Leading Change in the System of
Scholarly Communication: A Case
Study of Engaging Liaison Librarians
for Outreach to Faculty

Kara J. Malenfant

Kara J. Malenfant is Scholarly Communications and Government Relations Specialist at the Association
of College and Research Libraries and a Ph.D. student in the Leadership and Change program at Antioch
University; e-mail kmalenfant@ala.org. She would like to thank Karla Hahn and David Free for their com-
ments on earlier drafts of this article. ©Kara J. Malenfant

This narrative, single-case study examines how liaison librarians at the
University of Minnesota (UMN) came to include advocating for reform of
the scholarly communication system among their core responsibilities.
While other libraries may hire a coordinator or rely on a committee to
undertake outreach programs, UMN has defined baseline expertise in
scholarly communication for all librarians who serve as liaisons to disci-
plinary faculty members. By “mainstreaming” scholarly communication
duties, UMN is declaring these issues central to the profession.1 This
intrinsic study uses evidence gathered from open-ended interviews
with three participants, supplemented by documentation. It explores the
context of these changes, systems thinking, and new mental models.

he formal system of scholarly
communication—which al-
lows research and other schol-
arly writings to be created,

evaluated, registered, disseminated, and
preserved2—is rapidly evolving. Libraries
and universities are both responding to
this dynamic environment and seeking
to influence its development.3

Some academic libraries purposefully
target key stakeholders on campus—fac-
ulty authors, researchers, and administra-
tors. They plan outreach programs and
education initiatives, being deliberate
about the ways they seek to influence
change on their campuses. They commit

resources toward these efforts to ensure
sustainability. The initial stages of a
library-led scholarly communication out-
reach program often include educating
librarians on the issues and training them
in techniques to be effective advocates.
Engaging library staff to carry out the
various components of the outreach pro-
gram plan is a key element to its success.

Changes in scholarly communica-
tion are forcing librarians to shift their
mental models and alter their services.
This requires substantial personal and
organizational commitment to change.
As the Scholarly Communications and
Government Relations Specialist at the

64 College & Research Libraries January 2010

Association of College and Research
Libraries (ACRL), a division of the Ameri-
can Library Association, I have a strong
personal and professional interest in
understanding how this kind of change
occurs. I want to understand the change
process and how different individuals’
leadership, both positional and without
authority, plays into this kind of change.

Choice of Case
In this narrative, single-case study, I aim
to develop an understanding of ways
liaison librarians at the University of
Minnesota (UMN) became engaged in
furthering the goals of the outreach pro-
gram and how they view these changes
in their work. This case looks closely at
one organization that has been intention-
ally implementing a change process and
integrating scholarly communication
activities into the work life of liaison
librarians. Incorporating new roles and
new thinking into a complex system is
always dependent on the local situation,
the larger environmental shifts, and the
interconnected nature of the changes. I
hope to gain a better understanding of
the leadership principles that foster par-
ticipation in this change effort and a sense
of which elements may be transferrable.

By “mainstreaming” scholarly com-
munication duties into the work of all
liaison librarians, the UMN Libraries are
moving these issues to the very center of
the profession and fully owning them.4
I selected UMN as an intrinsic case: a
special, significant example, not a typical
or average case of how libraries imple-
ment scholarly communication outreach
programs. I am interested in what is hap-
pening at the UMN, as Robert E. Stake
says, “not because by studying it we learn
about other cases or about some general
problem, but because we need to learn
about that particular case. We have an
intrinsic interest in the case.”5

Positioning of the Researcher
I carried out this research as a Ph.D. stu-
dent in Antioch University’s leadership

and change program. I came to know
Karen Williams, the first Associate Uni-
versity Librarian for Academic Programs
at UMN, and her work there through her
roles as founding faculty member and
designer for the ARL/ACRL Institute on
Scholarly Communication, member of
ACRL’s Scholarly Communication Com-
mittee, and member at large on ACRL’s
Board of Directors. I had heard Williams
mention that UMN defined baseline
expertise in scholarly communication
for all librarians who serve as liaisons to
disciplinary faculty members during the
ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly Com-
munication and observed the room of one
hundred people, who were working on
planning their own scholarly communi-
cation programs, begin to murmur with
interest. It was clear that UMN is ahead
of the curve in developing their program.
Intrigued by their obvious commitment
to change, I wanted to develop an under-
standing of ways liaison librarians at the
UMN changed their primary responsibili-
ties to include advocating for reform of
the system of scholarly communication
with faculty researchers and authors on
their campuses. I seek to understand how
they engage in furthering the goals of the
outreach program and how they view
these changes in their work.

