Communication and Society

**51**

**Chapter 4**

**Abstract**

Scholarly Communication and the

This chapter focuses on the role that academic libraries play in the process of scholarly communication and presents a mixed-methods study to investigate (a) how faculty members perceive the involvement of academic librarians in scholarly communication and (b) how academic librarians perceive their own abilities to be involved in this process. The research population included faculty members from the faculties of humanities and social sciences in three Israeli academic institutions and academic librarians working in the libraries affiliated with these faculties. Interviews regarding the role of academic librarians in scholarly communication indicated wide gaps between faculty members and academic librarians and between individual members of each group, while questionnaires showed that a similar percentage of librarians and faculty members believe that academic librarians are potentially capable of being involved in this process. However, when asked whether the academic librarians should be involved in scholarly communication, only 36% of the librarians answered positively, as compared with 55% of the faculty members. These gaps highlight the need for change in academic libraries, as librarians should possess adequate technological skills, broad general knowledge, and an understanding of how to reorganize the

library work so as to accommodate collaborations with faculty members.

academic librarians, faculty members

**1. Introduction**

**1.1 Human communication**

vis-à-vis life in the modern world.

**Keywords:** scholarly communication, science communication, academic library,

Communication enables interpersonal transfer of messages and ideas and is a basic component of human interactions. Of all manifestations of human communication—e.g., facial expressions, body gestures, signs, or drawings—language appears to be the most complex, as it enables people to express complex ideas using a very wide range of words, subjects, and expressions, constructed into elaborate sentences. While researchers believe that language, or at least the ability to express thoughts by using words as means of communication, expression, and survival, is around 150–200 thousand of years old [1], it has evolved considerably with time, human biological and technological development, and changes in the human way of living, such that new words and expressions have been shaped to express ideas

Academic Library: Perceptions

and Recent Developments

*Liat Klain-Gabbay and Snunith Shoham*

## **Chapter 4**
