Preparing library and information science (LIS) students for scholarly communication librarianship: Assessing course objectives

This study investigates how well the scholarly communication course addresses the student learning objectives designed based on the competencies for SC librarianship established by North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG). Literature review shows a wide range of roles and responsibilities that scholarly communication librarians must learn on the job. Thus, this course was developed with the goal of preparing the LIS students for these emerging new roles and responsibilities. The self-assessment questionnaire was used to assess students’ comprehension of the scholarly communication competencies at the beginning and end of the semester. The paired t-test shows a statistically significant difference between pre- and post- course scores. The ANOVA analysis reveals that after the course completion the students learned the most about Institutional Repository management, with 1.57 points difference between pre- and post- scores, followed by publishing services (1.14), assessment metrics (.71), copyright services (.57), and data management (.43). These findings suggest that the course does cover most of the roles and responsibilities for scholarly communication librarians as defined by NASIG and it’s an important step forward in preparing students for scholarly communication librarianship.