EIFL-OA Programme Manager Iryna Kuchma will attend Bibliotheca academica 2014 (akvs.cz/aktivity/ba-2014/program.html) conference: Společně – otevřeně – efektivně / Together - Open - Effective, and will give a presentation "Librarians’ Competencies in Support of E-Research and Scholarly Communication".

This presentation will highlight the results of the ARL/CARL/COAR/LIBER Joint Task Force on Librarians’ Competencies in Support of E-Research and Scholarly Communication.

Rapid changes in technology and associated shifts in research and scholarly communications are profoundly changing the role of libraries in the 21st century. The emergence of e-research, for example, is bringing about new ways of doing science across the globe, compelling libraries to adopt new services, such as assisting with the development of research data management plans, hosting collaborative virtual research environments, in addition to managing institutional repositories, and providing support in open access publishing and digital humanities. These novel services require a range of new skills and expertise within the library community as well as a shift in organizational models for libraries.

In August 2013, The Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), and the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) came together to jointly work on defining professional librarians’ competency needs to support e-research and scholarly communication. The aim of the task force is to outline the competencies needed by librarians in this evolving environment.

Since then, the Task Force has been working on identifying emerging specialty roles, performing a literature review and collaboratively preparing a series of service areas and competencies documents for research data management, scholarly communication and publishing, digital curation and preservation and support for digital scholarship.

The task force will also produce a toolkit that will help to build capacity in libraries for supporting new roles in the area of scholarly communication and e-research. The toolkit will allow library managers to identify skill gaps in their institution, form the basis of job descriptions, enable professionals to carry out self-assessments, and act as a foundation for the development of training programs for librarians and library professionals. In addition, the toolkit will provide an outline of new organizational models that are evolving in this dynamic environment.

This presentation will update the research library community on the work of the Task Force, and will seek the feedback from the community.