Ithaka Strategic Services and the Association of Research Libraries recently released their latest joint venture, Current Models of Digital Scholarly Communication. This project was led by a field team of librarians who worked with faculty at research institutions to identify “new digital scholarly resources;” resources which are both born-digital and are produced by and for the scholarly community.
The report
“identifies eight principal types of digital scholarly resources:
- E-only journals
- Reviews
- Preprints and working papers
- Encyclopedias, dictionaries, and annotated content
- Data
- Blogs
- Discussion forums
- Professional and scholarly hubs“.
In talking about e-only journals, faculty members named
“speedy access to new work, the open access model, and the benefits of being part of a network or online community of scholars“
as the primary reasons for using e-only journals on a regular basis. Many e-journals allow features such as reader comments and peer commentary on digitally published content. While the definition of an e-journal created by Ithaka/ARL required “editorial guidelines, peer review, and a well-defined scholarly mission”, I would argue that the features of e-only journals that faculty in the digital environment appreciate are functionalities born of the blogosphere.
Blogs are used by faculty across the three major disciplines (humanties, social sciences, sciences) on a frequent (daily or weekly basis) to keep abreast of changes and discoveries in their disciplines and fields of study. Faculty members cited resources like blogs as digital loci where “‘exchanges among scholars’ is a primary function.” Blogs also exist as supplemental content alongside e-only journals, digital “professional and academic hubs” and other electronic forms of reference material.
In many cases, the scholarly blogs discussed are open access resources for reading and commenting but require account privileges for posting new content. In this sense,
“blogs tend to be a more ‘controlled’ form of informal scholarly communication, allowing a limited number of authors to post work to a much wider audience“.
Because “digital publishing is shaped powerfully by the traditions of scholarly culture”, and because scholarly blogs gain legitimary through traditional processes like “credentialing, peer review, and citation metrics,” I think serials librarians should begin to view scholarly blogs as serial resources worthy of cataloging and inclusion in the library OPAC.
Librarians have a role in distributing cutting-edge, born-digital content to patrons, and in helping content creators work towards digital preservation best-practices.
The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is currently conducting an e-forum ‘on Collecting Free Web Resources: Selection, Archiving, Metadata, Access‘. I encourage you to register and participate in this discussion forum, and to take part in the wider conversation about how libraries incorporate new media and forms of knowledge creation into their collections and services.