Key Conceptual Frameworks
Systems thinking is a useful primary
framework for examining a case like
UMN with wide-scale change and par-
ticipatory leadership. Distinct from linear
thinking, systems thinking draws from
physics, biology, and ecology, as well as
nonscientific fields like music. A systems
thinking approach recognizes the innate
networks, the interconnectedness, inter-
dependency, and collaboration among
people in organizations. “It is not top-
down or bottom up, but participative at
all levels—aligned through common un-
derstanding of a system,”6 as Peter Senge
describes it. He advocates viewing an
organization as a system within systems
and made up of systems as one of the five

Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication 65

key practices to unleash the potential for
organizational learning.7

Another proponent of systems think-
ing, Margaret Wheatley, explains, “the
way life organizes itself is entirely differ-
ent from the way humans have chosen to
organize it, especially in modern day life.
We are just beginning to understand this
difference.… We do not have to move into
these old patterns of organizing, which
involve command and control, structure,
and rules and policies as the way to create
order. We have a choice.”8

Williams brought systems thinking
practices, values, and beliefs to UMN
from her time at the University of Arizona
(UA) Library. Staff members at UA Li-
brary have used systems thinking for over
a decade, writes Shelly E. Phipps. They
view their workplace as “a laboratory of
learning about organizational change”9
and use a systems thinking approach to
prepare for “the transformational changes
that will occur in the twenty first cen-
tury.”10 As this approach was applied, the
UA Library goals “called for a flatter or-
ganization with shared decision-making
and problem-solving responsibilities.…
As the non hierarchical approach took
place, it was clear that all the embedded
systems that had supported work in the
former organization were incompatible
with the new structure and goals.”11
Phipps argues, “Culture change would
not have been possible without systems
change.”12

Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal’s
Reframing Organizations13 provides a
second framework for viewing this case.
Within academic librarianship, there is
acceptance and widespread application
of their four frames—political, structural,
symbolic, and human resources—in part
as their book is the cornerstone text for
the ACRL/Harvard Leadership Institute.
Some particular assumptions of the
symbolic frame have bearing in this case:
“What is important is not what happens,
but what it means” and “Activity and
meaning are loosely coupled; events have
multiple meanings because people inter-

pret experience differently.”14 As this case
examines library liaisons as a group, one
tenet of the symbolic frame is particularly
noteworthy: “Example, not command,
holds a team together.”15

Moving to the political frame, some
relevant assumptions include, “Organiza-
tions are coalitions of diverse individuals
and interest groups; there are enduring
differences among coalition members in
values, beliefs, information, interests, and
perceptions of reality; most important
decisions involve allocating scarce re-
sources—who gets what.”16 Both the sym-
bolic and political frames are powerful in
situations where there is a high level of
ambiguity and uncertainty, where conflict
and scarce resources are significant, and
where organizations are working from the
bottom up.17 This could well describe the
situation facing many academic libraries
today as we look to evolve in a tough
economic climate.

Methodology
This case aims to develop an understand-
ing of a culture and is, therefore, of an
ethnographic style. To understand the
changes at the UMN Libraries, my key
method was semistructured in-person
interviews with member checking in
the form of brief follow-up phone calls
and e-mails asking for clarification. I
used open-ended interviews, described
by Robert K. Yin as a common form of
case study evidence,18 to gather infor-
mation about the UMN change process
from Williams and two liaison librarians
affected directly by the new position
description framework. These kinds of
interviews, Yin says, “do not typically
employ a structured questionnaire instru-
ment but assume a more ‘conversational’
mode—requiring the investigator to have
a sound prior knowledge of the subject
matter if not about the specific person
being interviewed.”19 I recorded notes
from these conversations by hand, im-
mediately typing them afterward to fill
in gaps and to add my observations. The
liaisons volunteered to participate based

66 College & Research Libraries January 2010

on an invitation forwarded on my behalf.
Since I carried out this research in my

role as a student, the institutional review
board of Antioch University fully vetted
and approved of my research plan, par-
ticipants signed consent forms, and, as
part of member checking, they reviewed
draft portions of my paper to ensure I did
not misinterpret their comments or mis-
represent the context. When I decided to
adapt my work and submit a manuscript
for publication consideration, I informed
them and shared my final student paper
for additional reaction. Williams offered
me her express permission to use her
name in this published report, and I cre-
ated pseudonyms for the liaisons.

I supplemented the interviews and tri-
angulated that data by drawing on docu-
mentation (such as reports, brochures,
and Web sites). These additional sources
of evidence provide context of the change
process over time. Keeping in mind that
this is an intrinsic case, I followed Stake’s
advice, “The more the case study is an
intrinsic case study, the more attention
needs to be paid to the contexts.”20

All three participants are involved in
the libraries’ scholarly communication
planning group, and both liaisons sup-
port the sciences. As such, they are more
knowledgeable of the issues and more
invested in changing both the system of
scholarly communication and the liaisons’
roles than I would expect an average liai-
son to be. Without long-term field work,
I relied on the information they provided
to me and on their accounts of the events.
In developing the case, I am filtering those
stories yet again through my own lens
and with my own bias.

The Case
The Impetus for Systemic Change
Arriving at the UMN Libraries in No-
vember 2004 from the UA Library, Wil-
liams encountered two different and
very strong reactions from library staff
members—“Thank God; we need to shake
things up” and “We don’t want any part of
that” (“that” being team-based organiza-

tion development and systems thinking).
In many ways, the timing of her arrival
was propitious.

