| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立中興大學 === 圖書資訊學研究所 === 103 === Abstract
University libraries play a key role in helping universities with knowledge creation, production, communication, and usages, which are the key functions in scholarly communication. The current system of scholarly communication is changing. Libraries and their institutions can no longer keep up with the increasing volume and cost of scholarly resources. The much-touted expectation that the digital revolution would decrease costs and increase access has been thwarted by commercial publishers interested in maximizing revenues through raising prices and restricting access. Worldwide, an increasing number of university libraries and scholars are taking action against the situation. Developing alternative approaches to scholarly communication such as institutional repositories, open access, and publishing are effective ways for university libraries to restore accessibility of information, and the cognition and attitudes of university librarians are the keys to restoring access.
The study aims at exploring the cognition and attitudes of university librarians in Taiwan toward scholarly communication, the relationship between librarians’ cognition and attitudes, and the factors that affect libraries to aid scholarly communication. To achieve the study’s aims, questionnaires investigating the cognition and attitudes of university librarians were designed; these questionnaires were administered at the 12 universities participating in the Ministry of Education’s (Taiwan, R.O.C.) “Aim for the Top University Plan.” Data collection took place from Aug. 1st, 2014 to Sep. 15th, 2014. A total of 327 valid questionnaires were collected for a return rate of 72.66%.
The study reveals that (1) the 12 university libraries have developed institutional repositories, but still need to be encouraged to develop open access, and publishing; (2) librarians scored an average of 3.88 in the category of scholarly-communication cognition, and 3.60 on scholarly-communication attitudes; (3) better attitudes strongly correlates with better cognition; (4) and, regarding individual libraries, the best cognition was found in librarians at National Chiao Tung University, followed by those at National Chung Hsing University and then those at National Taiwan University, while librarians at National Yang Ming University showed the lowest cognition; (5) librarians at National Chung Hsing University, followed by those at National Taiwan University and then those at National Taiwan Normal University had the most positive attitudes on aiding scholarly communication, while librarians at National Yang Ming University showed the least positive attitudes; (6) certified librarians had better cognition than contract librarians, while librarians with master’s degrees had more positive attitudes on aiding scholarly communication; (7) librarians in libraries that had developed open access, and publishing had better cognition and more positive attitudes on aiding scholarly communication; (8) the indicators librarians gave the highest scores as being the keys to better developing scholarly communication were library director’s support, then principle’s support, then professors’ support; and (9) librarians had widely varying opinions on whether scholarly communication is a job that belongs to libraries.
The following suggestions are proposed based on the findings: (1) Get libraries much more involved in developing scholarly communication; (2) facilitate and improve collaboration between libraries and other departments/institutions both within each university and outside, as working with professors and other academics is crucial for progress; (3) enhance librarians knowledge and training on scholarly communication to improve their attitudes on aiding scholarly communication; (4) recognize that scholarly communication nowadays is a new job for university libraries worldwide, it’s important to rebuild and stress libraries’ value and new mission and get librarians’ support on aiding scholarly communication; (5) increase librarians’ enthusiasm for, and confidence in, aiding scholarly communication, as this will increase librarians’ willingness to aid scholarly communication and help libraries play a key and perhaps pivotal role in restoring and then protecting open access to scholarly information and in facilitating scholarly communication.
|
|---|
