NCSU Libraries awarded IMLS National Leadership Grant

IMLS Director Dr. Kathryn K. Matthew recently awarded National Leadership Grants to initiatives that “ensure librarians are equipped to provide citizens access to the information, resources, and services they want and need.” A total of $10 million was invested across 49 projects.

The NCSU Libraries, in collaboration with partners at Kansas University and the University of Illinois, was one of the recipients for the proposal, “Designing an OER To Prepare the Next Generation of Scholarly Communication Librarians.”

Scholarly communication is the process by which academics, scholars, and researchers share and publish their research findings so that they are available to the wider academic community and beyond, and it is transforming rapidly, driving change throughout the research lifecycle. As a result, formats such as articles and textbooks have serious limitations in how they can explain and describe the full potential of scholarly communication.

While more and more librarians are taking on dedicated roles as “scholarly communication librarians,” focused on topics like copyright, publishing, support for open access, open data, and open education, there is currently no unified educational resource available for scholarly communication training or continuing education.

According to Will Cross, director of the NCSU Libraries Copyright & Digital Scholarship Center and co-PI on the grant, “this grant will help us prepare the next generation of librarians to be leaders in access to information and create new tools for navigating the changing economic, legal and political waters of librarianship.”

“By developing both the technical infrastructure for sharing and an engaged, diverse community of practice,” Cross adds, “this project will seed a sustainable resource that will continue to evolve and develop in the years to come.”