Strategic change was transforming
the libraries and the larger campus en-
vironment. Williams was recruited to
lead a new library division, academic
programs, to create close ties to aca-
demic life on campus, integrate library
resources within academic programs, and
contribute to the intellectual and educa-
tional missions of the university. Just a
few months before Williams’ arrival, the
new university president introduced an
ambitious strategic positioning initiative,
“Transforming the U.”21 It sent the mes-
sage that “upstarts with big ideas are not
going to get trampled. For some people in
the libraries, it freed them to take risks, for
others it was a wake-up call that change
is afoot on this campus and major change
has support,” Williams observed.

One of my participants, whom I’ll call
Pat French, observed, looking back, that
University Librarian Wendy Lougee and
Williams “changed the tone and changed
the structure. One of the ways is by truly
taking into account the realities of the
university and its priorities. Wendy has
done a marvelous job of raising the profile
of the library, integrating the libraries’
priorities to those of the university’s. The
library and its programs are much more
vital now; they’re exciting and evolving.
Previously we were content; there was
no risk taking.”

With a university goal of becoming
one of the top three public research
universities in the world, and with the
focus of the new division of academic
programs, the UMN libraries set a priority
to change their relationship to scholarly
communication.

Introducing New Mental Models
When Williams started, one of her first
tasks was taking a hard look at how to
structure the new division of Academic
Programs, adding departments and
adjusting staffing levels. Sitting in Wil-
liams’ office, comfortably surrounded by a

Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication 67

veritable indoor garden and an attractive
array of photos and personal mementos,
she reflects, “When I restructured, I had
to pay attention to a lot of things. I’d had
good exposure and training at Arizona—
although nothing’s perfect—to systems
thinking and one of the gurus there was
Peter Senge. To me it’s essential to develop
an understanding that we’re part of the
university and part of higher education.”

Having written previously, along with
Joseph M. Brewer and others, of a clear
vision for how librarians can transform
their own roles and contribute to the
transformation of the colleges and uni-
versities they serve,22 Williams focused
the energy of this new division on, among
other things, integrating scholarly com-
munication activities into the work flow
of the liaison librarians by:

• establishing the Scholarly Commu-
nication Collaborative to support liaisons;

• changing liaisons’ job descriptions;
• administering a self-assessment of

knowledge, skills, and abilities; and
• requiring a performance goal

around author rights.
While I will address each of these of

four points in detail, Williams explains
this multipronged approach thus: “People
need more than just a vision and mission.
You have to figure out your message and
say it in every way and with multiple
tools to reinforce it.…You have to anchor
change into the system, then celebrate
success and celebrate failure. You have
to reward risk taking.”

The Scholarly Communication
Collaborative
Williams created the Scholarly Commu-
nication Collaborative in fall of 2006 as
a first major step in this change process.
Believing that language is very important
symbolically in signaling change, the
word collaborative was selected because
it has the implication that everyone par-
ticipates. The Scholarly Communication
Collaborative has “a two-pronged focus:
develop and implement as appropriate
a coordinated plan for the University

Libraries to inform and educate its staff;
and recommend appropriate approaches
for engaging the campus community
in the policy and practical issues that
surround the process of scholarly com-
munication.”23

Founding members of the group, the
first collaborative set up under the new
organizational structure, had to make a
big adjustment to this new way of work-
ing. One liaison says, “I had understood
in my mind that it was more like a sup-
port group for those who are interested in
these issues.… At the first meeting I saw
the charge and time commitment, and it
took me aback. It took time to be clear
that the collaborative as a group would
design and implement courses of action
for others to take and could be entirely
separate from the work I’d done before
on these issues as a liaison.”

The collaborative has sponsors who
function like a steering committee to give
guidance and feedback, remove barriers
and provide resources. The sponsors
decide the big overarching agenda for
the year, like the current focus on author
rights, while the chairs set the meeting
agendas, run the meetings, report out,
and design activities to achieve a goal.
They check in through monthly meetings
with the collaborative’s cochairs and are
tapped for resources to bring in speakers
or help in communicating with liaisons.

Collaborative members support li-
aisons in two primary ways. First, they
educate liaisons and foster discussion
through workshops that may include
external speakers. They also develop
tools for liaisons like a self-playing pre-
sentation on author rights, a PowerPoint
presentation template, talking points, and
environmental scan exercises.24

The collaborative found that staff faced
a steep learning curve. One liaison says,
“It felt for awhile like we were having
brown bags endlessly. Every time we’d
have one, some liaisons would chime in to
suggest other tools and more training.… It
indicates a continuing lack of confidence
about expertise and the general idea that

68 College & Research Libraries January 2010

since you’re expecting me to do a new
thing, you need to make it as easy as pos-
sible for me.”

Even with this support, liaisons have
to invest in preparing themselves before
they talk to faculty. It’s not just knowledge
and preparation that’s required, it is a
deeper change in mindset—one that also
requires opportunism. The second liai-
son to participate in this case, whom I’ll
call Julie Washburn, offered an example
around author rights. “In every depart-
ment there’s a different hook, a differ-
ent key. You have to think like a faculty
member, ‘Why do I care about this?’ You
have to find specific examples from their
societies, their journals, and point out
prohibitive language in agreements they
actually would be signing. You have to be
ready to go in. You can’t put up the self-
player and not know anything about their
societies, their disciplines, their issues.”

