Office of Scholarly Communication Scope, Organizational Placement, and Planning in Ten Research Libraries: Report

Abstract

The phrase “scholarly communication” appears often in the description of library roles and responsibilities, but the function is still new enough that it takes different forms in different institutions. There is no common understanding of where it fits into the library’s organizational structure. This landscape review of offices of scholarly communication grows out of research originally conducted by Ithaka S+R for the Harvard Library. The project was designed to undertake a review of how academic institutions support the scholarly communication function in their libraries and to gather basic information about the issues at some of the largest research intensive university libraries. It finds categorical differences in the vision for the scholarly communications unit and its organizational placement, as well as associated differences in staffing and budget