Seconding Steve's comment as the most important thing, plus a strong understanding of/ability to get on board with the institution's mission and goals re: scholcomm and digital initiatives. - Jenica

I agree with everyone else and add collections experience, since this has helped me great deal in my position. Budgeting and admin/management experience is also helpful. The person needs to be a good writer, and if they have PR and/or policy development experience that is a big plus. You also need to know what's happening with research and/or have done it at some point. - Elizabeth Brown

There are not many librarians/scholars who have such amazing backgrounds, experience, insight, speaking and communication skills, writing skills and political finesse.... This is sounding more and more like Heather Joseph herself. - Joe

I think Schol comm librarians should be at the AUL level -- where are they now? I haven't done a survey like that. - Joe

dorothea just made me snort coffee out my nose. - jambina

(As the initiator of the thread, I declare Kaijsa free of the sin of thread-jacking. PS: Thanks everyone, this is all very helpful!) - Mark Kille

(Mark is not thinking of applying for any currently open examples of this kind of job, but Mark never knows. Mark is also a solo professional in his library, so if anything related to scholarly communications is going to happen here, however small, it will have to be him.) - Mark Kille

The SC position can exist at several levels - liaison, dept head, AUL. In my position I first reported to the Assoc Director and later to the Director/Dean. I think of it more as an AUL in training in some ways as I tend to be at more admin-type meetings than dept head ones. One paradox of these positions is that they're very connected to digital initatives, but to be successful at SC you have to get out and talk to people, plan programs, etc. The collections role is useful because the faculty understand that role while SC is not well-understood. Also it's the only library role that directly links with faculty at a lot of places. The other issue is SC can double (or triple) your job load. Know why I've only posted twice on this thread? I'm too busy to look at ff all day! - Elizabeth Brown

(Typical Gen-X slacker!) Oh, did I say that aloud? - Joe

Well, I did stop running the science library so there was an adjustment. Part of the workload issue is the tasks are time-intensive. Programming and outreach take a lot of time relative to the more traditional activities. I'm also doing extra collections stuff (voluntarily) so I can reach more departments and gain more collections experience. I've also gotten involved in some other library initiatives recently so that's contributed as well. - Elizabeth Brown

Dorothea, when I took this on SC was envisoned as part of an FTE (about 1/3). At the time (early-mid 2008) this was defintely true - it's less so now more initiatives have come up. I think SC may eventually take a back-seat in libraries, and some other areas will become higher priority, like assessment, digitization, and preservation, as libraries will need to show value in more defined ways. It's hard to quantify value with SC activities. - Elizabeth Brown

I think some areas have done better than others - OA and IRs seem to have been less successful , IMO. Publishing and copyright support/guidance seem to be more successful. Author rights - well, that's a work in progress... I think it's too soon to tell with data management and escience. - Elizabeth Brown