An Overview of Scholarly Communication, Research Data Management and Digital Scholarship Services in American Academic Libraries: An Empirical Study from Five University Libraries in the States of Massachusetts and Missouri

Abstract

The core task of academic librarians are to support academic research. The recruitment for the following librarians’ positions including scholarly communication librarians, research data management librarians, and digital scholarship librarians is popular in American academic libraries. Few university libraries provide in-depth digital scholarship services in Taiwan. In order to learn experiential knowledge about digital scholarship services of American academic libraries, qualitative interviews were applied in this research. The interviewees include 4 scholarly communication librarians, 3 research data management librarians, 2 digital scholarship librarians. The research result were stated as the following items: core job descriptions, multiple skills including communication and challenges, the personal trait of good librarians and their passion, the roles and tasks in digital age. Several suggestions were provided in this study, including prioritizing tasks for future work, proposing plans for most challenging works, flexible organizational structure, and developing librarians’ competencies and skills. The research results are helpful to propose the plan for the practical work of digital scholarship services in university libraries in Taiwan.

Keywords

• academic libraries
• university libraries
• scholarly communication librarians
• research data management librarian
• digital scholarship librarian
• core competence