Against the Grain V35#6 December/January 2024 Full Issue

c/o Annual Reviews P.O. Box 10139 Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139

VOLUME 35, NUMBER 6

DECEMBER 2023 - JANUARY 2024 TM

ISSN: 1043-2094

“Linking Publishers, Vendors and Librarians”

Textbook Broke: How Libraries are Helping Students Succeed Guest Edited by Stephanie Warden (University of Wisconsin – Superior), Jennifer E. M. Cotton (University of Maryland), Theresa Carlson and Brittany Blanchard (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) Begins on Page 12

If Rumors Were Horses

A

nother Charleston Conference has come and gone.

It was great to see everyone who attended, either in Charleston or online, but it seems like it was over in a flash! This year was our first conference as part of the Annual Reviews team, and it was an emotional moment for us all as Katina received a standing ovation from the entire audience at the opening keynote session during the announcement about the acquisition. Her contributions, ideas, and innovative spirit have made an incalculable impact on the world of libraries and information science over the span of her career, and she’s still going strong and will continue to be involved with the conference and Against the Grain for the foreseeable future.

Career Moves and Retirements After 40 years of contribution to the library information services industry, EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO) CEO Tim Collins has announced that he will retire on June 30, 2024. EBSCO is working with a global leadership advisory firm to identify the company’s next CEO, with the goal to have a successor in the role by July 1, 2024. Tim says, “I will continued on page 8

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN THIS ISSUE: The Good, the Difficult, and the Dubious....................................... 12 It’s Not in our Budget............... 16 Open Educational Resources Initiatives at the University of Wisconsin – Superior................ 19 Elevating Excellence Through OER: A Case Study.................... 21 Open Education Week Authorship Panel, 2023........... 23 Top Textbooks in Review......... 26

REGULAR COLUMNS Bet You Missed It....................... 10 Reader’s Roundup..................... 30 Booklover.................................... 33 Legally Speaking....................... 34 Questions and Answers............ 36 Learning Belongs...................... 38 Libraries, Leadership, and Synergies.................................... 41 Wandering the Web.................. 44 Biz of Digital............................... 46 The Digital Toolbox.................. 48 Back Talk..................................... 62

INTERVIEWS Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with David Myers.... 51 People to Know — Paul Killoran and Exordo.................. 55

PROFILES ENCOURAGED People, Library and Company Profiles........................................ 58 Plus more...................... See inside

ACS READ AND PUBLISH UK

41% 94%

published OA pre-agreement

publish OA currently

ITALY

14% 89%

published OA pre-agreement

26% 95%

published OA pre-agreement

publish OA currently

POLAND

7%

published OA pre-agreement

92% publish OA currently

publish OA currently

TÜRKIYE

SPAIN

11% 80%

published OA pre-agreement

SWEDEN

publish OA currently

11%

published OA pre-agreement

87%

publish OA currently

Authors whose institution has a read and publish agreement are more likely to publish open access.

FIND OUT MORE

DISCOVER

Optica Publishing Group’s journals account for 36% of total citations and 32% of all articles published in the field of optics and photonics (2023 JCR).

To renew or subscribe, contact subscriptions@optica.org or learn more by visiting opg.optica.org/library.

AGAINST THE GRAIN – ISSUE HIGHLIGHTS Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094), Copyright 2023 by the name Against the Grain is published six times a year in February, April, June, September, November, and December/January by Against the Grain, LLC. Mailing Address: Annual Reviews, PO Box 10139, Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139. Subscribe online at https://www.charleston-hub.com/membership-options/.

Editor Emerita: Katina Strauch (College of Charleston, Retired) Editor: Leah Hinds (Charleston Hub) Manager: Caroline Goldsmith (Charleston Hub) Research Editor: Judy Luther (Informed Strategies) International Editor: Rossana Morriello (Politecnico di Torino) Contributing Editors: Glenda Alvin (Tennessee State University) Rick Anderson (Brigham Young University) Sever Bordeianu (U. of New Mexico) Todd Carpenter (NISO) Ashley Krenelka Chase (Stetson Univ. College of Law) Eleanor Cook (East Carolina University) Kyle K. Courtney (Harvard University) Cris Ferguson (Murray State) Michelle Flinchbaugh (U. of MD Baltimore County) Dr. Sven Fund (Fullstopp) Tom Gilson (College of Charleston, Retired) Michael Gruenberg (Gruenberg Consulting, LLC) Bob Holley (Wayne State University, Retired) Matthew Ismail (Charleston Briefings) Donna Jacobs (MUSC, Retired) Ramune Kubilius (Northwestern University) Myer Kutz (Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.) Tom Leonhardt (Retired) Stacey Marien (American University) Jack Montgomery (Retired) Lesley Rice Montgomery (Tulane University) Alayne Mundt (American University) Bob Nardini (Retired) Jim O’Donnell (Arizona State University) Ann Okerson (Center for Research Libraries) David Parker (Lived Places Publishing) Genevieve Robinson (IGI Global) Steve Rosato (OverDrive Academic) Jared Seay (College of Charleston) Corey Seeman (University of Michigan) Bruce Strauch (The Citadel, Emeritus) Lindsay Wertman (IGI Global) Graphics: Bowles & Carver, Old English Cuts & Illustrations. Grafton, More Silhouettes. Ehmcke, Graphic Trade Symbols By German Designers. Grafton, Ready-to-Use Old-Fashioned Illustrations. The Chap Book Style.

Publisher: Annual Reviews, PO Box 10139 Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139 Production & Ad Sales: Toni Nix, Just Right Group, LLC., P.O. Box 412, Cottageville, SC 29435, phone: 843-835-8604 <justwrite@lowcountry.com> Advertising Information: Toni Nix, phone: 843-835-8604 <justwrite@lowcountry.com> Send correspondence, press releases, etc., to: Leah Hinds, Editor, Against the Grain <leah@charlestonlibraryconference.com> Authors’ opinions are to be regarded as their own. All rights reserved. Produced in the United States of America.

Against the Grain is copyright ©2024

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v.35 #6 December 2023 - January 2024 — © 2024

ISSUES, NEWS, & GOINGS ON Rumors............................................................................................................... 1 From Your Editor................................................................................................ 6 Letters to the Editor........................................................................................... 6 Advertising Deadlines........................................................................................ 6

FEATURES The Good, the Difficult, and the Dubious: the Present and Future of Library Textbook Affordability Initiatives.................................................................... 12 It’s Not in our Budget: Crowdfunding & Seeking Funds for Textbook Affordability..................................................................................................... 16 Open Educational Resources Initiatives at the University of Wisconsin – Superior........................................................................................................... 19 Elevating Excellence Through OER: A Case Study.......................................... 21 Open Education Week Authorship Panel, 2023................................................ 23 Top Textbooks in Review: Considering a Decade’s Worth of a Textbook Affordability Program...................................................................................... 26 Back Talk — Around the World with IFLA........................................................ 62

REVIEWS Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews.................... 30 Booklover — Controversy................................................................................. 33

LEGAL ISSUES Legally Speaking — Circling Back to Hachette and a Fond Farewell................ 34 Questions and Answers — Copyright Column.................................................. 36

PUBLISHING Bet You Missed It............................................................................................. 10

TECHNOLOGY & STANDARDS AND TEACHING & LEARNING Learning Belongs in the Library — myfilmfriend, A New Library Streaming Option for International Film.......................................................................... 38 Libraries, Leadership, and Synergies — Artificial Intelligence: Thoughtful and Deliberate.................................................................................................. 41 Wandering the Web — Resources for Alternative Living Spaces, Part 2........... 44

BOOKSELLING AND VENDING Biz of Digital — Teaching Research Data Management to Future Researchers...................................................................................................... 46 The Digital Toolbox — Publishers Meet Academic Libraries’ Unique Demands Through Audiobooks (Part 2/2)........................................................ 48

ATG INTERVIEWS & PROFILES Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with David Myers........................................ 51 People to Know — Paul Killoran and Exordo.................................................... 55 Profiles Encouraged......................................................................................... 58

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

<https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/atg/>

A New Type of Transformative Agreement for Research Publishing in Biology “A sustainable path to open publication of biomedical research is a long-sought objective among the many science communication initiatives at Cold Spring Harbor. Our transformational offerings provide a model for any research-intensive institution whose scientists wish to make their articles openly available in these long-established, prestigious, not-for-profit journals.”

— Dr. John Inglis, Publisher of CSHL Press, co-founder of bioR χiv and medR χiv

Turn your subscription license into an OA publishing license — Immediate benefits for your authors and no extra cost for most institutions Subscribers to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (CSHLP) journals now have the option to adopt a Transformative License Agreement. This allows corresponding authors from your institution to publish unlimited OA articles (once accepted for publication), while giving your users access to the complete collection of CSHLP journals.

Transformative license agreements offer a fully OA publishing option for your researchers whose papers are accepted at Genes & Development, Genome Research, Learning & Memory, RNA. For more information about a transformative license with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, please contact Doug LaFrenier at dlafrenier@cshjournals.org

Benefits include: • Unlimited open access publication in CSHLP research journals • Access to the complete collection of CSHLP journals • No additional cost for most current subscribers (some minimums apply) • The option to create a branded channel in bioRχiv for preprints posted by your authors (includes medRχiv postings) Present your institution as an “end to end” open access advocate for the biological sciences.

For complete details, including specifics for your institution, visit https://www.cshl.edu/cold-spring-harbor-laboratory-press/journals/transformative-agreements/

From Your (optimistic) Editor Emerita:

W

e just came through a brutal (by South Carolina standards) cold snap on the heels of the flooding we experienced just before the December/January issue.

I’m looking forward to the forecast for warmer weather to come next week, and keeping my fingers crossed that Punxsutawney Phil will have something good to report from his shadow. After all, “Oh wind, if winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” (quote from Percy Bysshe Shelley, and the theme of the 2018 Charleston Conference!)

We’re very excited about this issue on open educational resources, open textbooks, and other ways that libraries are helping students succeed and save money. This issue was based on a panel presentation that was presented at ACRL 2023 in Pittsburgh, PA. Our editor Leah Hinds attended the session and knew this was something we needed to cover in Against the Grain. The panel included projects from a range of institution types and sizes that were all focused on textbook affordability.

Our guest editors were all panelists from that presentation!

Our thanks go to Stephanie Warden (University of Wisconsin – Superior), Jennifer E. M. Cotton (University of Maryland), Theresa Carlson and Brittany Blanchard (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) for putting together this fantastic collection of featured articles. In addition to reporting on their own projects, they also included a conversation about the Open Education Week Authorship Panel, 2023, and a “Top Textbooks in Review” look back at a decade’s worth of textbook affordability programs.

This issue also includes a fascinating interview with David Myers, CEO of the Data Licensing Alliance and CEO of DMedia Associates, conducted by Darrell Gunter of Gunter Media Group, and Matthew Ismail tells us about a wide-ranging conversation with Paul Killoran, CEO of Ex Ordo, on ATG the Podcast in his “People to Know” column. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s get cracking! Love, Yr.Ed.

Letters to the Editor Send letters to <editors@against-the-grain.com>, or you can also send a letter to the editor from the Charleston Hub at http://www.charleston-hub.com/contact-us/.

Dear Caroline: Thank you for connecting. I had a wonderful time at the Charleston Conference this year. Thanks for putting on a great event. I also enjoyed and appreciated being invited to be a guest on ATGthePodcast. I hope folks listening to the episode find it interesting.

All best, Zack Ellis (Founder and CEO, TheirStory) Response from Caroline: Hi Zack. I’m so glad to hear that you enjoyed the conference. It was so great to see everyone back this year in Charleston. And thank you for doing the interview with Matthew as well. It will air this Monday on our podcast.

Be sure to listen — Matthew Ismail, a Conference Director and Editor in Chief of the Charleston Briefings, talks with Zack Ellis, Founder and CEO of TheirStory — available here.

AGAINST THE GRAIN ADVERTISING DEADLINES VOLUME 36 — 2024

Issue February 2024 April 2024 June 2024 September 2024 November 2024

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Ad Reservation Camera-Ready 01/04/24 01/18/24 02/22/24 03/07/24 04/11/24 04/25/24 06/06/24 07/11/24 08/15/24 09/12/24

Dear Toni: As always, I simply wanted to thank you for your help this week. I’ve no idea how you can do so much and still help confused souls like me with granular shipping issues.

Another great show — was particularly great for Paratext and birdofparatext.com.

We’re already planning to sponsor a panel discussion and our own lunch at next year’s conference, so things are just getting started!

Gratefully, Eric M. Calaluca (President, Paratext LLC) <ec@paratext.com> www.paratext.com Dear Toni: You really went above and beyond to respond to my questions.

We participate in over 50 tradeshows a year, working with you is a joy!

Thanks again! Kelley Shively (OCLC) <shivelyk@oclc.org> Dear Toni:

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving this week! I also want to say that Bloomsbury really enjoyed the Conference this year. You always do a fantastic job running the show and we really got a lot out of it this year! Another great job to you and your team.

Toni Nix <justwrite@lowcountry.com> Phone: 843-835-8604

All the best, Michelle Kelly (Bloomsbury Digital Resources) <michelle.kelly@bloomsbury.com>

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

<https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/atg/>

The success of ACM’s transition to sustainable OA is reliant on the engagement and participation of its partners.

Please read our white paper presenting feedback and perspectives from six early adopters of ACMO.

