Environmental Scan Template
When planning to start your IR, it might be useful to do an environmental scan to assess conditions at your library. Here are some questions from the ARL/ACRL Institute on Scholarly Communication to get you started, feel free to add your own:
Background: Describe your institution with regard to its faculty, mission, student body, library collections, etc.
Institutional Environment: How aware are faculty of issues such as problems with journal publishing, problems with monograph publishing, author copyright transfer options, how commercial publisher practices differ from not for profit publisher practices, open access journals, institutional or disciplinary repositories, etc.?
Preparedness: What has your library been doing to build understanding of scholarly communication issues and faculty perspectives among its own staff?
Outreach Efforts: What has your library been doing to actively work with faculty to raise awareness of scholarly communication issues and build support for actions that could improve the system of scholarly communication?
Investment: What has your library been doing to promote new models of scholarly communication such as new forms of publishing, use of open access journals, promotion of institutional or disciplinary repositories, etc.
