Charlie, Mary Jo and I brainstormed some ideas about how the
Scholarly Communications & Special Collections unit would benefit from a
GA. I think it is important to say upfront that we do not see this person as
mitigating our need for a fully staffed unit, including a Scholarly
Communications Assistant, but rather an opportunity for us to provide useful
skills to a graduate student while delving deeper into areas that are important
to develop, but which we don’t have time to fully do all the legwork on
ourselves. Some examples:
1. Digital
Commons (DC)–
a.
do an annual site inventory with an eye towards
applying best practices such as SEO, metadata, organization, and collection
content
b.
do the repetitive work on established
collections that are updated periodically (ex. Annual conferences, some
journals)
c.
check copyright and publisher permissions for faculty
article submissions
d.
under the supervision of the Archivist, add
archival content to DC
2. Digital
Publishing
a.
Assist with the SUNY Brockport eBook platform in
a variety of ways – preparing books for publication (i.e. Gilgamesh, which we
have been working on combining, formatting and converting 27 Word files into
one book for 18 months now because we can’t find time to just continuously work
on it), writing promotional pieces, etc.
b.
Help with celebratory event planning for author
and new books
c.
Work with DC journals
3. Events
and Workshops
a.
Depending on the major and special talents of
the GA, they could help host workshops on various topics (data visualization,
O365, digital identity management, personal archiving, or other topics relating
to Scholarly Communications and Special Collections).
b.
Assist with event planning for annual or
biannual Celebration of Scholarship.
c.
Assist other areas in the library with events or
conferences, as needed.
I think it would be important to make sure we have a focus
and plan specific activities once we knew the talents and interests of the GA.
