New

SPEC Kit 299, Scholarly Communication Education Initiatives available as a FAIR resource.

Overview

The Association of Research Libraries and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) jointly sponsor the Institute on Scholarly Communication to promote the development of library-led outreach on scholarly communication issues. The institute has hundreds of alumni forming a community that provides peer support and professional sharing of information relating to campus outreach.

The institute's signature event is an immersive learning experience that prepares participants as local experts within their libraries and provides a structure for developing a program plan for scholarly communication outreach that is customized for each participant's institution. To achieve this goal, participant teams conduct an environmental scan before the institute, engage in a series of active learning experiences during the event, and create elements for a program plan for implementation at their home institution. Originally a national event, regional offerings of the institute are being developed.

A variety of other resources are also being developed as part of the institute initiative. Institute resources already include freely available Web tools and webcasts, with other kinds of resources being planned.

Comments from Past Participants

Frances Malloy (ARL: A Bimonthly Report Oct. 2006)

Terri Fishel ( C&RL News Jan. 2007)

Who Should Apply for an Institute Event?

Institute planners are committed to creating an experience that allows people with varied expertise to explore scholarly communications issues together. The goal is to have the cohort represent a wide range of professional backgrounds, types and sizes of institutions, and roles within the institutions. Examples of institutional roles include:

• Librarians who work directly with faculty members on campus
• Library administrators
• College and university faculty and administrators
• Those responsible for digital repositories
• Librarians with collection development responsibilities