Rumors continued from page 1 depart with much gratitude for the hard work and commitment of so many individuals, over so many years, that resulted in the company becoming what it is today. I am deeply thankful for the customers who have supported us over the years with their patronage. Having been in the role for 40 years, and with EBSCO well-positioned for the future, the timing is right for my retirement. I look forward to engaging in interests and activities I have not been able to pursue, and I will forever be grateful for the experiences that I have had while I was in this seat.”

Big news!!! The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is pleased to welcome Andrew K. Pace as its next executive director, effective February 1, 2024.

Wow!! Congratulations, Andrew! Andrew joins ARL from the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions (USMAI) Library Consortium, where he has served as executive director since 2022. At USMAI, Andrew leads the consortium of 17 academic libraries across the state of Maryland, centrally hosting management, discovery, and resource-sharing applications for millions of print, licensed, and open-access resources. His team also leads new digital initiatives in digital asset management, open educational resources (OER), and new service development. Andrew held previous executive director positions from 2008 to 2022 at OCLC, where he managed cloud-based application development and later led teams focused on data science and applied research.

Prior to OCLC, he was head of Information Technology at North Carolina State University Libraries. “I’m thrilled to be joining ARL in its commitment to advocacy, analysis, and leadership in research libraries,” said Andrew K. Pace, incoming ARL executive director. “In the face of the numerous challenges in libraries, I am impressed by a sense of optimism and opportunity displayed by the Board and ARL’s staff, and I’m grateful and humbled to be part of an organization with such a deep commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Food, Drinks, and Celebrations A note from one of Katina’s recent “Tea Time” posts: Christmas is one of my favorite times of year! It could be because my birthday is Christmas Eve but the older I get the less thrilled I am to remember my birthday! Still, I love all the festivities, especially the egg nog! This article in the Smithsonian Magazine (December 2023) is about the egg nog traditions! https://www. smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/american-history-eggnogleast-favorite-drink-180983236/ The Charleston Food + Wine Festival is coming up March 6-10. All foodies should try to attend at least once if you’re in the area! Of course, us locals mostly try to hide out until the tourists clear out a bit, but it’s a lot of fun and full (of course) of delicious things to sample and feast on.

If you’re a publisher or vendor, did you attend the Charleston Exhibitor Networking Event on Monday night, November 5? This was the brainchild of Heather Staines, of DeltaThink and one of our Conference Directors. Thank you Heather for organizing and hosting the event! There was a great turn out and people enjoyed meeting and chatting with one another in a relaxed atmosphere before the intensity of the Vendor Showcase the next day. It was hosted at the Share House, a place with a fun

8

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

and beachy vibe just a short walk away located on Ann Street between King and Meeting. We’ll be hosting this again this year since it was so popular!

Hip hip hooray! The Francis Marion Hotel, long-time headquarter hotel of the Charleston Conference, is celebrating their 100th anniversary this year. The historic hotel, named for the Revolutionary War hero Francis Marion, the “Swamp Fox,” has a long tradition of gracious service, elegant accommodations, and hosting splendid banquets and events dating back to its opening in 1924. Built by local investors at a cost of $1.5 million from plans by noted New York architect W.L. Stoddard, the Francis Marion was the largest and grandest hotel in the Carolinas. (https:// www.francismarionhotel.com/ history/) In a nod to the nickname of their namesake, the bar and restaurant in the hotel is called The Swamp Fox, and is a favorite hangout spot for conference attendees each year.

And speaking of the Swamp Fox, here’s a picture of Darrell Gunter (Gunter Media Group) receiving the first ever “Swamp Fox Award” from Derek Law (University of Strathclyde, retired) at the 2023 Charleston Conference.

The conference app featured a leaderboard contest that was highly competitive, with the top three contestants going back and forth in a mad rush to win. Darrell closed the event with the most points and was recognized for his achievements at the Closing Session.

Book News from Katina Inspired by Richard Charkin’s recent publication “My Back Pages,” I’m planning a memoir or some sort of publication (and maybe a webinar!) about the development and history of the Charleston Conference and the Hub. I would like to reach out to all of you to send us a snippet, a paragraph, a memory, a story, a remembrance, a speaker or session you remember, or whatever appeals to you. Here is a Google Drive form to share.

Matthew Ismail has also started conducting interviews with long-time conference attendees and friends. If you’re interested in participating, please let us know by emailing Matthew at <matthew.ismail@icloud.com>!

At one time, Elizabeth Connor was a professor at the Citadel (Education and Leadership), and before that a librarian at MUSC and elsewhere. I remember going to a Lively Lunch she ran at the Charleston Conference and won a woven basket (that she brought back from when she worked at Ross University, Dominica)… Now, since 2022 she’s an emerita and an author.

Per her LinkedIn: “When this book project first started in 2018, I gave Richard Porcher a bottle of Charleston Sercial (Madeira) to celebrate. Just picked up another bottle today because the book goes to press in early 2024.” Here’s more info about the book: The Santee Canal: South Carolina’s First Commercial Highway by Elizabeth Connor, Richard Dwight Porcher, Jr., and

<https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/atg/>

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William Robert Judd. The Santee Canal provided the first inland navigation route from the Upcountry of the South Carolina Piedmont to the port of Charleston and the Atlantic Ocean.

This is an authoritative and richly illustrated history of one of America’s first canals. (University of South Carolina Press, 2024.)

I was captivated by James Daunt’s keynote on Thursday November 8 during the in-person Charleston Conference as were many of you based on the number of people who selected Mr. Daunt’s speech as their favorite. Given all the discussion of journals and OA, etc., it was very refreshing to be reminded of the importance and relevance of books in our world! In fact, I just saw an article in the British magazine Country Life (October 11, 2023) — “Doing it by the Book.” The author Catriona Gray selects seven of her favorite independent bookshops. Catriona points out that unlike a chair or a picture or an item of clothing, you can’t tell whether you will like a book until you read it. “To step inside a bookshop is to be met with a realm filled with possibilities.”

It’s truly discovery! She talks about Shakespeare and Company in Paris, John Sandoe in London, Leakey’s Bookshop in Inverness Scotland, Topping & Company in Edinburgh, Octavia’s Bookshop in Glouchestershire, and Richard Booth’s bookshop in Herefordshire.

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

Save the Date!

The incredibly well-connected and busy bee Sven Fund (ask him about beekeeping!) is working with Leah Hinds to plan our next Charleston In Between on the topic of research and publishing integrity. The dates are March 19-20, and more information will be shared on the Charleston Hub as details are confirmed. This is shaping up to be a bam-zowie group of presentations! Rumor has it that, in addition to hearing from the experts in the field and some new solutions to face the crisis, Sven is seeking an anonymous presentation from someone who published with a papermill. You heard it here first! More details to come.

That’s it for now! Enjoy this issue and we’ll see you back here next time!

<https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/atg/>

9

Bet You Missed It — Press Clippings — In the News Carefully Selected by Your Crack Staff of News Sleuths Column Editor: Bruce Strauch (The Citadel, Emeritus) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com>

Pronunciation Guru

Forgotten Nature Poet

Having trouble with potable, cache or gnocci? And you don’t want to sound like a fool or a philistine in the workplace or on a date? And a politician better not get caught mangling chutzpah or saying nucular for nuclear.

John Clare was a contemporary of Wordsworth and Shelley, and like them, a poet. But Clare was a rural laborer who never went far from his thatched cottage in Helston, Northamtonshire.

Julien Miquel’s podcast is the go-to spot. With 50 million U.S. views so far this year, he is the biggest pronunciation video maker out there.

He speaks four languages, and was spurred to his project

by Americans butchering the pronunciation of wines. Yes, Auxey-Duresses and Puligny-Montrachet are bound to stump the non-French speakers.

Miquel lives on the French Mediterranean and is a winemaker by trade, but half his income is derived from podcasts. His YouTube channel has a million subscribers.

Now, say Tenochitlan and Siobhan.

See: Joe Finsker, “America’s Go-To Expert For Pronunciation Is a Frenchman,” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 31, 2023, p.A1.

Pioneer Anthropologist Zelia Nuttall (1857-1935) was born to a wealthy Irish father and Mexican mother in San Francisco. She learned Spanish and French in the home. At age 8, they decamped for Europe for 11 years where she learned German and Italian.

Returning to America, she married a fortunehunting French anthropologist, Alphonse Pinart. They travelled widely on her money, and he introduced her to the new field of anthro.

In Mexico, she learned Nahuatl and delved into her pre-Columbian heritage.

The marriage failed, but Zelia redefined herself as a woman with a vocation. At the time, there were no degrees in anthro or departments where you could study. Zelia made contact with Frederic Ward Putnam, curator of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. She became his assistant in Mexican archaeology and published her first article in the spring 1886 issue of the American Journal of Archaeology.

The Mexican upper classes were crafting a national image where the Aztecs, Maya, Olmecs, Toltecs, Zapotecs with their temples, sculpture and jewelry would take their place beside Greece and Rome.

Poems Descritive of Rural Life and Scenery (1827) gave him a brief flash of fame, but the rest of his work sold poorly, and he returned to rural toil and his communion with birds, flowers, and animals.

The historic enclosures of common ground for private fields devastated him, and he spent 30 years mad in asylums. He wasn’t around to see the magnificent English hedgerows teeming with life (and now sadly sheered away by prairie farming).

See: John Lewis Stempel, “Last of the summer wine,” Country Life, Sept. 27, 2023, p.104. Lewis’ latest book, “La Vie: A year in rural France,” is out now (Doubleday, (£16.99).

Peabody the Philanthropist George Peabody (1795-1869) came from New England merchant/ farming background. After the usual rags-to-riches rough start, he became a banker in London, and America’s de facto ambassador.

He sold Maryland Bonds, and when the state defaulted, raised loans to help Maryland back on its feet. And he held onto bonds which others dumped and began his fortune when Maryland paid off.

He financed the sale of the steel track from England to America’s railroads, partnered with Junius Spencer Morgan, father of J.P. Morgan. Together they placed British investment in America, and the wealth grew.

Around 1856, Peabody retired and began giving his fortune away. He built a Peabody library in Danvers, Mass. and another in Baltimore. He built Peabody Square in London with housing for the working poor. He built churches, libraries and museums at Harvard and Yale. The Peabody Education Fund was designed to educate the children of freed slaves after the Civil War. He gave to Washington & Lee and the Peabody Library at Johns Hopkins.

See: Michael Gross, “He’s a Good Guy After All,” Town & Country, Nov. 2023, p.125. As you can tell from the title, the author feels that providing the financing for investments that improve life for all — even with no accusation of fraud or unfair dealing — is vile, but giving wealth away to academe is a positive good.

Let’s Read Memorable Meals

Zelia gave a new interpretation of the Aztec calendar stone and began digs all over Mexico. In Mexico City, she lived in great style in a mansion with many servants, held salons with 30 to 40 savants. She travelled and lectured and became an honorary professor of the National Museum of Mexico.

(1) Marcel Rouff, The Passionate Epicure (1924) (gastronomic duel between two gourmands); (2) Annia Ciezadio, Day of Honey (2011) (experiencing the Middle East through exquisite meals); (3) Maya Angelou, Hallelujah! (2004) (memoir of poor rural Arkansas food to her developed cuisine praised by Oprah Winfrey and M.F.K. Fisher); (4) Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate (1989) (magical realist novel set during Mexican Revolution full of romance and recipes); (5) The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol (1998) (the author of Dead Souls was “besotted with eating and overeating”).

See: Merilee Grindle, “Trail Blazer,” Smithsonian, Nov. 2023, p.34.

See: Anya von Bremzen, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 25-26, 2023, p.C8.

10 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

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Brepols Online Databases

The Good, the Difficult, and the Dubious: the Present and Future of Library Textbook Affordability Initiatives

By Stephanie Warden (Associate Director/Information Literacy Librarian, Jim Dan Hill Library, University of Wisconsin – Superior) <swarden1@uwsuper.edu> and Jennifer E. M. Cotton (University of Maryland, College Park Libraries) <jecotton@umd.edu> https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1018-431X and Theresa Carlson (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) <Theresa.Carlson@nau.edu> and Brittany Blanchard (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) <Brittany.Blanchard@nau.edu>

T

extbook affordability has emerged as a significant concern for students pursuing higher education. The soaring costs of textbooks and course materials have become a significant barrier, limiting students’ access to essential resources. As a result, institutions and libraries have been exploring strategies to alleviate this financial burden, ensuring that students have equitable access to the educational materials they need. Approaches taken by libraries are varied but include providing access to textbooks through mechanisms like Course Reserves, facilitating lower cost alternatives through course packets and supporting the creation, adoption and curation of Open Educational Resources. In this issue, we explain our individual libraries’ approaches to textbook affordability and the impact these approaches have had. Our separate tactics have been shaped by our institutional context and resources. Before we “While discuss our individual approaches, challenges we want to take a moment to address some of the current challenges to and threats to textbook affordability initiatives on affordability a broader scale.

initiatives exist and can be difficult to overcome, libraries continue to evolve their approaches and adapt.”

