ASERL Summertime Summit

This was a one day event, titled Liaison Roles in Open Access & Data Management: Equal Parts Inspiration & Perspiration.
Our own Sayeed Choudhury was the keynote speaker. His talk, Open Access & Data Management are Do-Able Through Partnerships was very good. What stuck in my mind was the point he made about data becoming an economic driver. The traditional three economic drivers are land, labor, and capital. Data has been added as a fourth driver.
During Marketing Open Access Services & Tools to Faculty, Sean Lind, Georgia State University, made the point that mass marketing of open access services and tools to faculty does not work. He has found that one-on-one conversations, small workshops, working with campus research offices to contact faculty works better than campus-wide announcements and email blasts.
During Library Staffing/Responsibility Models for Data Management and Open Access, Kathy Crowe, UNC Greensboro, talked about how they re-evaluated the roles of their liaison librarians. They decided to change their approach to collection development to allow the liaisons for more time to learn about and promote OA and data services. She also pointed out that the people directly responsible for OA and Data services need to accompany liaison librarians for specific conversations, since the liaisons still didn't feel comfortable discussing specific situations, even after training.
Lorraine Harricombe, Dean University of Kansas Library, gave the closing address, Embracing Change = Empowering Scholarship.She urged us to get out and advocate OA. But she also warned that OA mandates, where faculty agree to make their journal articles open, take a lot of time and must come from the faculty themselves. Her other point, in this time of continual change, is this: It is not acceptable to say "I don't know anything about this."

If any of you has a chance to attend an ASERL event, I highly recommend it. The people I talked with were interesting, knowledgeable, and fun.

Robin N Sinn