Bearing this in mind, the collabora-
tive has developed structures to assist
librarians in doing this kind of home-
work, like the two-stage environmental
scan. For stage one, in fall 2007, liaisons
gathered information based on what they
already knew or could discover without
interviewing or surveying faculty. Items
include whether there is a disciplinary
repository serving the field, major pro-
fessional society/ies associated with the
discipline, and the society’s official posi-
tion on open access. In the second stage,
in spring 2008, liaisons interacted more
directly with the department to identify
influential faculty members, such as those
who edit for journals or serve as officers in
their disciplinary society. The stated goal
of the environmental scan is to “help liai-
sons in their work with faculty on authors’
rights issues and will also help identify
faculty champions who can join with us
in advocating for change in the scholarly
communication system.”25

Another leadership challenge arises
around shaping expectations and engag-
ing liaisons when the collaborative has
little direct authority. Collaborative mem-
bers realized that language is important

in how the cochairs convey information
to the liaisons. For example, liaisons “are
expected” to attend the workshops or
complete the environmental scan but not
“required.” Who conveys the message
is also important. Sometimes they ask
Williams to send messages so that they
carry more weight than a message from
the cochairs would. The collaborative
cannot, however, enforce compliance. The
cochairs could, with things like the envi-
ronmental scan exercise, inform Williams
of those who have not completed the task
and she could ask the department heads
and supervisors to talk to the liaisons.
As it turns out, there was a 97 percent
completion rate of phase one, which
revealed fascinating data that library ad-
ministrators could use for other purposes
in advocating for the library.

Position Descriptions
At the same time the collaborative was
formed, the libraries were introducing a
new framework for librarians to make po-
sition descriptions more uniform while,
at the same time, allowing for flexibility
and customization so that individuals
could play to their strengths. The in-
troduction to the internal, unpublished
document reads, “Our profession faces
significant change and this is reflected
in the changing and expanding roles of
librarians. The framework is intended
to help articulate both ongoing and new
roles and responsibilities.”26 Intention-
ally designed to bring people along with
incremental changes over time, French
observed, “Making the positions more
similar could be viewed as mechanical,
but it’s also a way to change the substance
of some jobs. If you didn’t have liaison
duties clearly spelled out before now you
do. And it’s not just the description on the
paper that changes, but it’s your job itself
that is changing.”

Introducing position descriptions
offered an important opportunity to
integrate scholarly communication roles
into liaison work. While the framework
identifies roles and responsibilities in nine

Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication 69

areas, those for scholarly communication
are the following:

• educate and inform faculty, gradu-
ate students, and campus administrators
about scholarly communication issues.
Examples include:

— helping faculty and graduate
students to understand their rights as
authors; and

— contributing content to copy-
right and/or scholarly communication
Web sites.

• advocate for sustainable models of
scholarly communication.

• work closely with faculty and
students to understand their changing
workflows and patterns of scholarly com-
munication; assist in the development and
creation of tools and services to facilitate
scholarly communication.

• support and promote the Univer-
sity Digital Conservancy by:

— helping administrators, faculty,
and students understand the role of the
UDC in building and preserving digital
collections;

— working with faculty and de-
partments to promote the UDC as a
scholarly communication tool;

— assisting in content recruitment;
— identifying digital resources that

require long-term preservation and merit
sustained access; and

— helping to shape the infrastruc-
ture in which digital preservation and
access can successfully evolve.27

Another tactic intended to show that
the scholarly communication duties are
not a separate, extra thing is leading by
example. Some liaisons, like Washburn
and French, are drawn to these issues
and actively work with faculty and
scholars on these issues anyway. Their
model behaviors convey to other liai-
sons that they, too, should be carrying
out these activities. For example, one of
them wrote a rebuttal to an anti–open
access editorial in a disciplinary society
newsletter, and the editors published
it. In a second success story, one liaison
was invited by a faculty member to co-

author a chapter of a book. “I took that
opportunity to work in a piece about
the value of open access. That wouldn’t
have happened if I hadn’t been having
these kinds of conversations with faculty
and didn’t have the knowledge myself
on these issues.” While these two are
motivated and engaged, French, at least,
is doubtful that positioning this work
as part of being a liaison resonates with
others: “I don’t know how successful it
has been to frame it that way.”

Course Check
Following on the collaborative’s educa-
tional program and the institution of po-
sition descriptions, liaisons completed an
anonymous self-assessment instrument
on their knowledge, skills, and abilities
(KSA) to carry out the work articulated
in the revised position descriptions. It
came after a year of education and intense
activities to help librarians make these
changes to their work. The KSA is an in-
ternal, unpublished instrument intended
to help identify gaps and aid with future
planning, not designed to be a statistically
valid instrument.

The KSA survey asks librarians to rate
their current knowledge, skills, and abili-
ties in nine areas. A few of the statements
for scholarly communication read:

• be aware of the scholarly commu-
nication differences among disciplines;

• possess a basic understanding of a
variety of publishing models, including
open access;

• understand the tenure process as it
relates to publishing, including the issue
of impact factor;

• advocate for sustainable models of
scholarly communication; and

• advise scholars on how they may
manage the articles, preprints, and other
materials that they gather.28

While the results were not yet aggre-
gated when we spoke in February 2008,29
Williams mentioned that very few people
said they were “advanced” in scholarly
communication. She was surprised by
how many said they fall into the basic

70 College & Research Libraries January 2010

and intermediate categories. “Now we’ll
have to go back to staff and discuss next
steps. Any survey has its limitations, of
course. And here it could be that ‘Min-
nesota modest’ thing where people tend
to be overly humble in general. I believe
people were very honest in completing
this, but maybe they were too modest?”