One trend that hampers the ability of libraries to aid students in textbook affordability is what are generally referred to as “inclusive access” programs. Inclusive access, also known as automatic billing, is widely touted as a panacea for affordability problems. Courses that are enrolled in an inclusive access program have all of the course materials available to students through the learning management system (LMS) at the beginning of the semester, with the costs of the materials added to the student’s tuition charges, rather than requiring separate purchase. The advantages touted by advocates of these programs include all of the students having access to the materials from the beginning of class, easier purchasing, and increased market share, which allows publishers to lower prices.1

low-cost options like open educational resources (OERs), particularly in models where the costs of all required materials are averaged together across courses. These programs can also lead to disciplines with less expensive course materials (e.g., humanities) subsidizing the costs for more expensive disciplines (e.g., STEM areas).

The electronic nature of inclusive access materials can also present issues. Electronic texts that require internet access may present problems for students who don’t have a reliable internet connection, which can be an issue especially for students from marginalized and/or rural communities, thereby further widening the digital divide. The electronic access included in inclusive access materials is also temporary, meaning that students who wish to use the same text for a future class or for their own further reference may be unable to do so. Inclusive access programs can also allow for the invisible collection of user data,2 depending on the contract between the materials broker and the school.

Another significant cause for concern is students’ ability to opt out of these programs. While inclusive access programs do theoretically offer the option for students to opt out (and thereby not be charged for the course materials), the process for doing so may present several hurdles. Not only can the process for opting out be multi-step, difficult to find, and/or subject to short or unspecified deadlines, but the inclusive access materials may include ancillary materials such as assignments and assessments, meaning that students effectively have no way to pass the class if they do manage to complete the opt out process. In theory, students have the ability to opt out of the program, but in practice, doing so may effectively be opting out of the chance to succeed in the class.3

However, inclusive access also presents several causes for concern to those interested in textbook affordability. For one thing, adding the textbook costs to tuition and fees does simplify the process, but it also makes it easier for students to overlook those costs, thereby adding to their overall student debt without necessarily realizing it. In our experience, inclusive access programs can also disincentivize instructors to investigate

In the case of “inclusive access,” libraries may be unable to purchase copies of the required texts. Students are also locked out of other cost-savings measures, such as sharing a textbook, trading used books, or buying a copy used or from a different source. In theory, this option costs the students less than the “traditional” publishing model, but since all of the prices are controlled directly by the publishers, their incentives for keeping those costs low are dubious. Indeed, these programs often make it difficult to measure cost savings in the absence of a one-toone comparison of what the prices of materials would be if the program were not available. In addition, since this contravenes the spirit of the Higher Education Opportunities Act of 20084 (and in cases where the book information and price of the text are not available from the course catalog, appears to violate the letter of the law as well), institutions that are considering adopting

12 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

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inclusive access programs would do well to consider all of the possible ramifications of doing so.

The issues with digital access textbooks are not limited exclusively to inclusive access content. Materials published under a traditional model and made available for purchase by users or libraries also present a set of unique problems.

These come mainly in the form of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions. These programs typically are justified as the way, maybe even the only way, to protect intellectual property rights once an electronic material is made available for purchase. Indeed, common restrictions coming from this software prohibit copying, downloading, converting, retaining, printing, and restriction on uses across devices among others.5 While this presents obvious barriers for research, it also creates a slew of unintended consequences surrounding accessibility6 and privacy.

Finally, we would be remiss not to mention the significant investment of personnel that textbook affordability initiatives demand. The successful implementation of these programs, in our experience, demands a considerable investment of time, financial resources, and unwavering commitment. Ideally, libraries would benefit from having a dedicated professional whose primary responsibility is to focus on affordability initiatives. However, convincing administrative bodies to create specialist positions in OER or textbook affordability can be challenging, often resulting in temporary or grant-funded contracts.

Furthermore, the funding landscape for these positions is often precarious. In instances where a dedicated position is funded, there might not be additional financial support allocated specifically for the initiatives themselves. Additionally, these specialists may find themselves diverted to other responsibilities as library priorities evolve. The lack of a standardized framework for the duties of an OER librarian further complicates matters.

A position description analysis of 33 OER job postings reveals a diversity of roles within the OER landscape. Some positions primarily focus on outreach and increasing awareness of OER, while others are centered around developing, sustaining, and evaluating publishing programs. Furthermore, certain roles remain undefined, encompassing a broad range of general library duties alongside responsibilities related to OER initiatives.7 This variability in roles adds an extra layer of complexity to the development and sustainability of OER initiatives within academic libraries.

While challenges and threats to affordability initiatives exist and can be difficult to overcome, libraries continue to evolve their approaches and adapt. Access to textbooks is a crucial part of the learning experience and their usage by students

14 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

should not be dictated by a lack of funding. By implementing various strategies towards textbook affordability, libraries strive to create a more inclusive educational environment where all students have access to the materials necessary for their academic success. The articles included in this issue of Against the Grain describe approaches taken at three different university libraries, with varying sizes and finances, to assist students with textbook affordability.

Endnotes 1. McKenzie, Lindsay. “‘Inclusive Access’ Takes Off” Inside Higher Ed, November 06, 2017. https://www. insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/07/inclusive-accesstakes-model-college-textbook-sales 2. InclusiveAccess.org. “Inclusive Access – Deal or Data Mine?” InclusiveAccess.org, July 18, 2023. https://www. inclusiveaccess.org/facts/deal-or-data-mine 3. Cuillier, Cheryl. “Chapter 16 – Inclusive Access: Who, What, When, Where, How, and Why?” in The Evolution of Affordable Content Efforts in the Higher Education Environment: Programs, Case Studies, and Examples edited

by Kristi Jensen and Shane Nackerud, ch. 16. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Libraries, 2018. https://doi. org/10.24926/86666.0101 4. Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Administration. “Public Law 110 - 315 Higher Education Opportunity Act.” Government. U.S. Government Printing Office, August 13, 2008. https:// www.govinfo.gov/app/details/PLAW-110publ315 5. Roncevic, Mirela. “Digital Rights Management.”

American Libraries 51, no. 3/4 (2020): 47–47.

6. Devi, Rekha, and Shailendra Kumar. 2023. “Digital Right Management and Accessibility of Libraries Electronic Resources for Blind and Visually Impaired Users: A Review.” DESIDOC Journal of Library & Information Technology 43 (3): 193–201. doi:10.14429/ djlit.43.03.18544 7. Larson, A. (2020). Open Education Librarianship: A Position Description Analysis of the Newly Emerging Role in Academic Libraries. International Journal of Open Educational Resources, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.18278/ ijoer.3.1.4

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It’s Not in our Budget: Crowdfunding & Seeking Funds for Textbook Affordability

By Brittany Blanchard (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) <Brittany.Blanchard@nau.edu> and Theresa Carlson (Northern Arizona University, Cline Library) <Theresa.Carlson@nau.edu>

Introduction Textbook prices have increased approximately 160% over the past 20 years, even when controlling for an overall inflation rate of 60.1%.1 On average, students at four year institutions pay $1,200 annually for textbooks and supplies.2 The ability for students to access required course materials directly correlates to student success, lower Drop/Fail/Withdraw rates and higher retention and completion rates. In a 2022 survey of more than 13,000 Florida college students, due to textbook costs, 53.5% do not purchase the required textbook; 43.7% take fewer courses; 38.5% do not register for a specific course; and, 32.4% earn a poor grade from not affording the textbook and 24.2% drop a course.3 This information corresponds to a National Survey by USPIRG taken in September 2020 which included 82 participating institutions and more than 5,000 responses. In 2020, 65% of students surveyed reported not buying a textbook because of cost; two percentage points higher than the previous year.

The number of students who report not buying an access code increased from 17 percent in 2019 to 21 percent in 2020. Students who faced food insecurity were more heavily impacted by unaffordable course materials. 82% of students who reported missing a meal due to the pandemic also reported skipping buying textbooks; furthermore, 38% reported they skipped buying an access code.4 S tu dents wh o a r e f ro m h is t or ic al l y un ders erve d backgrounds, part-time, first generation, and/or financial aid recipients often feel the burden of textbook costs more acutely. A study at California State University Channel Islands found that Latine, first generation, and financial aid dependent students felt higher stress from textbook costs than their white, non-first generation, and non-financial aid dependent counterparts.5 While Northern Arizona University’s estimated $900 annual books and supply cost is below the national average of $1200,6 it is still a challenge for students to afford course materials. Of NAU’s 22,000 students, approximately 40% identify as a race other than White [6]; 46% identify as first-generation7 and 33% received a Pell Grant.8 According to The Institute for College Access and Success, NAU students graduate with an average of $22,587 in debt, with 55% of graduates owing money.9 In addition, the cost of housing in Flagstaff is 43% higher and groceries are 16% higher than the national average.10

Finding Funding for Textbook Affordability These economic challenges, which are already common on our campus, became exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In response to the pandemic, Northern Arizona University shifted to a hybrid online/in-person model for the Fall 2020 semester.

This new approach meant that not all students would return to campus and those that did may not be in physical classrooms.

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Quarantines for students testing positive for Covid added more complications. Worried at the possibility that not all students would have access, or could afford their required texts, the library wanted to highlight our collections as a possible solution. While we knew of some books used in courses due to our Course Reserves system, we suspected that there were far more texts in our collections that were being required in courses. To find out this information, we would need a list of required texts, course numbers and faculty names, all of which was most readily available through our campus’ bookstore.

Despite not having an established relationship with the bookstore, they were agreeable to our request and provided a spreadsheet with most of the information that we needed to get started. Spreadsheet clean-up combined with additional data entry took two individuals approximately 20 hours of work. This was due to some unfamiliarity with Excel, not knowing what information was needed and duplicative efforts.

Since this time, the bookstore has adjusted the formatting of their spreadsheet which allows us to use an Excel plugin called Fuzzy Lookup to make comparisons easy. We also utilize the functionality inherent in Proquest’s Rialto to do comparisons with books we currently own and those available to purchase.

Once we had a clean spreadsheet, we were able to do an ISBN and title comparison search in our Library Management System (LMS), Ex Libris’ Alma. We were pleasantly surprised that the library already owned over 150 electronic versions of texts used in existing courses. These titles came with varying usage limitations from unlimited to one seat. Since our Course Reserves model was similarly (if not more) limited, we made the decision to alert faculty to all the options, including titles that only offered one seat. Utilizing enrollment numbers from the previous Spring semester and the projections for Fall 2020 classes, we estimated a yearly cost of over $500,000 to students in purchasing these texts. However, based on the comparatively low usage numbers, these students were not using our collection. Did students not realize that they could access their texts for free through the library? We could not contact students directly, but we could alert their faculty. After gathering the permalinks for materials in our catalog, we sent an email to faculty alerting them to the text’s availability and asking them to pass the information along to their students.

The responses we received were overwhelmingly positive. One History faculty member said, “Amazing! What a gift for my students!” While another faculty member said, “I’m shocked by how much textbooks cost these days, so I’m sure this will really help my students.”

Seeing how successful this small initiative was, we wondered if we could purchase additional texts to provide even more students with access to their required texts at no cost to them.

Where would we get the money?

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Crowdfunding for Affordability Since the library had just experienced significant budget cuts just a few months earlier, we had to look outside the library for our funding. Our development director suggested doing a crowdfunding campaign. Crowdfunding is the idea of raising money from many small donations rather than seeking out a few large ones. Based on data from UK universities, crowdfunding is more prevalent among universities with limited resources, which tend to be more focused on teaching, are less prestigious, and serve student populations predominantly from lower socio-economic backgrounds. In addition, UK findings show that crowdfunding is used by students and staff to create a “learning experience that they perceive to be more beneficial.”11 As this was a new way to fundraise for the library, we weren’t sure if this method would work. According to the literature, crowdfunding in higher education offers the advantage of diversifying donor sources beyond the conventional ones, such as alumni, to include students, faculty, staff, and community members.12 While there is limited research on crowdfunding in higher education, the studies suggest that students and staff are motivated to give to a crowdfunding campaign out of a sense of philanthropy or an “individual’s desire to generate positive outcomes for both the environment and himself.” Also, affiliation and belongingness are high motivations for giving.13

Cline Library’s Textbook Affordability Challenge Was Born Getting permission and individuals in the library on-board with the idea was the easiest and most important task. In the Fall of 2020, many in our library wanted something positive to rally around and affordability was a topic many felt passionately about. Librarians drafted informational graphics on the high cost of textbooks and the academic impact that having (or not having) access to textbooks has on students. Library student workers and other students on campus told their stories in videos and graphics thus personalizing the campaign. The library worked closely with the NAU Foundation, as well as individual staff for the colleges responsible for fundraising.

Based on conversations with Development and those with more experience fundraising, we narrowed our focus to courses in the Colleges of Health & Human Services and Social & Behavioral Sciences. We set a goal to raise $15,000 within two months, beginning in October and ending before the winter break in December.

At the conclusion of the campaign, we had raised $7,500.

Similar to what the research demonstrated, our donors largely fell into two categories: current employees (43%) and Alumni (35%). While we did have some current students participate, they were at a much smaller number. Just over half of the donors made pledges over $100.

We wanted to maximize the impact of these donations by carefully considering how we allocated funds. To achieve this goal, we prioritized engaging with faculty members before making any textbook purchases. We initiated this process by distributing a brief survey to faculty members whose course materials were identified as those that the library could acquire.

The survey posed four key inquiries: 1. Are you still planning to utilize this textbook in either the upcoming Spring or Fall semester?

