Reshaping Academic Librarianship in the Context of Twenty-First Century Scholarly Communications and Information Fluency: A Case Study of the Scholarly Communications Management Team at Imperial College London Library Services

abstract

Academic librarianship has had a traditional role encompassing various specialisms: subject support, training, journal subscription management, collection development and user engagement front of house. While many of these roles remain, they should be re-evaluated. New competencies and skillsets in teaching, publishing, bibliometrics, impact, data management, online communication and ethics are becoming the subject of considerable debate and concern within the profession. We cannot deliver existing and new services without acknowledging that scholarly communication support is the future of academic librarianship, and we must move towards effecting a shift from liaison as information literacy and subject expert to relationship management and understanding the impact of scholarly communication developments on both students and academics. This case study will examine how Imperial College London Library Services is striving to meet this challenge, through the creation of a Scholarly Communications Management team.

Keywords:

• Information literacy
• library staff development
• management scholarly communication
• open access publishing

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Chris Banks, Frances Boyle, Michela Wilkins, and Torsten Reimer for the conversations that have contributed to the development of this article, and her colleagues in the Scholarly Communications Management team for their professionalism that demonstrates what a high quality service can achieve.