Performance Goal on Author Rights
Another step in changing librarians’ roles
was implementing a performance goal
in 2008 around talking to faculty about
publishing agreements and retaining key
copyrights. An important symbolic step, it
indicates the organization is committed to
a new model of operation. This new goal
aligns with a broader systemic change;
as Williams says, “This has really been
helped out by the UMN endorsing the
Committee on Institutional Cooperation
addendum. This push for author rights is
not just coming from me, the collabora-
tive, or someone’s department director.
The Senate endorsed it; the Provost en-
dorsed it.” Although the goal is required,
how one carries it out is flexible. It could
mean a ten-minute presentation at a fac-
ulty meeting, talking to two people from
the department over coffee, sending an e-
mail message to spark an online dialogue,
or leading a whole seminar.

Implementing this goal has required
strong support from formal leaders.
“Some departments are OK. Some depart-
ment heads are strong and coach their
people and are willing to be directive,”
Williams explains. “In others there is
push back but not as much as I would
have expected.” She has taken personal
responsibility for communicating her
expectations. “I have made it clear that
if a goal has to slide, it had better not be
this one.”

French, too, reports a mixed but gener-
ally positive response. She tells me about
plenty of liaisons who are gung ho, like
one who started a blog for her department
on author rights issues since she could not
meet in person with the faculty as a group
(the department does not have regular

meetings). Another liaison saw the beta
version of the self-playing presentation
and wanted to use it immediately. A third
colleague finds it difficult in some respects
to be a liaison and dislikes going out and
talking to faculty. Yet this person gave
presentations on author rights to two
different departments. “It’s good to see
this progress,” French says. “And it came
about because the goal is enforceable,
and we did provide the tools. Without
scholarly communication as a priority, in
the position description, in the goals, and
without support from the collaborative,
this wouldn’t have happened.”

Washburn also reported on the goal’s
effect on her own commitment to lead
change in this area. While inclined to
take on this work anyway,y she says she
now feels “absolutely compelled. It’s in
our formal goal statements.” While she
generally embraces scholarly communica-
tion responsibilities, “Probably there are
liaisons who are resentful, who see it as
very top down and an imposition. ‘You
will do this in your goals even though it’s
not your priority.’ ”

What Liaisons Let Go
When positions change, people feel they
are being asked to take on more. Here,
liaisons are explicitly expected to stop
doing things in the areas of collection
development, reference desk staffing, and
departmental libraries. Liaisons must re-
direct scarce resources—their time—with
inherent political implications.

Approval plans were instituted; civil
service staff were promoted to oversee
information and reference desks and to
function as supervisors of branch librar-
ies. Williams approaches these changes
gently. “I just start the conversation and
understand that the first time it will be
controversial and painful, but I also ex-
plain that we don’t have to make a deci-
sion today or even in the first year. So the
conversation continues, and when I’m not
in the room it goes on. People come back
to me with objections, and we discuss
them. My job is to plant the idea, get the

Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication 71

conversation going and make people a
little uncomfortable. I keep saying, ‘Could
we do this differently? If we started over,
what would it look like?’ ”

Liaison Reluctance
Williams has heard over and over from
liaisons, “I can’t do that! How do I make
cold calls? What’s my entré?” Indeed,
many librarians are afraid of faculty and
intimidated. Williams mused that while
“librarians are often progressive politi-
cally and socially, they are not progressive
in terms of changing and experimenting
in their own work.” In terms of risk tak-
ing, “we think about things as failure
that probably aren’t and avoid them in
the future. If we want people to work in
new ways they have to be comfortable
hearing ‘no’ and feel that it’s OK. How do
you react? What would you do differently
next time?”

Still, Williams remarks, “I’m surprised
I haven’t had more resistance. But our
ways of doing things have really changed
in the past five years. One reason, per-
haps, that I haven’t seen much resistance
is because we’re still doing some of the
easier stuff, but what will it be like when
it gets harder?” It may help that she talks
up the UMN Libraries efforts in scholarly
communication. “Positioning us as a na-
tional leader works to motivate staff. It’s
encouraging to them to think that people
are watching us.”

While shifting duties should be releas-
ing time, from one liaison’s perspective
“it still feels like I’m expected to do ev-
erything. If we take it all on, there’s not
time to play to our strengths.” And she
discloses that many of her colleagues
“still adhere to the old model.… There
are many opportunities for everyone to
come together, and you’re supposed to be
collaborating more and not isolated, yet
there are still some people I never see.”
Yet, she reports, “There’s a culture shift
in the libraries. Now we have to work
together across boundaries.”

Some liaisons, particularly those in
the humanities and even some in social

sciences, seem to think that scholarly
communication issues aren’t terribly im-
portant, one liaison feels. “I get the sense
from those librarians that they resent
the scholarly communication initiative
because they are being asked to do extra
work. They feel this is a science issue, not
their issue.”