2. Do you intend to incorporate this textbook into your courses in future semesters?

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

3. If the answer to either of the previous questions is “no,” do you have an alternative required textbook in mind?

4. If we acquire the textbook, would you be willing to include a link to the library-owned material in your course syllabus?

If faculty responded “no” to the first question, we did not purchase that text. If they responded no to the second, we examined the cost of the text versus potential impact for students and decided whether to purchase based on that information. The answer to the third question allowed us to check whether we had access to the replacement text and, if “Overall faculty so, purchase that instead. The fourth question had no bearing are thrilled to on spending. With hindsight, the find out we are questionnaires slowed down the purchasing their purchasing process as many faculty did not respond or needed to be textbook.” contacted directly for answers.

Only a few responses changed our purchasing decision. Now, we simply ask faculty if they are using the text and would like us to purchase an electronic copy.

We find this question to be important as we discovered errors on the bookstore list. Overall, faculty are thrilled to find out we are purchasing their textbook and quickly respond to these short questions.

Restricting the funding campaign to two colleges made spending the money slightly more difficult. At the beginning of this project, a decision was made to only purchase books that had a perpetual license and with unlimited seats. However, due to publisher constraints, a significant number of the course texts were not available as eBooks for library purchase.

These circumstances prompted the group to reconsider the initial requirement for unlimited user access, allowing for the inclusion of texts with more restricted usage licenses.

Conversely (and somewhat surprising to us), several eBooks were relatively inexpensive purchases (under $100), especially for courses within the College of Social & Behavioral Sciences.

In the end, we purchased nearly 40 separate texts for the Spring & Fall courses in 2021 combined. A substantial portion of these textbooks had unlimited user access, while approximately 10% had limitations of three seats or fewer. For those with less than unlimited seats, we gave faculty tips on how to reduce turn-aways. These include reminding students to check back later, close the books when they are done or download a chapter if needed. Library staff also monitor turn-aways and purchase more copies if funds allow. This has been a rare occurrence. Depending on the student enrollment for these courses and the cost of the textbooks, we adjusted our purchases accordingly by acquiring additional copies or expanding the number of simultaneous users.

Many of these texts continue to be used in courses, thus extending the reach of the initial investment. We calculate that this project has potentially saved students more than $200,000 when compared to the bookstore’s pricing for these materials.

Challenges & Forward Directions Without continued funding to purchase new textbooks, we reverted to examining the list of required textbooks every semester and comparing it against library holdings and alerting

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or reminding faculty of the availability of a library copy of their course readings. We observed that without these reminders, there was a noticeable decline in usage, as students were unaware of the presence of these materials in the library’s collection.

This change in strategy introduced a few challenges. First, it required us to obtain accurate information from the bookstore in a timely manner, which was sometimes challenging. Second, we relied on faculty members to provide the bookstore with their textbook lists in a timely manner. Lastly, this approach increased the workload on library personnel as they managed the communication and coordination involved in these efforts.

The crowdfunding campaign came together rapidly and, during the momentum, we neglected to decide upon a data tracking method. Consequently, we missed a valuable opportunity to gather feedback from our faculty and students, who were the beneficiaries of these textbook purchases. The data we have collected and continue to gather provides insights into usage and monetary value but falls short of capturing the more personal aspect of how these resources may have positively impacted students in their courses.

The success of this campaign was the foundation used to apply for and receive additional funding through an internal NAU presidential grant. In Fall of 2022, the library received an additional $15,000 to continue our efforts of purchasing electronic textbooks for courses. With this additional financial support, we have been able to purchase over 100 books, estimating potential student savings of approximately halfmillion dollars. Even with the success we have had purchasing small amounts of texts for students, it is clear that library purchases of course materials is a stopgap measure, not the solution to lowering costs for students.

While we are not discontinuing our current initiatives, we have shifted our focus towards promoting the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) among faculty. As part of the NAU grant, we also received $100,000 to offer faculty members stipends to either learn about, adopt, adapt, or create OER materials. Although this project is still in its early stages, we aspire to pave the way for a more inclusive and cost-effective educational landscape.

18 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

Endnotes 1. Chart of the Day…or Century. https://www.aei.org/carpediem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-6/ 2. College Board Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2021. https://research.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/ trends-college-pricing-student-aid-2021.pdf 3. Student Textbook and Instructional Materials Survey: Results and Findings. (2022). Florida Virtual Campus. https://assets.website-files.

com/646e59f2d76c6e8c0c5223de/64de6132148ed 7739bc186e4_FLVC%20Textbook%20Survey%20 Report%20-%202022.pdf

4. Fixing the Broken Textbook Market, Third Edition. https://pirg.org/edfund/resources/fixing-the-brokentextbook-market-third-edition/ 5. Textbook Affordability and Student Success for Historically Underserved Populations at CSUCI. https:// senate.csuci.edu/meeting-materials/5-openci-whitepaper.pdf 6. Average Cost of College Textbooks. https://educationdata. org/average-cost-of-college-textbooks 7. Institution Research Quick Facts. https://in.nau.edu/ institutional-research/quick-facts/# 8. First Generation Programs. https://nau.edu/first-gen/ 9. IPEDS Data. https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/ institutionprofile.aspx?unitId=105330 10. Cost of Living in Flagstaff. https://payscale.com/cost-ofliving-calculator/Arizona-Flagstaff 11. Horta, H., Meoli, M. & Vismara, S. Crowdfunding in higher education: evidence from UK Universities. High Educ 83, 547–575 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-02100678-8 12. Craven, J. (May 24, 2013). Universities explore crowdfunding, social media to raise money. USA Today.

Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/ nation/2013/05/24/collegecrowdfunding-social-mediafundraising/2358503/.

13. Cho, M., Lemon, L.L., Levenshus, A.B. et al. Current students as university donors?: determinants in college students’ intentions to donate and share information about university crowdfunding efforts. Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark 16, 23–41 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/ s12208-018-00217-9

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Open Educational Resources Initiatives at the University of Wisconsin – Superior

By Travis Mann (Librarian, W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research) <mann@upjohn.org> and Emily Moran (Instructional Designer, University of Wisconsin-Superior) <emoran4@uwsuper.edu> and Stephanie Warden (Associate Director/Information Literacy Librarian, Jim Dan Hill Library, University of Wisconsin – Superior) <swarden1@uwsuper.edu>

T

he OER Committee within the Center for Learning, Innovation, and Collaboration (CLIC) at the Jim Dan Hill Library at the University of Wisconsin – Superior started in 2020 with scant resources in an environment that was not familiar with open educational resources. There had been attempts to promote the use and creation of these resources, but those efforts were largely ad hoc and had very little opportunity for collaboration between the CLIC and university faculty and staff. It quickly became evident that one-off workshops were not going to move the needle on the adoption and creation of OER. Things changed, however, when the library and former Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) merged in July 2020. Suddenly their faculty development funding and additional three staff members were available to focus on and create many dynamic opportunities for the creation and adoption of OER. Instead of just presenting lectures to a glass-eyed audience, we could create more authentic opportunities for participants to engage with the committee and each other, deepening their understanding and commitment to using open materials. The “Instead of committee began our efforts with a just presenting sum of $7,000 to start with.

lectures to a glass-eyed audience, we could create more authentic opportunities for participants to engage with the committee and each other, deepening their understanding and commitment to using open materials.”

Our approach to programming for faculty and staff is to be practical and adaptable. Our goal is for participants to engage at the point at which they are most comfortable and continue honing their skills and gaining the confidence to create or adopt an OER. The programs are constructed to give entry points to learners of various expertise with OER, so they can choose to engage in activities that are ideal for beginners or for more advanced users/creators of OER. These activities were designed by the committee, and many made use of existing activities that were given an OER flavor.

One such activity, the Superior Learning Experience (SLE), is an example of an existing activity repurposed for OER. This activity is a six-week cohort of five instructors from any discipline during which monetarily incentivized participants learn about a topic and incorporate that information into a course during the following academic year. One member of our committee led a cohort focused on adopting OER during the summer of 2021 and a second cohort focused on developing an Open Pedagogy assignment during the

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

summer of 2022. The cohort experience creates a networking opportunity between people doing instruction at the university and people who are experts in the areas of open scholarship. It also allows people to learn together and from each other, sharing concrete, real-world examples of how it can work in the field.

This compensated experience often draws in new instructors and leads them to continue pursuing open educational practices.

Another instructor-focused activity that we offer is the OER Intensive Workshop. This is a compensated opportunity for participants to learn the basics about open resources, Creative Commons, and other pertinent topics. Participants are also asked to submit a review of an open textbook through the Open Education Network. This serves as an entry point for faculty and staff to learn about OER and is flexible so that participants with experience using OER can skip the basics. It gives them experience reviewing an open textbook and the opportunity to interact with open textbooks and their ancillary materials in general, which helps to address the negative stereotypes surrounding OER, such as that they are low quality. Almost half of the attendees ended up using the book they reviewed as part of the program in their classes after participating. This is, of course, no small thing, considering that for many this is their first time or one of their first times dabbling in the world of OER. In addition, this cohort program provides more networking opportunities both within and outside of the cohort.

For example, one year, an instructor connected with the author of a textbook they reviewed and partnered with them on a project.

Our OER Mini-Grant Program is a compensated opportunity for instructors to explore creating or adopting textbooks that they may not otherwise explore. Faculty and staff can apply for grants including adoption, creation, and departmental, and the grants range in value from $600 to $2,000, depending on the type.

Recipients are expected to meet one-on-one with librarians, who are Creative Commons certified, as they work on their projects.

This program has had the biggest impact on student savings, with approximately $12,000 saved for students across classes including Appreciation and History of Music (MUS U660-101), Methods: Agency, Comm, and Macro (SWK 366)/Macro Skills (PLI 366), Reading Academic Texts (ESL 131), and Chemistry of Everyday Phenomena (CHEM 102) in 2022-23. The committee also projects a savings of $40,000 in the 2023-24 school year with the addition of classes including Introduction to Contemporary Math (MATH 112), Behavior Analysis Intervention (SPED 760), Interpersonal Communication (COMM 211), Teach Elementary/ Middle School Math II (MTHED 323), and Human Structure and Function (HLTH 264/265). In addition to the obvious benefits to the students, this activity increases instructor confidence in their own subject matter expertise and allows instructors to engage authentically with the course materials.

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OER Panel Discussions hosted annually by members of the committee during Open Education Week are great opportunities for participants of our programs to detail their experiences, advocate for open textbooks, and educate their peers who may wish to learn more about OER from a trusted, local source. This event is held in the library in front of live and virtual audiences and is recorded and hosted on the library’s YouTube channel.

This means participants get to showcase their real world experiences and work for themselves, the administration, and the public. Participants are generally chosen based on their participation in our other OER events, such as the Superior Learning Experience or, more often, the OER mini-grant program.

Our student-centered events are not quite as robust as our instructor-centered ones (yet), but we still endeavor to make connections with students at every opportunity. Two such opportunities occur during Open Education Week and Open Access Week. During these times, we ask students to engage with whiteboards by asking them questions such as, “How much did you spend on textbooks last semester?” which gives us anecdotal data to share with our stakeholders. These are great opportunities to strike up conversations with students that allow us to educate them on OER and learn more context for surprising data. For example, when students say they spent $0 on textbooks, this may mean they didn’t purchase the textbook due to financial hardship, they opted to not purchase the textbook because it is not used enough throughout the course to make it worth their while, or they indeed had $0 cost for the course materials because the instructors use open resources or do not require textbooks. These conversations have the added benefit of fostering collaborations with student groups, such as the student government association.

Our efforts also extend to building bridges with campus administration. For example, when the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) 2022-23 Institute on OER was announced, our team was asked by our Dean of Academic Affairs to apply with a group of faculty and staff from one academic department at our institution. This was a challenging but informative project, as many of the participants were selected not necessarily because of an interest in OER, but because they were asked to do this project by a person of authority. While some were already OER advocates, some were deeply attached to paid resources for various reasons. Even so, it gave us the opportunity to work with a specific program to meet their goals and serve as a proof of concept to administration. This resulted in a departmental template that could be adapted for any department who wished to get started with OER, though it has seen limited use and success. If we were to apply to this institute again, we would be more proactive in asserting ourselves as the people with expertise who should shape the pathway forward, as well as the makeup of the team, and we would be far more expansive with our efforts and not focus on one department.

Another point of contact with administration was the writing of a 2022 OER Report for our Provost. Our committee was asked to write a short update about our progress with OER on campus.

This report focused on successes and data to support the efficacy of our efforts and highlighted the background of OER efforts on campus. It included recommendations for future directions and was presented to the provost by the committee. At this meeting, the provost requested additional information from us, including highlights from the report, a three-, five-, and ten-year plan for OER on campus, and contextualizing data such as student voices and information from institutional research regarding OER. This report was only written for the Provost of our institution and, as a result, it was not shared widely. The action plans contained therein did not meet with resistance, however, so we have begun our work on our long-term goals. The committee has already made significant progress on one item, paving the way for instructors to label their classes Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) and Low Textbook Cost (LTC) in the class schedule.

We also try to ensure that the approaches that we take to advocate for OER are centered in the reality of the students who we serve. As a result, we promote a yearly, anonymous, Qualtrics survey through a global announcement in our Learning Management System to gather information about the relationships students have with course materials. This Affordable Textbook Survey allows us to learn much about student attitudes and dispositions toward textbooks and the specific campus culture surrounding their use. It gives us valuable insight into how students are getting around textbook costs, such as by sharing, pirating, or otherwise not purchasing materials and allows us to use that data in our advocacy efforts with instructors. We also gather insight about how the cost of textbooks affects students’ academic and social lives, allowing us to focus our efforts on student quality of life as we have an institutional focus on culture of care.

