| Karla Hahn Director of Scholarly Communication Association of Research Libraries |
Nancy L. Maron Strategic Services Analyst Ithaka |
| K. Kirby Smith Strategic Services Analyst Ithaka |
In November 2008 the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) released the findings of a study commissioned from Ithaka’s Strategic Services Group exploring the wealth of digital scholarship being produced today outside of traditional publishing channels. The research process for this study involved two phases: the creation of an international field team of librarians to interview faculty, and a close examination of the more than 200 examples of new kinds of scholarly works that faculty named as resources they use to support their scholarship. A database documenting the study collection has also been made freely available.
In the first phase of work, ARL and Ithaka created a field team of volunteers from 46 institutions in the US and Canada. Working closely with a small pilot group to refine the process, ARL gathered over 300 volunteers to participate in this project by seeking out on-campus professors to initiate guided conversations about the digital resources they use.
The hundreds of digital resources reported by faculty to the field team covered a broad disciplinary range and fell into eight basic categories: e-only journals; reviews; preprints and working papers; encyclopedias, dictionaries, and annotated content; blogs; discussion lists; and academic or professional hubs. Beyond genre, information on additional characteristics such as peer review and quality control practices were collected. Indicators of how faculty who reported examples of new works of scholarship are using them were gathered as well. Collectively, the study data provide a unique view of current communicative practices and how they may vary between disciplines. Distinctive patterns and indicators of emerging trends provide some surprises with regard to what many might consider conventional wisdom.
The richness of the study collection and the scope of its analysis allow a fresh picture of the contemporary landscape of scholars’ use of new kinds of digital works to emerge. By creating this librarian field team and having the members collect examples directly from faculty, this study not only yielded rich information on the resources faculty use, but also set a valuable precedent for further collaborations between librarians and their faculty colleagues.
http://www.arl.org/sc/models/model-pubs/pubstudy/
http://www.arl.org/sc/models/model-pubs/search-form.shtml
http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/current-models-report.pdf
Handout (PDF)
Handout (PDF)