French spoke with evident frustration
about foot dragging by some liaisons. Her
voice shook a bit as she declared, “Plenty
of people think it’s no problem that they
don’t feel knowledgeable about scholarly
communication; it’s not their own issue, or
it’s a lesser obligation. But we don’t think
that way about other liaison responsibili-
ties. It’s not OK to think, ‘Oh well, I just
don’t know much about the subject index
in my field.’ No one would think it’s fine to
have that attitude, but with the scholarly
communication issues somehow it’s OK?”

Another factor playing into the reluc-
tance to take on new responsibility is the
traditionally autonomous nature of the
liaison librarian position. French explains,

While everyone has a huge mix of
duties, they also have their own
agendas. To a large extent the jobs
lend themselves to choosing to
spend more time on selecting books
or on reference if that’s what you
want to do. Sure, scholarly com-
munication duties are now written
into a job description, but people
still choose to spend time on what
interests them. So while scholarly
communication is stated as a prior-
ity with goals and follow up, some
people’s internal priorities are not
in line necessarily. Even though it’s
spelled out and they don’t refuse to
do it, they don’t think it’s an impor-
tant part of their job.

Looking to the Future
While total transformation remains on
the horizon, French says, “I recognize
and admire the implementation of this
change around scholarly communication
duties and responsibilities at the library.

72 College & Research Libraries January 2010

This has been a gradual process with
implementing goals in general, changing
the position descriptions, and integrating
author rights into our performance evalu-
ation process. Now all the parts reinforce
each other. There were statements from
Karen, reinforcement through supervi-
sors and outside speakers. In fact, now
we’re using the same model with infor-
mation literacy.” She finds the libraries’
new directions, by focusing on scholarly
communication, to be quite promising:

It’s very interesting the relation-
ships we’re developing within the
university. By having one group,
the library, that pays attention to
these issues and is trying to get the
word out, it means we are assuming
a leadership role in our university.
And we’re getting a good response.
Take the recent National Institutes
of Health mandate [to make results
of research it funds publicly ac-
cessible in PubMed Central]. The
Vice President of the Research and
Grants Administration Office ap-
proached the libraries to collaborate
on implementation. That’s big. Some
of the issues we’re talking about,
like author rights, don’t have any
other home on campus. I hate the
conversation that the library has to
reinvent itself to stay relevant. It’s a
very different thing to say we recog-
nize a need on our campus and are
proactively doing things to fill that
need. It puts us in a very different
relationship.

Washburn sees the future of the sys-
tem of scholarly communication in flux
and evolving and a need for librarians
to understand and convey the nuances:

People want to hurry it along, and
get changes in the system quickly,
but we can’t. I think we can’t come
at faculty saying “we want you to
advocate for us on position X,” like
“everything needs to be open ac-

cess.” It’s not that easy, and we can’t
ride roughshod over their issues. We
still don’t know what model we’ll
land on or what combination of
models we’ll land on. It’s not so clear
cut that we’ll just convert fee-based
access to open access. There could
be all kinds of combinations. We
understand scholarly societies need
to protect their revenue stream and
are fine with embargoes. We need
to see more experimentation and
to test out more publishing models.

For Williams, the self-directed, au-
tonomous nature of librarianship has to
change for academic librarians to remain
viable in the future.

My take on our profession is that
we’ve done fairly well for ourselves.
Prior to the last decade we had it
pretty easy. We were independent,
could decide how we wanted to
spend our time and what we wanted
to do. Some people think that’s how
it should be on a day-to-day basis
still, and I respectfully disagree.
Part of this attitude in some institu-
tions is related to librarians who
hold tenure. But we have a service
to run. This has really challenged
my way of thinking on librarians
being part of the tenure process.
We’ve changed, and it’s not about
collections anymore; we have to
work together to provide services.
It can’t be that a library, a depart-
ment, or a campus receives the ser-
vice that a particular librarian feels
like providing. Going forward it’s
very dysfunctional for librarians to
think they get to choose what they
get to do.

Analysis and Interpretation
As Stake espouses, when describing case
study research, “Given the intense inter-
action of the researcher with persons in
the field and elsewhere, given a construc-
tivist orientation to knowledge, given

Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication 73

risk, encourage experimentation, and
readily allow failure.

While Williams is a strong practitioner
of systems thinking, there are some tra-
ditional command and control methods
in place. The changes are not organic or
ground up; they are being driven from the
top down. Changes to the job description
and performance goal are fairly aggres-
sive. Through measures like these, you
can get compliance, but this does not
necessarily equal commitment. Lack of
commitment is reflected in the reluc-
tance from some liaisons. Even the two
liaisons who spoke to me, among those
most committed to change in scholarly
communication, described some aspects
of their experience with a good deal of
tension and discomfort. To gain commit-
ment, people must participate in creating
the new, as participation increases the
likelihood that change will stick. Many
liaisons, it seems, are content to be pas-
sive and do not participate in these new
endeavors.