Our efforts are diverse and reflect the many stakeholders who are affected by the use of OER on campus. By ensuring that our work touches instructors, students, and administration, we hope to ensure that our labors bear fruit and are inclusive to the groups who are impacted by OER use. We are persistent and consistent with our efforts and, though some endeavors are more challenging than others, we do not allow our perceived failures to derail our long-term goal of creating a campus in which open and affordable course materials are the norm, not a delightful surprise.

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Elevating Excellence Through OER: A Case Study

By John J. Doherty (Northern Arizona University Cline Library) <John.Doherty@nau.edu> and Theresa Carlson (Northern Arizona University Cline Library) <Theresa.Carlson@nau.edu>

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orthern Arizona University’s NAU 2025 – Elevating Excellence vision committed the institution to a fresh, collective journey of strategic priorities. To facilitate this, the newly appointed President of NAU invited proposals for projects that aligned with the university’s new directions.

Among the funded initiatives was our Affordable Learning Materials Initiative. This initiative aimed to establish a comprehensive framework for reducing course material costs for NAU students, while also creating a mechanism to acknowledge faculty contributing to this endeavor.

Within our approach, we specifically targeted the university’s strategic priorities of Academic Excellence and Student Success.

Our objective was to increase faculty utilization of open educational resources (OER) or library materials as alternatives to traditional textbooks. While recognizing that library books are not strictly classified as OER due to associated costs, they do ensure zero costs for students in the course. Insights gleaned from a 2022 survey of NAU faculty, conducted as part of the American Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) initiative on Lowering the Cost of Textbooks & Other Affordable Learning Materials, revealed that many faculty members refrain from using OER due to challenges in discovering suitable texts, lack of familiarity with OER, or concerns about quality. Further research supports the notion that institutions expanding efforts to provide open and no-cost facultyselected alternatives to expensive “... institutions textbooks witness increased student engagement, faculty customization expanding of course materials to meet specific efforts to provide classroom needs, and the freedom open and no-cost for faculty to rethink courses with outcomes- and student-centered faculty selected approaches.1, 2 alternatives

to expensive textbooks witness increased student engagement ...”

Our proposal received full funding, and we began implementation midway in late 2022 and will continue through June 2023. As a supplementary aspect to Open Educational Resources (OER), it’s worth noting that a portion of these funds was allocated to purchasing electronic copies of select textbooks. This process involved reviewing the faculty adoption lists from the NAU Bookstore. We either purchased an eBook, when available, and provided a link to the faculty or identified and shared the link for eBooks already accessible through our subscriptions. To date, we have utilized less than $15,000 of our funds, resulting in savings exceeding $572,000 for over 8,500 students in the Spring 2023 and Fall 2023 semesters. It’s crucial to emphasize that these one-time acquisitions will continue to generate savings each semester faculty opt for them.

As highlighted earlier, a significant focus of our OER initiative was to enhance faculty engagement with OER.

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Our proposal deliberately incorporated incentive awards for faculty to adopt, adapt, or create OER for their courses. We established a tiered award system: • $500 for adopting preexisting OER for an upcoming course, • $1,000 for adapting preexisting OER for an upcoming course, and • $5,000 for creating new OER or OER ancillaries for an upcoming course.

Following a call for proposals where faculty provided details on their courses, student enrollment, previous or current textbook costs, and their intended use of OER, we funded five projects in Summer 2023 from the Chemistry, Forestry, and Mathematics programs. In a Fall 2023 panel discussion involving three awardees, it was established that their projects would save students $32,000 in textbook costs for one semester. Given our requirement for awardees to commit to using the OER for at least two semesters, these savings are anticipated to accumulate over time.

Our proposal also emphasized the need for increased education and awareness of Open Educational Resources (OER) at NAU, along with potential initiatives for implementation.

To address this, we opted to finance a team comprised of NAU faculty, administrators, and a student to participate in the 2023-2024 American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) Institute on Open Educational Resources. The team composition included: • • • • • • •

Senior Vice Provost, Academic Operations Assistant Vice Provost, Teaching and Learning Center Dean and University Librarian Librarian, Head of Content and Discovery Services* Librarian, Head of Research and Instruction Services* Faculty, College of Arts and Letters Faculty, College of the Environment, Forestry, and Natural Sciences • Student Senator [*Co-authors of this essay] As part of the Institute on Open Educational Resources (iOER), the team collaborates with other institutions and an experienced OER professional mentor to formulate an implementation plan for OER at NAU. Presently, the NAU team has concentrated on raising faculty awareness and development, aligning with the institutional move towards equitable access in Fall 204.

Presently, the authors are in the process of securing approval for a faculty survey on OER use at NAU. Bookstore data indicates that approximately three-quarters of the courses offered per semester do not adopt a textbook through their system. The

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aim is to understand the alternatives faculty are employing. Are they, for instance, utilizing an alternate vendor? Or, perhaps, are they not using textbooks at all? It’s possible they are relying on library-licensed eBooks or articles delivered via the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS). In essence, the goal is to gauge the potential savings achieved by faculty using texts outside of traditional textbooks.

Scheduled for the end of the fall and spring semesters, our survey will seek answers to the following questions: 1. Are you using OER? 2. Are you using another source for your texts?

3. How much does your alternative text cost?

4. What is the average cost of a textbook for this course?

5. In what program/discipline is this course?

6. Is this course a General Studies course?

While these questions aim to gather information, they also intend to provide faculty respondents and their programs with valuable cost-saving data to share with relevant authorities.

The inclusion of a question on General Studies aligns with the program’s significance in the Elevating Excellence and academic momentum initiatives. Sharing affordable learning material data with General Studies is anticipated to further strengthen our OER footprint.

As indicated earlier, NAU’s Affordable Learning Materials Initiative received funding for a two-year period, concluding on June 30, 2024. In the second year of this funding, we have already identified additional resources to support more projects involving the adoption, adaptation, or creation of learning materials. The success of the initial funding round has been promising, fostering expectations for even more positive outcomes in the second round.

A portion of our budget has been allocated to supporting faculty and staff development around Open Educational Resources (OER), including bringing in OER experts to improve our understanding of OER and its challenges. Notably, we recently sponsored attendance at the 2023 Open Education virtual conference and have committed to co-sponsoring the upcoming OERizona annual conference in early March 2024.

Our Institute on Open Educational Resources team is set to participate as presenters and contribute to the leadership day for this virtual conference.

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The co-authors of this essay have also submitted a grant proposal to the federal Institute for Museums and Library Science (IMLS) seeking funding to extend our Elevating Excellence initiative for an additional two to three years. Our goal is to further raise awareness and promote the use of OER and other affordable learning materials solutions. Combined with potential funding from university leadership, our plans are well on their way to becoming integral to NAU’s Elevating Excellence strategic plan.

We are also planning to host a “teach-in” on Open Pedagogy with some of our funding. Open pedagogy, simply defined as engaging with students as creators of content and information rather than mere consumers, will be the focus of this event in March 2024. This approach aims to facilitate the integration of OER into faculty teaching and curriculum development.

Our experience with Open Educational Resource initiatives at Northern Arizona University has been a long one of trial and error, of ebbs and flows, of highs and a lot of lows. The lesson we have taken from all of this is that it is extremely difficult for the library to be the sole contributor to OER efforts. In order for us to succeed, we needed to tie our OER goals into institutional initiatives to achieve the buy-in from the university’s leadership.

It needed the vision of a new President who is dedicated to providing a university that will “educate, support, and empower students from all backgrounds, identities, and lived experiences to reach their full potential and contribute to a more just, equitable, inclusive, prosperous, and sustainable future.”3

Endnotes 1. Feldstein, A., Martin, M., Hudson, A., Warren, K., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. (2012). Open textbooks and increased student access and outcomes. European Journal of Open, Distance and E–Learning.

2. Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Education Tech Research and Development, 64(4), 573 – 590.

3. The New NAU Charter. https://nau.edu/about/visionmission/

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Open Education Week Authorship Panel, 2023 Edited by Stephanie Warden (Associate Director/Information Literacy Librarian, Jim Dan Hill Library, University of Wisconsin – Superior) <swarden1@uwsuper.edu>

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n March of 2023, the Markwood Center for Learning, Innovation, and Collaboration (CLIC) at the Jim Dan Hill Library (JDHL) hosted an Open Education Week Authorship Panel with University of Superior – Wisconsin instructors. The participants: Lynn Goerdt, Rich Freese, Staci Gilpin, and Amanda Zbacnik were all previous participants in the CLIC/JDHL open educational resources programming and events. This instructorcentered event was held at the library. Though sparsely attended at the time in person, the recorded live-stream attracted more attention after it was posted on YouTube.

The following discussion has been edited for clarity, conciseness, length, and grammar. The full video is available for viewing on the Jim Dan Hill Library’s YouTube channel.

(Lynn) Hi, I’m Lynn Goerdt, and I am faculty in the social work program here on campus.

(Rich) My name is Rich Freese. I am an adjunct online music instructor with the University of Wisconsin – Superior, teaching through the Independent Learning Program. When I am not doing that, I am an instructional designer.

(Staci) Hi, everyone. I am Staci Gilpin. I am a UWS Alum. I am back teaching as an adjunct faculty in the graduate special education program, working with the fabulous Amanda. I was also previously an OER fellow with the Hewlett Foundation.

Currently, I am working with Normandale Community College on the OERs they are creating for their teachers-of-color grant.

I am very passionate about OER work.

(Amanda) I’m Amanda Zbacnik, I work in the Department of Education as an associate professor of special education. I have the honor of working with Staci on co-creating our, and what will be my first, OER. (Stephanie) What made you decide to author your own textbook for your class?

(Amanda) Staci and I have collaborated on presentations in the past. She also has experience teaching in the graduate special education course world. We were discussing SPED 760 (Behavior Analysis and Intervention). As Staci mentioned, I wished we had a stronger text, as the current text was too clinical-based in nature. Our need to create a better text, coupled with my current Wisconsin Teaching Scholars and Fellows journey which emphasizes being equity-minded and student focused contributed to our desire to pursue this project. We were trying to find not only a better resource but also a free one.

(Staci) I agree 100 percent with everything Amanda said. I want to share an example of why Amanda and I chose the OER path. I have an email from a student who was giving feedback.

This is towards the end of a term, and I had shared bits of the OER Amanda and I are working on with some students that I am teaching now. I was already supplementing with bits and pieces all over the place and I wanted to create a document for them that was more organized. I thought, why not share the document? This student said thank you for doing that. They

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also offered some feedback about the standard textbook. The student told me “I didn’t really open it and it was expensive.”

The text costs over a hundred dollars, so they wrote this is my critique sandwich or criticism sandwich — they said some good things, but also expressed “I am glad you’re moving forward with an OER type text.”

(Lynn) My answer is very similar. I had not used a text for years because I never found one that I thought was accessible to students and they were way too expensive for what I thought would be the value to the students from using it. I had been creating content that I either would send to students before class or I would deliver it and take about a third of the class before we would get to discussions and activities. I wanted to create material that they could review prior to class and it would free up more time while being free for them. This particular class is cross-listed with the public leadership and innovation major which is outside social work. I did not want a text that was just for social workers, I wanted it to be inclusive of the other majors.

I wanted to create content that was more inclusive.

(Rich) The online courses I teach are generally general degree requirements. They are not people pursuing music majors. It is not as though this text is something that they are going to be referring to throughout their career, they are looking for three credits and something of interest. Beyond the money thing as a reason for choosing to do an OER, several years ago, when I was working on the course, someone I was collaborating with suggested that we create some study notes highlighting key concepts of the texts. I enjoy content creation and it kind of turned into a hundred-page summary of the two- or three-hundred-page text. I ended up creating this good chunk of content. In addition, the text I had been using, which is a fine text, had third party apps such as quizzes and online text which resulted in me getting emails; probably 95 of the emails that I received from students were from people who were having difficulty accessing the online text or the supplemental materials.

It got to the point where I thought I could take all the time I am responding to these emails and I could use that to make an OER and be done with these barriers and the timing was perfect. By the time I was looking, I had just joined the Superior staff as adjunct faculty and I did a Google search about OER grants in Wisconsin and the first thing that came up was one of these University of Wisconsin – Superior Center for Learning, Innovation, and Collaboration at the Jim Dan Hill Library mini-grant applications that was due in a month. I thought I will give it a try. If it is meant to be, it is meant to be. Things aligned. Another big factor in me choosing to author my own textbook for class involves diversity. Working in the world of music, especially European influenced, classical music, your standard texts do not do a good job including diverse populations, specifically, people of color and women composers. Do not get me wrong, I still have work to do diversifying this content but, going through now, we are finding people who are not just dead white males for each and every one of these units. This is something I am very excited about. No matter what background a student comes from, I want to see them reflected in the material, even if it is Renaissance music. It is something I am passionate about.

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(Stephanie) What resources did you incorporate or consult in the creation of your OER? (Amanda) Documents such as the current syllabus and, for all education programs, making sure that the specific assessment pieces required by Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction that have to be included continue to be included in the courses.

