Issues in Scholarly Communication is a newsletter produced by Paula Kaufman, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, for the Illinois community. Entries from 2001-2005 newsletter are available.
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“The University,” Ed Ayers declared, “is still unified under one convention, and that is scholarship.” So opened the Digital Library Federation’s (DLF) Spring Forum 2005, held in San Diego April 13–15. Edward Ayers, dean of the University of Virginia’s College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and director of the Valley of the Shadow project, delivered the keynote address to an audience of DLF members, allies, and invited guests from the United States and abroad. Ayers’s theme of “technology and the professorate” was timely. All university constituencies find themselves grappling with the implementation and implications of modern technology. What does it mean for the scholarly community when new tools change not only the method of dissemination but the very creation of scholarship itself? It is true, Ayers acknowledged, that modern American universities often seem fixed in the apparently disparate disciplinary structures formed in the nineteenth century. But it is also true that those who gather at our universities and colleges, regardless of their discipline, come with the common goals of creating new scholarship and building on what already exists. Digital technology does not alter these goals, but it does raise serious questions about the nature of modern and future scholarship. How may scholars best study, write, and share their knowledge? And how can librarians most effectively support scholars in an increasingly digitally based environment? CLIR Issues July/August 2005 http://www.clir.org/pubs/issues/issues46.html#promise
Posted by P. Kaufman at July 22, 2005 10:10 AM
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