Liaison librarians are both adopting a
new skill set—advocacy and persuasion—
and developing a new knowledge base
around the system of scholarly commu-
nication. These are two very substantial
endeavors. Either change alone would
be quite significant. Williams infused her
comments with energy, optimism, and
confidence in liaisons’ abilities to become
advocates and develop skills of persua-
sion. Investing in learning the issues of
scholarly communication requires convic-
tion that these are the right issues and this
is the right time. Through their work on
the collaborative, French and Washburn
show this dedication and demonstrate
their certainty that these issues are core
to the profession.

Implementing such large-scale change
requires everyone involved to redirect
resources and make decisions that are
political in nature. So liaisons are asked
to loosen their ties to the activities that tra-
ditionally defined them as librarians. This
puts them at a crossroads of competing val-
ues. They wonder, “What happens if I turn

the attention to participant intentionality
and sense of self, however descriptive the
report, the researcher ultimately comes to
offer a personal view.”30

To my eyes, the changes underway
at the UMN Libraries are remarkable.
Through the Scholarly Communication
Collaborative and the many other efforts,
the libraries’ positional leaders are send-
ing a clear message that librarians and
librarianship must change dramatically
to remain viable. Individuals cannot be
autonomous in setting their own pri-
orities or remain isolated in the library
any longer. They must talk to faculty
regularly and be an active part of the
academic life of the campus; it is not
something reserved for the university
librarian.

Collaboration and systems thinking
are at the heart of these changes. It is no
small move to go from thinking of “self”
as an individual who is competent and
secure in one’s own knowledge and skill
set (with the inherent competitive and
hierarchical implications that mindset
brings) to being part of a “system” that
is in flux and evolving. Cooperation is
a core competency, and librarians must
think of the many systems of which they
are part—higher education, teaching
and learning, research, scholarly com-
munication, the academy, the university,
the local community, and so on. To echo
one liaison, there is indeed a culture shift
underway at the UMN Libraries. Such an
endeavor takes time and a commitment
to sustaining the effort.

This level of change takes strong
support and dedicated leadership from
administrative leaders and shared power
with the liaisons themselves. This change
is happening through a multipronged
approach, where all parts reinforce each
other. It is not enough to add duties to a
job description or a goal in a performance
appraisal. The collaborative of peers is
essential, giving concrete expectations
to, and support for, liaisons. Likewise,
the sponsor model appears very effective.
Library leaders have a high tolerance for

74 College & Research Libraries January 2010

my back on the collection, the reference
desk, my departmental library? Who am
I anymore?” This is a major shift in mental
models about what it means to be a librar-
ian in the twenty-first century. It requires
one to come to terms with the changes, let
go, and reorient oneself. Understandably,
some fear the loss of competence.

As a profession, librarians often feel
faculty members have impressive cre-
dentials and are somehow superior. This
mindset poses a significant challenge
for creating an atmosphere of mutuality
and shared action to change such a large
system as scholarly communication. Li-
brarians have to think differently about
themselves as partners with faculty in
the research enterprise and not servants.
I wonder if, as U.S. society continues to
become less formal, as hierarchy breaks
down, and titles mean less, librarians
will be less “scared” of faculty members.
Perhaps this is naive, as the academy still
retains the prestige economy model—
ranking journals, scholars, and institu-
tions. However, just as the scholarly
communication system is changing, we
see calls to transform the basic underpin-
nings of the academy. Tenure reform, the
rise of the portfolio career, revolutions in
pedagogy, the push for lower tuition, and
increased calls for accountability all signal
a sea change ahead for higher education.

Conclusion and Discussion
In examining these changes in scholarly
communication at the UMN Libraries, I
can see real implications for leadership
and change in the profession of librarian-
ship at large. At the same time, I want to
acknowledge that this case is unique to its
own context. I chose to examine the UMN
because I held an intrinsic interest in this
particular case, and as such the implica-
tions are heavily context dependent. This
is an organization that has been inten-
tionally implementing a change process,
incorporating new roles for liaison librar-
ians and shifting mental models.

There are many factors contributing
to the interconnected system that is the

UMN Libraries. As such, I cannot claim
generalizability of any of my findings,
although I do propose transferability.
The implications that point to the value
of systems thinking and reinforcing the
message of change from many angles may
well serve others. These could be trans-
ferred to similar programs at other aca-
demic libraries, with care. For instance,
some of the most striking features of
UMN’s change process are the following:

• the fresh perspective Williams
brought as a relative newcomer;

• the large investment in learning,
iterative processes, and communication
loops with collaborative members, spon-
sors, and administrators sharing respon-
sibility;

• an environment that rewards risk
taking, as with the author rights per-
formance goal, and provides tools and
support to those taking risks;

• the need to be clear and directive
(for example, in the job description frame-
work); and

• the value of encouraging reflection,
through the KSA, so that liaisons better
understand themselves and where to
focus on their future development.

