Karla Hahn on Publishing in Academic Libraries

In response to the changing needs of students and researchers, and the changing information environment, academic libraries are re-evaluating their roles, and planning their futures. As part of this general and ongoing adjustment, there is an opportunity for librarians to capitalize on their expertise in bibliography, to shore up their position at the heart of scholarly communications, and to improve their budgets by supporting in-house academic publishing.

Karla Hahn, Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication at ARL, has done a lot of ground breaking research in this area, and an accessible interview with her on the topic has just been published. For more info, see the works linked under New Model Publications and Library Publishing at the ARL page on new models of scholarly communication . See also (or hear) the original Educause interview her on the topic last April. Her most recent scholarly contribution outlines important topics for on campus dialogue regarding new models of publishing in the JEP.

All this has relevance for law libraries and legal researchers of course, as they face the same issues as those in other disciplines. As courts and legislatures respond to the spread of digital media, will their libraries also be able to re-position themselves, or will they be reduced to warehouses of paper, as some fear?