Ultimately, I felt this could potentially be another path to bring liaison librarians closer to the research and faculty research processes on our campus. To begin the process of utilizing liaison librarians for data gathering at the discipline level and potentially shaping new roles for liaison librarians in scholarly communication, it was essential to involve them in the process early on. Their buy-in was considered critical to the success of the project in the short term and in the future operationalization of scholarly communications activities and services. The first step was to recruit several liaison librarians to work with the Steering Committee to develop a scholarly communications training program for liaison librarians that would serve two purposes: 1. To serve as a vehicle for eliciting librarian and library staff input on the shape of scholarly communications activities in the Library and in conceptualizing new roles in this arena 2. To give liaison librarians requisite tools and a coordinated approach to begin the work of engaging their faculties in a discussion of the issues Specific objectives for liaison development included the following: Library staff will have an awareness of changes to the traditional model of scholarship. Librarians will have a base understanding of scholarly communications issues. Liaison Librarians will have greater confidence and expertise in their understanding of scholarly communications activities, particularly at a discipline level, and be able to educate their faculty on trends in scholarly communications be resource people on scholarly communications issues at the discipline level and be resource people for identifying new models of scholarship in their discipline. As Project Manager and leader of the steering committee, my overall vision for liaison development, and indeed for the broader Scholarly Communication Project, was that our outreach programming was guided by the principle of open and shared dialogue about the issues with our community and is based on relationship-building and partnership with campus stakeholders. While we, like many research libraries, took on a leadership role in campus dialogue, we were very conscious of the necessity of gaining the acceptance and active participation of our faculty colleagues and knowledge creators on campus. In this sense, at the center of the project was our determination to engage our campus stakeholders in RLI 265 23 Scholarly Communications: Planning for the Integration of Liaison Librarian Roles ( C O N T I N U E D ) AUGUST 2009 RESEARCH LIBRARY ISSUES: A BIMONTHLY REPORT FROM ARL, CNI, AND SPARC
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