ACRL = the Association of College & Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association.
ACRL recently published Intersections of Scholarly Communication and Information Literacy: Creating Strategic Collaborations for a Changing Academic Environment. It is a white paper that ". . . explores and articulates three intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy." (It is an interactive online publication; there's also a pdf version here.)
Here is the executive summary (as chapter one):
This white paper explores and articulates three intersections between scholarly communication and information literacy, arguing that these intersections indicate areas of strategic realignment for librarians in order for libraries to be resilient in the face of tremendous change in the scholarly information environment. The three intersections are:
- economics of the distribution of scholarship (including access to scholarship, the changing nature of scholarly publishing, and the education of students to be knowledgeable content consumers and content creators);
- digital literacies (including teaching new technologies and rights issues, and the emergence of multiple types of non-textual content);
- our changing roles (including the imperative to contribute to the building of new infrastructures for scholarship, and deep involvement with creative approaches to teaching).
Based on these intersections, this paper provides strategies that librarians from different backgrounds and responsibilities can use to construct and initiate collaborations within their own campus environments between information literacy and scholarly communication. These strategies, or core responses, will support libraries in becoming more resilient in the face of the changing digital information environment.
After articulating these intersections and exploring core responses, the paper recommends four objectives, with actions for each, which could be taken by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), other academic library organizations, individual libraries, and library leaders. The overarching recommendations are:
- integrate pedagogy and scholarly communication into educational programs for librarians to achieve the ideal of information fluency;
- develop new model information literacy curricula, incorporating evolutions in pedagogy and scholarly communication issues;
- explore options for organizational change;
- promote advocacy.
This white paper is issued as both a PDF and an interactive format. The latter serves to "model new dissemination practices," an objective of ACRL’s Plan for Excellence (2011). Moreover, we hope readers will add comments and reactions there to help further the conversation.