Libraries and Technology and Electronic Publishing

Ithaka's 2006 survey of faculty members sought to determine their attitudes related to online resources, electronic archiving, teaching and learning and related subjects.  This study affords the opportunity to develop trend analysis of many measurements collected in the 2003 and 2000 faculty surveys. As in the past, Ithaka developed a robust set of disciplinary and other demographic analyses that have allowed them to learn more about how best to serve the needs of different types of faculty members. Findings include;

• Attitudes towards the possibility of a transition away from print format, both for scholarly journals and monographs
• Perceptions of libraries and their value, including specific library functions, and how these perceptions are changing
• Preferences in research practices, including disciplinary differences and changes over time
• Attitudes towards archiving of both print and electronic resources
• Preferences that lead authors to choose among scholarly journals in which to publish their articles, as well as attitudes towards digital repositories

Libraries are supporting the teaching and research missions of universities in new ways, such as providing expertise in digital curation, electronic publishing, and content development. At the University of Kansas, the Scholar Services program strengthens an evolving research environment by promoting best practices and innovation in cyberinfrastructure and digital scholarship.

Although many new forms of scholarly exchange have reached an advanced state of adoption, scholars and researchers generally remain remarkably naïve and uninformed about many issues involved with change in scholarly publishing and scholarly communication broadly. It is increasingly important that dialogue at research institutions involve a much wider group of researchers and scholars. Only active engagement by those undertaking research and scholarship can ensure that the advancement of research and scholarship takes priority in the development and adoption of new models. Research libraries have led in educating stakeholders about new models and are expanding their outreach to campus communities. In considering the effects of recent change, and looking to emerging trends and concerns, six dangers of the current moment are considered along with six topics ripe for campus dialogue.

The collective expertise of digital libraries in making available the diverse literatures of science and artistic expression, in concert with the increasing sophistication of commercial partners and the development of distributed, interactive forms of publishing, require libraries to chart the engineering of new architectures for teaching, learning, and research. Digital libraries must work to forge the new collaborations required to enable and build these services.