We are looking for materials that can assist in those type of assessments. Wisconsin Teaching Fellows offer a budgeting and supplies thing that you can use to purchase supplies — as a result I did a lot of searching for different little texts related to behavioral analysis. “Functional Behavioral Assessment” was a book I got, and “Equity Inclusions in Education Case Studies,” among others. Those are some of the texts that looked like they really aligned with the curriculum needs of the course.

It just came down to taking the most applicable pieces and looking for applicable videos, or other supplemental things to include. We are about halfway through this process. Because our programs operate on a seven-week schedule, we decided to create a seven-chapter OER. That was the logic we used in the process of creating this.

(Staci) One more thing I want to add to what Amanda shared was I have done some work with OER and authoring and things and I had some resources that are open textbooks that have licenses on them — I do not want to get into a lot about licensing — but the authors license them, which is a really cool thing about OER, so they could be mixed and re-shared as long as I give them credit. Amanda and I give them credit within our text, and that is something that has been cool because I found bits and pieces of some of these open texts that I wanted to use but I did not like all of them. We have been able to pull parts, copy and paste chunks, with the author’s permission, into our text and give them credit. That has been a fun thing to do. I suggest it if you are going to get into the OER authoring world — consider doing some of that.

(Lynn) I accessed one open-source textbook that was available, I scanned a lot of material, but I only found one that I had known about before. I incorporated that, of course complying with copyright expectations, and the rest of the content I ended up creating, which was never my intention, but that is what I found myself doing. Then, of course, pulling from a ton of references, I, like Amanda, ordered a bunch of books and did this mostly while I was on sabbatical. I read and read and read and incorporated a lot of information as references — but it was content that I put together.

(Rich) So, I mentioned I had the past study notes, my own summary of the old text. In addition to that, I found the lecture transcripts for instructional videos I had made.

Echoing others’ ideas, I remixed other sources. The University of Georgia System had a text with good information. I wanted to rearrange how a lot of the content was. There was a lot of pick — and choosing — I like this and I like that. There were other remixable sources I saw. Anyone who is excited about pursuing this — learn from what I did. Make sure you are keeping track of and really diving into the specifics of how they want the material cited. I discovered in the process that there were a couple of sources that they let you remix, incorporate and adapt as you see fit, but they also make sure that you include a link to their OER on every page that you remix. That sounds cumbersome, so I paraphrased and credit it. I moved that from the portions that I copy and pasted and made that part of the bibliography. Be respectful of what the creators have said about how they want their material presented. I learned in this process that YouTube has a filter for Creative

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Commons licensing. My initial thought was — I teach music — I’ll include YouTube links or say to students you’ll be able to find famous pieces such as Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony etc. on YouTube. After learning about the filters, I was able to find a downloadable listening list with about 90 music examples that had been shared on YouTube. That inspired me — I was already finding stuff on YouTube but I would also find things I really liked that did not have the Creative Commons license. It inspired me to email them and say I am making this textbook — and there is something about asking people, saying I would love to use this thing in my course and my students would love to see this — would you be willing to share this?

Generally, they are receptive, everybody was honored: yeah, that would be wonderful, please use that, that’s great, that’s great. The last thing: what I love about an OER is that it can be a living document. I am catching typos, I am revising as needed, I am also crafting into my course as a midterm and a final assessment, students getting to write about whatever they want, and as an optional thing, do you give permission for us to take what you have written and add to this resource? You do not have to do this, this is your writing, do whatever you want with your writing. For future iterations, students in the course will be helping shape what this text looks like.

(Stephanie) What did you find most frustrating about this process, and how did you overcome it?

(Amanda) I would not call it super frustrating. I think I just had questions. My mind goes to how to make this OER something that students can easily access within the course shell to a variety of different learners. Staci and I have had conversations about not including charts or being able to consider Universal Design for Learning. With all these great resources we have bits of text, but how much is too much? At what point do we need to add something else in there, a supportive video for example. I would not say frustration. Open conversations such as we have two full pages of intense information here, do we need to break it up right now, and with what? Just questions here and there opening the door for more collaboration.

(Staci) To add to what Amada shared, I would say some advice that would help alleviate frustration that I found helpful was looking at other examples of OER textbooks out there in your field and paying special attention to the writing crafts — not only the content — how are they giving credit to those who have come before them?, how are they citing remix materials?, how are they doing their bibliography?, things like that. I would say through that process, Amanda and I have picked and chose what we liked and made it our own. I think looking at models really helped. Initially, that “how are you going to keep track and reference all this information” feeling is overwhelming, but once you get the system down it goes really fast.

(Lynn) I’m currently in the thick of the frustrating part.

I think it could feel like it is a never-ending thing. It is not ready to be shared publicly yet, but I feel like I could always think that and, at some point, I just need to put it out there and get feedback. I am going to a conference at the end of March where it will be not necessarily public, but I will talk about it publicly. There are things about the platform I am using that are frustrating. For example, if I create a table and upload it as a JPEG it is not accessible — the content reader would not work.

I try to use the table within the platform and it never looks right.

Things like that — I am trying to use tools and I have ended up hiring somebody to figure out some of this stuff because I do not have the time. I am limited by my own capacity, but I am not willing to share it until it is better.

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(Amanda) Thank you for bringing that up, Lynn. Once we are closer to the end of our OER, that point where you must be done. You also made me think this is a very time-consuming process, at least for me, and finding, chunking out time in my schedule is a big challenge, too. I do it, but it is time intensive.

(Rich) I agree with it being time intensive. For me, the toughest part was getting started, like any project. Once I got my first paragraphs in my first chapter, I got on a roll. I included various images — there is a host of stuff shared that is freely accessible to share — now it is time to add my pictures and what is this going to look like? After the first couple, okay, I am on a roll. Then it was the glossary, now I must make a glossary, and it was just getting on a roll. It is not that traditional text that is locked in stone. It is something where you can always go back. I think I have had various milestones, whether it is that the course is about to launch, and I think okay, course launched, I am taking a break from this. This panel was another one of those I get to geek out about my OER, leading up to that let’s spend just a little bit of time doing some tweaks here and there. Knowing it’s fine and I can go back to it is something that has helped me, because I know there has got to be more typos in there. I just put an announcement to my students “hey, I’m really excited that you have a free text, there might be some typos, if you want extra credit let me know when you see them, and you will get extra credit.” So just being upfront with the students, too. Know it is not the most polished thing in the world, but it is free, and you can increase your grade if you see something.

(Stephanie) What did you find the most rewarding about this experience, and why?

(Amanda) I love the collaboration piece. At the end, the most rewarding thing will be that final — well, never final — our OER is going to be what is used in fall and then I look forward to positive, and constructive comments from students as well about the OER in itself.

(Staci) I would second Amanda again, I love partnering with Amanda and we both bring different perspectives in. It is also like professional development for me as an instructor, doing this process. It is that kind of growth, then to have a product at the end — something that we are working towards is even better.

(Lynn) I agree, I’m very proud of what I have done. I used it in the class and the feedback was positive, even though there were many things that needed to be fixed. I knew that there would be, but the students said, “you know, I’ve never had such an accessible textbook,” and “I really like the style.” I intentionally designed each section so it was no more than like five or six pages. I did the whole thing that way, and the students indicated “I’ve never read a book where you could like it.” It is in sections, even if I said read two sections, what I planned seem to be valuable, so that was really rewarding. Also, just what I learned and how I have evolved as a professional. I never would have anticipated where I would be now, all the things that I learned and that I have already incorporated in multiple aspects of my professional world.

(Rich) There are so many things that I am happy about, such as how students are going to benefit from this text. I think what is most rewarding has been my own just like knowledge and learning. I learned a lot about great pieces of music that I only learned more about because I’m writing this OER. Let’s branch out from all the other same composers I have been learning about, and I have loved geeking out on content creation and making use of what is freely accessible and something I am going to be using for a while. I made this on a whole scheme

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of platforms, and it is kind of low-tech but, I made a Google doc. I learned, I have been using Google Docs for a decade, all sorts of new tips and tricks with Google Docs that I didn’t know and picked up because I wrote a 280-page OER, so just the new little features and things along my way. I am appreciative of the personal growth.

(Stephanie) What would you say to someone who is insecure about authoring their own OER? (Rich) I think that is healthy, this is daunting, and I think it is okay to acknowledge that knowing where to start, knowing what platforms to use — I just kind of embrace the uncertainty — I don’t know exactly what I am going to get myself into.

You look at that published text, especially an intimidating hardcover, and I think that text is the final project. I had goals of doing this for like five or six years before I finally did it. So if you are in a situation where you cannot do it this semester or even next semester, you just want to jot down your ideas and then think: this is the semester that I have the bandwidth — here are my bajillions of notes that I have been just adding little by little — I think that is a healthy approach, too, looking at an OER piecemeal. For example, you can have a finished text — what if you start with: “okay, I am going to use my text for two more semesters, but I am finding a couple articles so I think I don’t need this chapter anymore because I have this article.” Then, little by little you do your own writing to connect the dots and, with enough time and scaffolding, you have your own OER. (Staci) I agree with Richard; that is kind of what Amanda and I have been doing over the past year, because it was Spring when I started teaching 760. I thought “oh, we need to do these crazy crisis management plans.” Before I had a hodgepodge of things, but now I have built this chapter that I am going to share with students. Things like this are part of launching next year and we will kind of be finished. I’d been learning about this kind of stuff for two or three years before I decided “okay, now I am going to do it.” I have been doing something with open pedagogy, which is a whole different thing, but it’s kind of a progression.

(Lynn) I totally agree with everything that you all said.

The only thing I must add is if you can combine something big with this and have that be the sabbatical project — I thought it was fabulous to be able to have that kind of time. I am not sure how I would be able to do this — I know that was a luxury — but I would not have been able to do what I did if I was not in sabbatical. It was nice because then I was able to dive in and I had planned it.

(Amanda) Yeah, I echo everything that has been said, and I think it is absolutely alright to be asking questions such as “do I have the time to do this?” and “what sort of resources are there?” Have that curiosity, use your local resources, think about how the creation of this OER could really help a ton of students that you work with in your courses. I am probably not alone in this, but I have had in past classes students reach out and say, “I can’t buy my textbook yet because I have to pay my mortgage or rent.” Those sorts of things, the sheer power behind statements like that — starting this process you will make a difference in students’ lives.

Bibliography Open Education Week Authorship Panel, March 9 2023.

YouTube. Jim Dan Hill Library, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=X9DVJSVWEL8

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Top Textbooks in Review: Considering a Decade’s Worth of a Textbook Affordability Program

By Jennifer E. M. Cotton (University of Maryland, College Park Libraries) <jecotton@umd.edu> https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1018-431X

Introduction The Top Textbooks on Reserve program at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) Libraries began almost a decade ago as a way for the UMD Libraries to provide immediate and direct assistance to students struggling with the high costs of their required course materials. Though the Top Textbooks program has faced a number of challenges in meeting this goal over that time, it continues to help students and is expanding at the present time. This article is intended to provide a review of the Top Textbooks program over the past ten years, and in particular to share some of the insights that have emerged from running it so that other libraries can benefit from the lessons learned.

Origins and Early Years The University of Maryland, College Park serves over 40,700 students in 12 different schools and colleges, with 104 undergrad majors, 115 master’s programs, and 84 doctoral programs.1 The University of Maryland Libraries consists of eight branches, each of which manages its own hardcopy reserves, with centralized electronic and streaming media reserves services located in the main McKeldin Library, along with the Top Textbooks on Reserves “By focusing program. All of the reserves services on outreach, operated out of the McKeldin Library part of the Resource Sharing and collaboration, are Reserves (RSR) unit in the User adaptation, and Services and Resource Sharing department. assessment, the

Top Textbooks on Reserve program has been helping students learn for almost a decade, and to date has provided UMD students a maximum potential savings of over $1.5 million.”

Since the origins and early years of the Top Textbooks program (along with workflows and criteria for title selection) have already been described at more length in a previous article,2 this discussion will focus primarily on the program during and following the Covid-19 pandemic, and efforts to rebuild and expand the Top Textbooks in its wake. In brief, the Top Textbooks program originated in early 2014, out of conversations among members of the Student Government Association (SGA) and staff and upper administration of the UMD Libraries about the issues surrounding textbook affordability, and what the Libraries could do to help students. Though the specifics have shifted some over the years, the fundamental idea of the Top Textbooks program remains that the Libraries identify some of the largest (highest enrollment) courses on campus

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for which we can provide the required textbooks, and offer those textbooks for four-hour loans. While eBooks are included in the program when they are available to the Libraries with unlimited simultaneous user licenses, those remain rare, and the bulk of the program lies in physical books. The program began offering the textbooks for 50 courses at a single library branch during the Fall 2014 semester, expanding to approximately 100 courses starting in Fall 2015.

The Pandemic and Aftermath In between the Fall 2014 and Fall 2023 semesters lies Spring 2020, and with it the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. During this time, the UMD campus as a whole moved first to an entirelyremote model of operations, with no one entering the Libraries at all, followed by a primarily-remote model for the 2020-2021 academic year. In the initial version of the second model, a limited number of the Libraries staff were permitted into the Libraries, but book check-out was only done via curbside pickup and all materials were quarantined between users. Even once all Libraries employees and other members of the UMD community began to be permitted back inside the library, they were only allowed inside in limited numbers for restricted amounts of time up until the Fall 2021 semester.