Other libraries seeking to develop
programs for working with their liaison
librarians to own fully scholarly commu-
nication reform might want to consider
these steps:

• encouraging democratic involve-
ment of a wide group of stakeholders
to increase a sense of ownership and
ultimately create more commitment;

• using a systems thinking approach
to plan and implement a multipronged
program that is integrative and change-
centric;

• being explicit about the context
for the change effort and intentional in
articulating it as core to the evolving na-
ture of our profession, an important step
symbolically for making meaning;

• sharing frequent updates to dis-
close the reasons behind changes, to
show how they are related, and to solicit
feedback; and

Leading Change in the System of Scholarly Communication 75

• using a political lens to build co-
alitions outside the library and promote
mutuality over a potentially polarizing
dynamic with sensitive topics like open
access or promotion and tenure.

It would be interesting to revisit UMN
Libraries in three years and see how they
are doing, particularly with engaging
humanities liaisons. As an organization
intentionally implementing a change
process, it would be equally interesting
to know how and if shifts in the external
environment, such as the economic down-
turn, have affected the libraries’ planned
change. And, recognizing the intercon-
nected nature of change, what will come
from these early experiments and initial
risks? Will there be great evolutionary
leaps in the UMN scholarly communica-
tion outreach program in future years?

Future researchers may wish to con-
sider questions related to the perspectives
of newer librarians. Will librarians now
entering the profession more readily
embrace scholarly communication duties

and the mindset that sees this as core to
the profession? Is this true regardless of
generation, or are there nuances among
age groups? Other questions are worth
exploring as technology enables a more
robust informal system for scholarly com-
munication. Will this informal system,
aided by social networking tools where
scholars communicate peer-to-peer,
eclipse the importance of formal pub-
lishing for evaluating and disseminating
knowledge? If so, what are the implica-
tions for libraries?

The changing system of scholarly
communication offers librarians exciting,
important, and engaging ways to become
a vital part of the academy. Librarians at
the UMN are probably not so different
from other librarians, and their faculty not
so different from other faculty, in terms of
the attitudes, concerns, beliefs, and values
they hold. A unique confluence of events
at the UMN made the climate just right for
Williams’ arrival and supported the level
of sweeping change she initiated.

Notes

1. I am indebted to members of the ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee, in particular
Lee Van Orsdel, for first articulating and defining this concept of mainstreaming.

2. Association of College and Research Libraries Scholarly Communications Committee,
“Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication” (Association of College
and Research Libraries, June 2003). Available online at www.acrl.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/publica-
tions/whitepapers/principlesstrategies.cfm. [Accessed 18 March 2008].

3. Kathleen A. Newman, Deborah D. Blecic, and Kimberly L. Armstrong, Scholarly Commu-
nication Education Initiatives SPEC Kit 299 (Washington, D.C.: Association of Research Libraries,
2007). Available online at www.arl.org/bm~doc/spec299book.pdf.zip. [Accessed 18 March 2008].

4. See endnote #1.
5. Robert E. Stake, The Art of Case Study Research (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications,

1995), 3.
6. Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning

Organization (New York: Currency, Doubleday, 1994), 89.
7. Ibid., 5–12.
8. Margaret Wheatley, “A New Paradigm for a New Leadership,” in Reflections on Leadership,

ed. Richard A. Couto (Towson, Md.: University Press of America, 2007), 106.
9. Shelley E. Phipps, “The System Design Approach to Organizational Development: The

University of Arizona Model,” Library Trends 53, no. 1 (Summer 2004): 68.
10. Ibid., 68.
11. Ibid., 72.
12. Ibid., 72.
13. Lee G. Bolman and Terrence E. Deal, Reframing Organizations: Artistry, Choice, and Leadership

(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003).
14. Ibid., 242.
15. Ibid., 289–90.
16. Ibid., 186.

76 College & Research Libraries January 2010

17. Ibid., 310.
18. Robert K. Yin, The Case Study Anthology (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2004), 179.
19. Ibid., 179.
20. Stake, The Art of Case Study Research, 64.
21. University of Minnesota, Transforming the U. Available online at www1.umn.edu/system-

wide/strategic_positioning. [Accessed 18 March 2008].
22. Joseph M. Brewer, Sheril J. Hook, Janice Simmons-Welburn, and Karen Williams, “Libraries

Dealing with the Future Now,” ARL: A Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues & Actions, no.
234 (June 2004): 1–9. Available online at www.arl.org/bm~doc/dealing.pdf. [Accessed 16 March
2008].

23. University of Minnesota Libraries, Scholarly Communication Collaborative Home Page. Avail-
able online at https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/ScholarlyCommunicationCollaborative/HomePage. [Ac-
cessed 18 March 2008].

24. Many of these tools are publicly available from the Collaborative Home Page, Liaison Tools.
Available online at https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/ScholarlyCommunication/LiaisonTools. [Accessed
18 March 2008].

25. Collaborative Home Page, Environmental Scan for Scholarly Communication—Part One. Avail-
able online at https://wiki.lib.umn.edu/ScholarlyCommunication/SurveyPartOne. [Accessed 18
March 2008].

26. University of Minnesota Libraries, Academic Programs, Librarian Position Description
Framework.

27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. For more on the KSA process at the U of MN Libraries, see chapter by Stephanie Horowitz

and Janice Jaguszewski expected in the forthcoming book: The Expert Library: Staffing, Sustaining,
and Advancing the Academic Library in the 21st Century to be published by the Association of Col-
lege and Research Libraries.

30. Stake, The Art of Case Study Research, 42.

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