the idea of "social scholar"

Here is a post I came across with a librarian explaining an idealized form of scholarship--using social software and web 2.0

http://liblogs.albany.edu/library20/2007/04/social_scholarship_on_the_rise.html

Here are the first four:
1. A social scholar contributes to the conversation about her research topic by discussing her findings and ruminations on her blog and by inviting comments. By doing this, she moves some of her research activities into the public arena.

2. A social scholar initiates or joins an online community devoted to her topic, using any of a number of social software services or tools.

3. During the source gathering phase of her research, a social scholar shares important citations by depositing and tagging them on academic-oriented bookmarking sites such as Connotea and CiteULike.

4. By placing items in social bookmarking sites, a social scholar takes an interest in and contributes to the phenomenon of soft peer review. This type of peer review derives metrics from content on social sites and user interactions with this content.

Frustration with the last mile

A huge 113 page report from the British Research Network, Researchers and discovery services Behaviour, perceptions and needs: A study commissioned by the
Research Information Network November 2006

"The main frustration is not with the research discovery services themselves but with the
problem of subsequently accessing identified sources and materials. The .last mile. of the
process which actually delivers the document or other source that has been searched for is
the focus of concern, with lack of access to journal articles because of a subscription barrier
being the most frequently-expressed difficulty experienced. Librarians agree with researchers
that the key problem is accessing online journals rather than problems with the discovery
tools themselves. (Section 4.2.9)"
http://www.rin.ac.uk/files/Report%20-%20final.pdf

I thought this analogy of the last mile is a great one. I think I will use it in my instruction--certainly I know users frustrations with the "last mile"