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April 9, 2007
E-publishing is first focus of lecture series exploring the
role of academic libraries

by kim urquhart

A symposium on the role of electronic publishing in the academy is the first in a series of public conversations the University Libraries will hold over the next two years to explore the evolving role of the academic library in the 21st century.

“The library of the 21st century is going to have multiple dimensions. It will exist in a real place in a real space, but also exist very intensively in cyberspace,” said Jonathan Prude, faculty chair of the Library Policy Committee and associate professor of history. “The lecture series is designed to present all those different aspects and explore what the library will look like as we move forward.”

The first symposium in the series, “The Library and the Production of Knowledge in the Digital Age,” is set for Friday, April 13, from 2 to 4 p.m. in the Jones Room of the Woodruff Library.

Short presentations and a panel discussion will explore the developing role of e-publications; their effect on particular fields and on intellectual inquiry; their reception in the academy; and their intersection with and support from academic libraries.

The panel of four distinguished scholars includes two Emory professors who edit e-journals: John Nickerson, associate professor of ophthalmology and editor of Molecular Vision, a peer-reviewed Web journal at Emory; and Allen Tullos, associate professor in the Institute of Liberal Arts and editor of Southern Spaces, an e-journal created at Emory. Charles Henry, president of the Council on Library and Information Resources, and professor Rosemary Feal, executive director of the Modern Language Association, will also participate in the discussion.

Prude said that faculty and graduates should find the symposium to be of direct relevance. “Whether we regard publication in e-journals as comparable to publication in [traditional print journals] with respect to promotion and tenure” will be an increasingly important question within the academy, he said.

Future symposia will continue the campus dialogue. “The Library and Informatics” is tentatively scheduled for fall 2007 followed by “Texts, Rare and Valuable, Past and Present” and “Collecting for a Library in the Digital Age.”

Sponsored by Emory College, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the Emory Libraries and the Office of the Provost, the event is free and open to the public. For more information call 404-727-6861.

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