Designing OERs to Prepare the Next Generation of Scholarly Communication Librarians

This IMLS-supported (LG-72-17-0132-17) collaboration* among librarians at North Carolina State University Libraries, University of Kansas Libraries, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences is exploring the need for, and ideal components of, a corpus of open educational resources (OER) for teaching library students and professionals about scholarly communication librarianship. Our project is born in the recognition that even as scholarly communication is ascendant as a core academic librarian competency there is little formal instruction in scholcomm topics and no unified teaching/learning resource that might spur an increase in relevant instruction. As librarians spanning career status (early to established) with a variety of experience within scholarly communication sub-fields, we hope to involve all stakeholders in the creation and maintenance of a living body of openly-licensed content to support the growth of scholcomm and related positions, as well as diffuse scholcomm praxis and values across LIS curricula according to its myriad intersections with other aspects of librarianship. Project website

*The portion of IMLS funding that came to the University of Illinois is $12,993.