Because the Top Textbooks program deals primarily in physical books, the program was largely suspended for the duration of the remote period. No new books were added during this time, and the existing collection was only available for chapter scanning requests. However, we did identify the instructors for the courses that might have been considered for inclusion under normal circumstances, and let them know that while the program was not currently operating, we did still have a large textbook collection, and would be glad to provide scans of portions of these works through our electronic reserves service.

As seen in Graph 1, the Covid-19 pandemic dealt a huge blow to the usage of this popular program. In addition to all of the other disruptions associated with the pandemic, we saw a large loss of institutional knowledge among the student body.

We have always notified the instructors whose courses are included in the Top Textbooks that their books are available for students to check out, but we also know from anecdotal student reports that the transmission of this information to the students themselves is inconsistent at best. In addition to not coming into the libraries, the opportunities for direct word-ofmouth information sharing between the students were severely diminished in an entirely virtual class environment. Many of the students who were familiar with the Top Textbooks graduated or left, and incoming students didn’t know about the program and had few ways to learn.

When the Top Textbooks returned with the return to campus in Fall 2021, we saw an 84% decrease in usage from the pre-

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pandemic levels in Fall 2019. Despite this, it is worth bearing in mind that even in Fall 2021, the Top Textbooks still saw 616 circulations by 253 unique borrowers, which is not an insubstantial number of students to have helped. At the time of this writing, the usage numbers have still not recovered to their previous levels, although a preliminary report at the end of October 2023 showed an increase to 918 circulations a little over halfway through the semester.

materials, meaning that in order to find out what textbooks are (or are not) required for a given course, Libraries staff must look up that course by individual sections on the bookstore website. This necessitates a great deal of staff time. Further complicating matters, the titles and ISBNs used on the bookstore website may not match those in the Libraries’ catalog and, in recent years, we have seen several instances where the bookstore’s website was malfunctioning intermittently or entirely for extended periods.

The other significant barrier for the Top Textbooks program is courses that require materials that the Libraries cannot acquire or provide. These include rental-only textbooks, single-user eBook access codes, and First DayTM (“inclusive access”) materials.3 As seen in Graph 2, the combined percentage of the courses evaluated for Top Textbooks that require materials which are unavailable to the UMD Libraries for purchase has been trending upward over time, particularly in the years since the pandemic suspension. See Graph 2 located below.

Other Challenges

Rebuilding and Expanding

The difficulties presented by the pandemic are only one segment of the challenges that the Top Textbooks program has had and continues to face. The first of these challenges has always been letting the students know that the books are available for them to use. As previously mentioned, while some instructors are very enthusiastic about the Top Textbooks program and conscientious about spreading the word to their students, others are less so, and may make only a brief mention of the program or not say anything about it to their students at all. Staff in the Libraries have no means of contacting the students enrolled in the included courses directly, so we must rely on more indirect methods, like notifying the instructors or trying to advertise the Top Textbooks more generally in campus-wide venues.

Despite the challenges, the UMD Libraries remain committed to textbook affordability, and the Libraries’ Administrative Leadership Team (ALT) has supported not only rebuilding but also expanding the Top Textbooks on Reserve program. This has included funding a new contingent staff position for a textbook reserves specialist, whose work is focused on the Top Textbooks program. Having someone in this dedicated position has allowed us to expand the program in ways that would have been untenable otherwise, including by expanding the number of courses included from approximately 100 to over 150 and offering copies of the required texts for 25 STEM-related courses at the STEM Library branch.

Another ongoing challenge is the difficulty posed by identifying the textbooks and courses for inclusion in the Top Textbooks in the first place. We have access to a report from the registrar which allows us to see how many seats are offered and filled for each course on campus, but there is no information about required course materials for those courses. The college bookstore has proven reluctant to provide us with any consolidated information about the course

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We have also worked to expand the discoverability of the Top Textbooks. We have worked with our Cataloging and Metadata Services department to get all of the Top Textbooks into the Libraries’ catalog so that they can be found using a typical title search. (For a variety of historical reasons, the Top Textbooks had previously been part of a suppressed collection with temporary circulation records only. They could be searched for via a separate database on the Libraries’ website.) In addition, we have worked with members of the Digital Services and Technology division to add not only the titles but the course numbers for Top Textbooks courses into the Libraries’ website’s Bento search function, meaning that students can find their materials by course as well as by title, author, or ISBN. As of October 17th, 2023, the Top Textbooks search page was the seventh most popular page on the Libraries’ website.

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Lessons Learned Outreach Needs to Be Perpetual, Mutual, and Multi-Pronged We have learned a number of useful lessons from running this program over the years. The first of these is about outreach, since having textbooks on our shelves is of no value if the students who would use them don’t know about them. Outreach needs to be perpetual, especially in a university setting, where the student body is constantly turning over. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, we found that marketing the program to students was something that needed to be done every year, especially since so many of the largest courses (i.e., the ones most likely to be included in the Top Textbooks program) are introductory level and especially likely to be taken by incoming students.

Outreach also can and should be undertaken as a mutually supportive endeavor with other groups whose goals align with those of the program. Though Open Educational Resources (OERs) are sometimes regarded as being in opposition to Course Reserves, in fact they can work very well in conjunction. We are very fortunate at the UMD Libraries to have librarians in our Research, Teaching and Learning department (where the Libraries’ OER work is centered) who also recognize this, and work with us to cross-promote all of the textbook affordability efforts that the Libraries supports, as do our subject liaison librarians.

In the case of something like the Top Textbooks program, it is also important to make sure that outreach is multi-pronged.

In addition to the students, we also want to inform and build strong relationships with the instructors. Beyond that, we work to make sure that the subject liaison librarians are familiar with the program (including which courses from their disciplines areas are included), so that they can promote it to the instructors they work with, and also communicate ideas and issues raised by those instructors back to us. Outreach to the Libraries’ upper administration is also key. The continued, and even expanded, work of the Top Textbooks program is only possible through their support, so it is vital that we communicate the value of the program to them. The members of ALT are then also able to share that information with other campus upper administrators and beyond as evidence of the UMD Libraries’ commitment to textbook and educational affordability. The Top Textbooks program was mentioned by name in the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award for 2020 which the UMD Libraries received.4 Outreach and information exchange with others in the field is also valuable, as we have learned from the experiences of other institutions as well as sharing our own, including with George Washington University, whose Top Textbooks program is partially modeled on UMD’s program.5

Collaboration is Key Collaboration is key to dealing with all of the challenges identified previously, and almost all of the work done on the Top Textbooks program represents a collaboration between RSR and one or more other groups. Outside of the Libraries, we collaborate regularly with the SGA, who has provided financial support, assistance in publicizing the program as well as our annual spring Top Textbooks donation drive, and communicates student perspectives to us. The department of Resident Life is also a key partner in the spring donation drive, allowing donation bins in the dorms and encouraging students to donate textbooks they no longer need to support the Top Textbooks program. We even have a limited partnership with the campus bookstore, in which they have allowed us to use the UMD staff discount and

28 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

to have access to the textbooks section of the store before it has opened to the public for the semester.

Within the UMD Libraries, the Top Textbooks program directly involves almost every division. In addition to previously mentioned work with the subject liaison librarians and the Research, Teaching and Learning department, we collaborate regularly with the Strategic Communications and Outreach Team and Student Engagement Services to promote the Top Textbooks through campus advertising, social media, and Libraries events.

On the internally-facing side, we work with members of the Digital Services and Technology division and now the Cataloging and Metadata Services department to make the Top Textbooks findable on the Libraries’ website. We also have extensive support from other members of the Collection Services and Strategies division in doing the initial identification of textbooks for inclusion as well as in the acquisition of new materials. We work with our Preservation department to bind any loose-leaf textbooks and to repair books that become damaged with use.

As of the Fall 2023 semester, we also collaborate with members of the STEM Library branch on making Top Textbooks available at that location as well.

The Importance of Being Adaptable Adaptability is another necessary quality for a program like the Top Textbooks. The surrounding circumstances can and will change over time, in both more negative ways (e.g., global pandemic, the rise of rental-only textbooks) and more positive ones (increasing the number of courses served, expanding to a second library branch). Continuing the Top Textbooks over a number of years has required ongoing adaptation, and a willingness to constantly evaluate what is working well and what could be improved.

We are always thinking about future directions of the program as well. One of our current goals is to investigate the feasibility of offering Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) for Course Reserves, starting with the Top Textbooks program. If we do end up moving to this model, it will require an enormous shift in the way we operate the program, but we are willing to undertake this change if we determine that it would be feasible and beneficial.

We must adapt to both circumstances outside of our control and those that are more subject to our decision-making. In our experience, the best practice is to maintain a focus on the core goals (in this case, providing students with access to their course materials at no extra cost to them) and to adjust the procedures to match the circumstances.

Knowing Where You Are, Knowing Where You’re Going One important feature of the Top Textbooks program from the Libraries’ perspective has always been ongoing assessment. We have kept extensive quantitative statistics from the beginning, and used them in making data-informed decisions. We look not just at overall circulation numbers but also break the data down more specifically, for instance, in determining that there is value in retaining the older editions of textbooks even when we have the newest edition (at least for a time), or that it is not worth including the courses in an online-only business degree program whose students were never on campus.

In addition to total circulation numbers, we also keep track of the number of different individual borrowers, so that we have a better understanding of how many students are using the program. We then use the number of unique borrowers multiplied by the average cost of a Top Textbooks title for the semester to calculate the maximum potential savings that the

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program has offered UMD students in that semester. As we have no way of knowing actual student savings, we use the maximum potential savings as a measure of the amount of money that may have been saved by students, if every student who checked out a Top Textbook would otherwise have purchased that book for full price. We use the maximum potential savings to calculate the maximum potential return on investment by subtracting the amount spent by the Libraries on materials and staff time.

An area in which our assessment has been lacking thus far is in more qualitative measures. The same circumstances which make it difficult to contact the students to let them know about the Top Textbooks make it equally difficult to contact them for feedback on the program. However, we have begun working with one of the newly-hired Teaching and Learning librarians to plan ways that we might be able to gather some of that information.

We are currently discussing plans for an initial student survey followed by focus groups to help us better understand students’ perspectives on this issue, and how the Top Textbooks program can best address their needs. More qualitative data will also allow us to better understand what impact this program has on the students that we serve.

Conclusions The overall scope of the problems with textbook affordability (and more broadly, educational affordability at large) are beyond the reach of libraries alone to solve, but that does not mean that libraries cannot make a meaningful contribution by helping students in concrete ways. Despite the challenges involved (and any claims that the internet has made libraries obsolete), our experience with the Top Textbooks on Reserve shows that it is possible to operate such a program in a way that students and the Libraries find valuable. The Covid-19 pandemic dealt a significant blow to the Top Textbooks usage, but it has still seen considerable use, and we have been working to rebuild and expand.

For any institutions considering implementing a similar program, we have some suggested best practices. First, identify all of your potential stakeholders. These include both your potential collaborators as well as those to whom you will need to target your outreach. Make sure that outreach is an integral part of your plans from the beginning. We also recommend establishing strong relationships with your collaborators, and making sure that you are all communicating regularly about anything related to the textbook program. In as much as it is possible, plan to be adaptable. It’s worth putting in the time to do some planning for both positive potential changes (e.g., if you receive extra funding for purchasing textbooks, what would be the best use of it? Adding more courses, or adding more duplicate copies?) and negative ones (e.g., if you face

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an unexpected staffing shortage one semester, what would be the best way to handle it? Ask another person or department for assistance, or identify ways to scale back temporarily?)

Assessment is also vital in adaptation, because it can help you identify trends to which you should be responding. With any assessment, it is critical to be thoughtful about both the questions you are trying to answer and the data that you’re using to answer them. What metrics (or combination of metrics) would indicate that the program is achieving your goals, and what would tell you that change is needed? And for outreach purposes, what metrics would help you demonstrate the value of your program to those who do not directly work with it?

By focusing on outreach, collaboration, adaptation, and assessment, the Top Textbooks on Reserve program has been helping students learn for almost a decade, and to date has provided UMD students a maximum potential savings of over $1.5 million. While an eventual shift to entirely electronic course materials may someday render a program like the Top Textbooks ineffective (or require it to evolve into something significantly different), as long as the program continues to help students and to strengthen the bonds between the Libraries and the campus community, there is a place for a textbook reserves program like this one.

Endnotes 1. “Rankings and Fast Facts.” University of Maryland, Oct. 2023, http://www.umd.edu/rankings-and-fast-facts, Accessed 5 November 2023.

2. Thompson, Hilary H, and Jennifer E. M. Cotton. “Top Textbooks on Reserve: Creating, Promoting, and Assessing a Program to Help Meet Students’ Need for Affordable Textbooks.” Journal of Access Services 14, no.

2 (2017): 53–67.

3. “First Day FAQs.” University of Maryland College Park Bookstore, https://umcp.bncollege.com/first-day-faqs, Accessed 5 November 2023.

4. “2020 ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Recipients Award Announced.” ACRL Update, 23 Jan. 2020, https:// ala.informz.net/informzdataservice/onlineversion/ ind/bWFpbGluZ2luc3RhbmNlaWQ9OTA4MDI3OSZzd WJzY3JpYmVyaWQ9MTAwNzM4ODA5Mw==, Accessed 5 November 2023.

