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CHICAGO - To support its scholarly communications initiatives, the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) is pleased to announce the 12-month appointment of Joy Kirchner as visiting program officer. Kirchner will play an integral role in supporting one of ACRL's new strategic goals (ACRL Plan for Excellence, (PDF)) that will help librarians accelerate the transition to a more open system of scholarship. Kirchner will work with members and staff to develop a sustainable model for the Scholarly Communications 101 workshop, support the work of the Scholarly Communications Committee and develop other initiatives to advance ACRL’s work in this area.

“We are delighted to have Joy join ACRL in its efforts to increase our support to librarians as they promote a more open and sustainable system of scholarly communication,” said ACRL Executive Director Mary Ellen K. Davis, “Her expertise in this arena will help ACRL further its goals of advancing new forms of scholarly research. We are grateful to our colleagues at the University of British Columbia for granting Joy the time to support ACRL in such a substantial way. Joy will augment the work of ACRL Scholarly Communications and Government Relations Specialist Kara Malenfant.”

“Having worked with Joy in the past on scholarly communications issues, I know she will do a great job,” added Joyce L. Ogburn, dean of the library at the University of Utah and ACRL vice-president/president-elect. “I am very enthusiastic about her new role with ACRL. It is my sincere hope that we are able to engage other capable, motivated librarians in this way.”

Kirchner, scholarly communications coordinator at University of British Columbia (UBC), has served as a member of ACRL’s Scholarly Communications Committee, helped develop and is a presenter for the ACRL Scholarly Communications 101 workshop and is a faculty member with the ARL/ACRL Institute for Scholarly Communication. Her extensive experience in scholarly communication includes identifying recommended and sustainable service models to support scholarly communication activities on the UBC campus, and she was instrumental in establishing the Provost’s Scholarly Communications Steering Committee and associated working groups where she sits as a key member of the committee. She is also the point person for open access, copyright and author rights queries on campus and is responsible for formalized discussion and education of these issues with faculty, research and publishing constituencies on the UBC campus. She holds a BA and an MLIS from UBC.

“We are very pleased that Joy has been asked to work closely with ACRL to support evolving approaches to scholarly communication,” said Allan Bell, director of library digital initiatives at UBC. “Joy’s work with ACRL will have a direct connection to our institutional and library strategic plans. Her work with ACRL will dovetail with UBC’s goals to increase the impact of UBC research by making it widely available in open access digital repositories and promote open access and open source methods and tools.”

Kirchner began working with ACRL in early June 2011.

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ACRL is a division of the 91´«Ã½ (91´«Ã½), representing more than 12,500 academic and research librarians and interested individuals. ACRL is the only individual membership organization in North America that develops programs, products and services to meet the unique needs of academic and research librarians. Its initiatives enable the higher education community to understand the role that academic libraries play in the teaching, learning and research environments. ACRL is on the Web at , Facebook at and Twitter at .