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Program Background
We have entered an era characterized by a scholarly knowledge divide. The creators of knowledge (the scholars) and the stewards of knowledge (the librarians) have each become more professionalized and, as an unintended consequence, have become less engaged in the ways in which the work of each depends on the work of the other. This trend has become more pronounced in the digital age. Scholarship and librarianship are interrelated, but their issues are usually addressed separately. For example:
- Libraries digitize primary resources to respond to the demands of individual scholars, but scholars don't recognize the complexity of carrying out this task nor do they understand the demands placed on librarians who need to improve access and ensure preservation;
- Scholars, either individually or in groups, digitize materials for classroom use, research, personal use, or as parts of thematic collections without seeking support and advice from librarians and other information professionals about issues such as access, preservation, metadata, and copyright;
- Scholars are increasingly accepting of digital publication while librarians are finding that the contract law that controls access to such publications often makes preservation impossible and access problematic;
- Quality support of many special collections requires the subject area expertise of the scholar-specialist but this competency is not widely available within the library profession;
- Faculty members are often unaware of the information needs and use-patterns of their students, and are equally unaware of the pedagogical resources available to them through librarians and other information specialists; and
- Scholars, teachers, and librarians often miss opportunities to collaborate on the collection, digitization, dissemination, and use of materials (including primary sources, special collections, images, sound recordings, and more) and ways to integrate these materials in a pedagogically informed manner in the undergraduate classroom.
It is clear that librarians and scholars must become active collaborators in developing effective approaches to the interrelated domains of knowledge production and knowledge stewardship so that access can be effectively broadened and preservation ensured, and so that students can benefit from the ever-increasing range and types of materials available to them. In this swiftly changing and rapidly growing domain of knowledge management, the importance of creating newly coherent strategies is ever more important.
There are few vehicles within the scholarly disciplines to educate scholars about the implications for libraries of the choices they are making about specialized collections, primary resources, digital resources, and scholarship. In addition, the curriculum for library education does not always provide sufficient depth of preparation for librarians to address these challenges or to allow them to more adequately engage scholars in digital preservation and access issues. Similarly, many librarians will not have had the opportunity to actively teach and are therefore less prepared to engage with faculty about ways in which to include library instruction in courses, how to propose collaboration on course support, or to offer guest lectures on the importance of information resources, primary sources, library collections, etc. On the other hand, faculty scholars are often unaware of the ways in which librarians can supplement course instruction, help deliver digitized and analog course material, and advise on the cataloging and preservation of digital instructional materials.
The purpose of the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Scholarly Information Resources is to educate new scholars about the challenges and opportunities created by new forms of scholarly research and the information resources that support them, both traditional and digital. Simultaneously, Fellows bring advanced subject-area expertise, teaching experience, familiarity with new media, and awareness of current research trends to the libraries in which they will spend their fellowship. CLIR Fellows engage with library and information management issues across varied disciplines, learning the basics of library and information science while contributing their scholarly and pedagogical expertise in various venues. Previous Fellows have, over the course of their tenure in the program, accomplished the following:
- consulted on the best, pedagogically sound ways to integrate technology and digital materials into the undergraduate classroom;
- collaborated with librarians, archivists, and information technologists on the development of writing and research guides for students;
- participated in the design and implementation of metadata standards for faculty using digital visual resources in their teaching and research;
- designed improved library sites and portals that take into account user patterns of undergraduates;
- worked in special collections and rare materials archives, learning and performing tasks including material review and selection, creation of catalogue records, metadata entry, and authoring of abstracts;
- contributed to conversations about library renovation;
- authored front matter for printed catalogues in special collections;
- co-taught honors research skills courses;
- managed digital archives;
- advised on and contributed to inventories of digital projects in area collections;
- authored and consulted on grant proposals for digital projects;
- presented at national and international conferences in various areas of librarianship, archive management, metadata, humanities computing, and discipline-specific topics;
- taught bibliographic instruction sections for particular disciplines;
- proposed new courses which integrate library and archive research into the undergraduate curriculum; and
- promoted the CLIR Fellowship Program through articles, conference presentations, and colloquia.
Open to individuals who have recently completed (or who will complete before starting the program) the Ph.D. in the humanities and who believe that there are opportunities to develop meaningful linkages between disciplinary scholarship, libraries, archives, and evolving digital tools, the fellowship lasts for one (or, at some institutions, two) years and will include four fundamental components:
- a professional placement at an academic research library;
- an in-depth project carried out by the fellow;
- an intensive two-week seminar; and
- participation in the development of a community of scholarly information professionals through monthly virtual, synchronous sessions with leaders in the fields of librarianship, archives, publishing, and more.
The fellowship will include a full-time salary plus benefits as determined by the institution.
As a result of this fellowship, participants will:
- be positioned to pursue new career paths in the academy;
- be exceptionally qualified to find challenging positions in research institutions and/or campus libraries;
- broaden expertise in the professions that support the creation, management, and dissemination of scholarly resources;
- gain skills and creativity in the management of scholarly resources; and
- bring more subject-based expertise into the development and service of scholarly resources that will meet the rapidly changing needs of scholars for research and teaching.
Previous Fellows have gone on to pursue
- careers in library and information sciences, including advanced degrees in library and information science and/or information technology;
- tenure-track teaching and research positions at academic institutions;
- writing and consulting;
- pedagogy and curriculum support;
- hybrid positions in teaching and librarianship.
For more information about previous Fellows and their work while participating in the CLIR Program, see Fellows
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