association of Research Libraries
leeanne@arl.org
202-296-2296 ext. 130

ARL Scholarly Communication Discussion Guides Updated and Expanded

Washington DC—The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Office of Scholarly Communication has enhanced its popular series of free discussion guides on current scholarly communication issues to facilitate summer discussion programs among library staff.

As the scholarly communication system continues to change rapidly, the Library Brown-Bag Lunch Series on Issues in Scholarly Communication is a valuable resource for library staff to use in expanding their own awareness of key issues and preparing for campus outreach. The series now offers eight guides and a discussion leader’s introduction. Entirely new discussion guides on new model publications and author rights have been created. The series now includes both an introductory guide for discussions of author rights and a second guide for discussions of institutional policies on author rights. Several others of the original guides have been revised to reflect advancements occurring in the past year and new suggestions for further reading have been added.

ARL’s discussion series was developed by Karla Hahn, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication, and covers:

• Starting discussions of scholarly communication
• Talking with faculty
• Access to publicly funded research
• Author rights
• Institutional strategies for rights management
• Scholarly society roles
• Peer review
• New model publications

Each guide offers prework and discussion questions for a meeting, along with resources that provide further background for the discussion leader of an hour-long session. The guides can serve as a starting point for a single discussion or for a series of conversations.

Using the discussion guides, library leaders can launch a program quickly without requiring special expertise on the topics. A brown-bag series could be initiated by a library director, a group of staff, or by any staff person with an interest in the scholarly communication system. The only requirements are the willingness to organize the gatherings and facilitate each meeting’s discussion.

Electronic copies of the guides are freely available at http://www.arl.org/sc/brownbag/.

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 123 research libraries in North America. Its mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the Web at http://www.arl.org/.