Last weekend, I had the pleasure to serve on a panel at ACRL with three fantastic library scholars – Marie Radford, Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe, and Lynn Connaway – in a discussion about scholarly identity, where I shared about the Digital Presence and Public Scholarship Initiative at Michigan State. The panel was recorded, and the video will be shared soon. Below are our slides and the framing materials for the panel.
Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL)
April 10-12, 2019
Cleveland, OH
The slides are also available on Humanities Commons at: http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/jtw6-pp40
Overview
Online scholarly identity is complex and multi-faceted. Bringing together a panel of experts with knowledge and experience in different aspects of developing and sustaining one’s scholarly identify provides an opportunity to present the full range of opportunities and challenges for both librarians and scholars. This panel marries academic research on issues of scholarly identity with the on-the-ground practice of training faculty, librarians, and graduate students in online and digital presence.
In addition to discussion, session attendees will have the opportunity to reflect on and share strategies that they can employ in working with faculty and in curating their own personal online identities. Audience engagement opportunities also include a hands-on, interactive mapping activity, interactive online exercises and polls, and group discussion.
Full Program Description
Scholarly Identity (SI) encompasses scholars’ efforts to promote their reputation and impact (Brigham 2016) using digital tools and social networking sites (SNS) (e.g., ORCID). The need to cultivate an academic SNS presence is pressing, particularly for individuals who are in tenure-track positions, working towards promotion, etc. Managing SI is complex, and disciplinary standards differ for selecting SNS and establishing impact measurements. This panel provides diverse perspectives from academic librarians and researchers to address: a) How should/could academic librarians assist users who wish to build their SI? b) What services are currently offered? c) What opportunities, as well as concerns, surround SI work? The library and information science (LIS) literature has shed some light on academic libraries’ SI assistance (Ward et al. 2015). Reed et al. (2016) assert that academic libraries can build support services to help users craft and manage their SI. Academic librarians also use SNS to promote their own work (Brigham, 2016).
References: https://bit.ly/2rfqj9O
Panel Outline
Marie Radford – Will moderate the panel, introduce the topic of SI, cover advantages of SI work for academics, and provide brief results from exploratory interviews with academic librarians, social science faculty, and doctoral students to illustrate different goals, opportunities, and perspectives regarding SI work. She will also reveal findings surrounding help users want from academic librarians.
Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe – Will discuss advice and support librarians can give to scholars who are looking to further their online SI through the most effective and efficient use of various platforms. She will provide specific recommendations, such as time management strategies, for those at different career stages, including researchers who write books rather than articles. Recommendations for librarians as scholars included.
Kristen Mapes – Will discuss a program for scholars at a large, public, research university (Michigan State University), that introduces online identity and digital presence concepts via a range of options, from a three-hour workshop to an eight-week fellowship program. This program embraces the varying ways scholars can use SI to forge one’s “Path to Intellectual Leadership”. The presenter will discuss the grassroots approach of this growing program, relationships that have formed across campus units, and goals for creating scalable models for other institutional contexts.
Lynn Connaway – Lead V+R maps activity and building into discussion. Will discuss concerns surrounding scholarly identity work also drawing from exploratory interviews and extant literature. Although academic librarians and social science faculty and doctoral students identified positive aspects of SI development, they also articulated several drawbacks and concerns associated with promoting one’s SI. She will explain and summarize the “dark side” of scholarly identify work discussed by the interviewees, which could be useful for librarians’ own SI work as well as their related user services