5. “Top Textbooks.” Libraries & Academic Innovation. https://library.gwu.edu/top-textbooks, Accessed 5 November 2023.

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Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan) <cseeman@umich.edu> Visit him at https://www.squirreldude.com/ Column Editor’s Note: As I am writing this at the end of another strange year in library land, I am grateful for many things.

First, I am grateful for excellent reviewers like Carolyn Filippelli (University of Arkansas – Fort Smith) and Jennifer Matthews (Rowan University) who have authored the three reviews you see in this column. As always, I want to thank them for bringing this column together.

Second, I am grateful for the fact that there are resources that let me understand the historical stigma of mental health issues, the longstanding attraction to conspiracy theories and the ways that individuals may find a career in music. These three works will be useful for libraries where patrons are hoping to find something real to help them move along.

or have yet to realize even existed.

With that in mind, this reference volume was created to provide an overview of many different and varied possibilities that one can undertake as a career musician, focusing on high school and undergraduate students trying to decide on a career path. Careers range from bartender to lawyer to executive and demonstrate the wide range of possibilities for students interested in music-based fields.

Careers in Music Industry highlights 31 music occupations with a snapshot that includes features such as median p a y, t y p i c a l e d u c a t i o n , j o b prospects, working conditions, and recommended areas of interest f o r t h a t f i e l d . A d d i t i o n a l l y, entries include a general overview with information about similar Third, I am grateful for the newest occupations. One of the key features additions to our house — Fred and of each entry is an interview with Ginger. These two kittens were an individual currently in that adopted on October 7th, 2023. So if occupation to provide a firsthand you have asked for anything from me glance at what each professional since that day, it is late — but there is does in their role, how they got there, good reason. We last had kittens in essential skills for the role, what 2006 — so we are out of practice. But they wish they knew before their life is grand — they are masters of the home and get along well with our dog “Working at home is a challenge when you have role, what the job prospects are like Runyon (often presented here in this kittens. Introducing Fred (tuxedo) and Ginger in their field, and where they see column). The cats were supposed to (tortie). Adopted at four and a half months old their profession going in the next be named Miss Kitty and Chester (from from Bottle Babies Rescue in metro Detroit on five years. the old radio and TV series Gunsmoke). October 7th. Here they are helping with my This reference book also uses the But we never had a tuxedo cat before writing and photography.”

Holland code, created by psychologist and Pam thought that we needed a John Holland based on theories of more elegant name. Thus, with all but a top hat, Fred and Ginger careers and vocational choice. The work provides a guide to were thus named. Though he is more like a Chester — that is use in an appendix for the classification of each career. The another story. They just turned six months old — and are a hoot!

Holland code has six categories for classification that include realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and If you would like to be a reviewer for Against the Grain, please conventional. Applying these categories to each profession write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you are a publisher and allows for a systematic rating of each occupation throughout have a book you would like to see reviewed in a future column, and provides a way for individuals to better understand how please also write me directly. You can also find out more about different fields might compare. Additionally, there is a list the Reader’s Roundup here — https://www.squirreldude.com/ of organizations and resources in an appendix that readers atg-readers-roundup. can utilize for further information about any of the careers Happy reading and be nutty! — Corey in the book.

Careers in the Music Industry. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2021.

9781637000304. $125.00 Reviewed by Jennifer Matthews (Collection Strategy Librarian, Rowan University) <matthewsj@rowan.edu> The music industry is rapidly growing and includes careers in areas that individuals might need more time to consider

30 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

With the variety of careers in this reference book and the focus on high-school and undergraduate students, this item is worth considering for inclusion in collections that assist with career development.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

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Issitt, Micah L. Opinions Throughout History: Conspiracy Theories. Grey House Publishing, 2022. 978-1-63700-5170.

718 pages, $195.00.

Reviewed by Carolyn Filippelli (Reference Librarian, Boreham Library, University of Arkansas-Fort Smith) <carolyn.filippelli@uafs.edu> Many books have been published on the causes, origins, and types of conspiracies. Opinions Throughout History: Conspiracy Theories is a recent publication that presents a wide-ranging group of conspiracies that have occurred during various periods in United States history. Where appropriate, European and other historical roots of conspiracies and groups such as the Illuminati and the Rosicrucians are also included as background.

Following a thought-provoking introductory chapter on the “Nature of Belief,“ the next chapter continues with conspiracies associated with the reputed activities of Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty in fomenting colonial rebellion during the revolutionary period of American history. Additional conspiracies during these early years of U.S. history were those about Romanism and Anti-Catholic prejudices, conspiracies associated with the gold standard and coinage, and reputed intrigues of the Freemasons. Historical timelines, photos, primary sources, and cartoons provide additional context

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and aid in understanding the origins behind the conspiracies presented. The “Issue Entrepreneurs” section highlights figures or organizations who represented a specific conspiracy or were important in perpetuating it.

Important discussions in this work focus on the reasons why individuals are attracted to conspiracy theories, the types of persons who become followers of conspiracy theories, and the various reasons why conspiracy theories develop. Over the various decades of U.S. history, a wide variety of factors and perspectives, including those from sociology, psychology, political science, medical science, and religion have influenced development of conspiracies. The contributions of the internet and social media in perpetuating conspiracies and the importance of critical thinking and a literate population in evaluating conspiracies are emphasized.

The range of conspiracy theories included in this volume is impressive. These include conspiracies related to the Jewish people, Holocaust Denial, Satanism and Ouija boards, the Red Scare, UFOs and aliens, the Kennedy assassination, Gays and HIV/AIDS, the suspected hoax of the moon landing, and climate change. Also included are activities of organizations such as the John Birch Society and anti- vaccine movements that preceded those surrounding those of the COVID outbreaks. Some of the most chilling conspiracies relate to government experiments with psychedelic drugs, the gun control conspiracy connected with the Sandy Hook shooting, and those conspiracies related to QAnon and the election of 2020.

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31

The variety and quality of sources is outstanding. The section on “Works Used” provides excellent sources for further reading.

Discussion Questions for each chapter are a logical starting point for debate, discussion, and critical thinking exercises in classes in psychology, political science, history, and media.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Issitt, Micah. Opinions Throughout History: Mental Health.

Grey House Publishing, 2023. 978-1-63700-540-8. 630 pages, $195.00.

Guide to the ATG Reviewer Ratings The ATG Reviewer Rating is being included for each book reviewed. Corey came up with this rating to reflect our collaborative collections and resource sharing means and thinks it will help to classify the importance of these books.

• I need this book on my nightstand. (This book is so good, that I want a copy close at hand when I am in bed.)

• I need this on my desk. (This book is so valuable, that I want my own copy at my desk that I will share with no one.)

Reviewed by Carolyn Filippelli (Reference Librarian, Boreham Library, University of Arkansas-Fort Smith) <carolyn.filippelli@uafs.edu>

• I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

In Opinions Throughout History: Mental Health, the author skillfully interweaves text, primary sources, and images to chronicle changes in the attitudes and treatment of mental illness. The primary aim of the 29 essays in this book is the presentation of the why — the historical events and the causes (religious, legal, medical, and political) that contributed to changes in attitudes about mental health.

• I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Cultural prejudices, superstition, and lack of scientific knowledge were early factors that influenced public opinion about mental illness. Originally, the focus of treatments was on keeping individuals with mental health problems locked up to protect society. If problematic individuals were locked up, they would be out of sight and mind. Society could then ignore these persons. Asylums and institutional homes for the mentally ill were some results of this way of thinking.

Gradually, through scientific research and the work of many activists such as Dorothea Dix, reforms were made. Treatment philosophy on mental illness gradually changed from one of “lock up” to a more enlightened emphasis on restoring individuals to mental health.

Of particular interest in this work are discussions on the origins and treatment of hysteria, the eugenics movement, experiments with electric shock therapy and lobotomy, B. F. Skinner’s baby box or high-tech crib, and neurodiversity.

Accomplishments of well-known pioneers such as Freud and Watson are included as are Dr. Benjamin Rush’s theory about alcoholism as a disease. Achievements of other scientists who produced research on behavioral psychology, conditioning, child psychology, the autism spectrum, and post- traumatic stress disorder helped to increase public awareness and knowledge about mental illness. Legal cases resulted in the insanity defense and rulings on involuntary medication and involuntary commitment.

32 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

• I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this is a useful book for my library or my network.)

Opinions Through History: Mental Health fills a definite need for a current and well-balanced work on this topic. Author Michael Issitt has skillfully curated text and primary sources to illustrate the causes behind events. Features such as historical snapshots, photos, a bibliography, and notes add to the usefulness of the work. Discussion questions at the end of each chapter could be appropriately used for seminars and discussion groups. A feature that might be added is a section on web resources or names of organizations for further information on mental health statistics and polls, organizations involved in mental health education, and information from government agencies such as the National Institutes of Health. Further exploration of topics such as telehealth, therapeutic uses of psychoactive drugs, and the connections of mental health to homelessness, gun violence, and crises such as COVID require additional volumes. This is a solid and versatile reference work.

It has applications as a sourcebook for supplementary readings in psychology, social work, and the social sciences. It also has value as a resource for workshops and seminars on mental health awareness. Opinions Throughout History: Mental Health is the twentieth volume in a series by Grey House Publishing. It is available in both print and online format.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

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Booklover — Controversy Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

E

yvind Johnson and Harry Martinson, both natives of Sweden, shared the 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Johnson — “for a narrative art, far-seeing in lands and ages, in the service of freedom” and Martinson — “for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos.” Curiosity fact, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been shared four times with the 1974 prize being the last time to date.

Seems simple enough except for the controversy and it was very controversial. Both Johnson and Martinson were members of the Nobel academy and three other authors were on the shortlist for the prize in 1974. Critics considered this awarding incestuous, corrupt and beneath the integrity of the academy.

Supporters felt the two authors were deserving and the award too long in coming. History suggests that the controversy compromised both authors resulting in their early demise.

Johnson died in 1976 and Martinson died in 1978.

Eyvind Johnson Dust covers are meant to give the reader a tease. The dust cover of Johnson’s 1949 novel Dreams of Roses and Fire had been disassembled and pasted into the front of the book I checked out from the Clemson Library. The tease for me was three-fold: 1) “The novel was instrumental in his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1974.”; 2) it was “already considered a European classic”; and 3) “a reading experience of unusual intensity.” Intensity is a mild descriptor for this novel, to say the least.

Introductions to complex works of literature can be essential to fully appreciate the work. This is true of Monica Setterwall’s “Introduction” to Johnson’s novel Dreams of Roses and Fire. The narrative from two perspectives is based on a “I know nothing historic event and a historic figure, Urbain Grandier (spelled Grainier in the world that in the book). Setterwall gives has as much elements for the reader to consider; power as a word. a bit of biography; props to the translator Erik J. Friis for tackling Sometimes I Johnson’s difficult writing style; write one, and I and perspective for this work of look at it, until historical fiction — “Historical facts it begins to can only be transmitted as echoes through the subjective eyes of the shine.” — Emily beholder or listener.” The reader Dickinson can now begin this story, set in France in the 1600s and delivered in phenomenal detail, about village life, religion, power, demonic possession, exorcism, fire and dreams about roses.

There were too many excerpts noted to share, but they are difficult to appreciate without story context. However, these two illustrate the exquisite, elegant beauty of both the writing and the translation.

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

Changes “Mortar comes loose slowly and falls down from a surface made a long time ago and the stone underneath is graying, crumbling, or is getting darker. Forests sway as they rove across hills and plains: a wave of forests receding a few yards toward the south or toward the north, gnawed off at the edges where the peasant’s axe and hoe penetrate for a generation or two. Later, in a movement that we with our limited view, our time-conditioned shortsightedness believe is immobility, the forest rolls, surges or slinks back for a generation or two when the axe and hoe have fallen out of the old man’s hands; — a forest buries, absorbs, and changes both man and hoe, before it once again pulls back when the new roving fields and meadows drive it away and want to take its place in the plains or on the hills of Touraine, Poiters, Vienne.”

A Night in the fall of 1633 “One candle had almost burned itself out, and when the wick at last bent down toward the puddle of wax, he took the candle snuffers from the pewter bowl and waited. He snuffed it out when the blue flame began to flicker. The burnt wick remained in the hollow of the snuffers, its tip still glowing. The smoke stung his nose. He reached out and put out the other candle.

The room was dark but some light entered from outside. It came from an undetermined source flickering above the crucifix on the wall, shining with faint gleams on the dark table top, at the edge of the pewter bowl and across the worn leather of the armchair.

He dropped the candle snuffers into the bowl. The tip and the blades made a dull scraping noise against the pewter.”

Harry Martinson When searching the Internet for a work of Martinson’s poetry to read and share, the website: www.nobelprize.org provided a nice selection to choose from. This offering from Passad published in 1945 and translated by Stephen Klass seemed appropriate as a compliment to Johnson’s Dreams of Roses and Fire.

“Waves from all upheavals turn swiftly old and paths from all upheavals soon become highroads.

What is left is a longing for something not the wheel of appetites or revenges.

Man is best when he wishes good he cannot do and stops breeding evil he finds easier to do.

He will still have a direction. It will have no end in view.

It is free from unsparing endeavor.”

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LEGAL ISSUES Section Editors: Bruce Strauch (Retired, The Citadel) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com> Jack Montgomery (Georgia Southern University) <jmontgomery@georgiasouthern.edu>

Legally Speaking — Circling Back to Hachette and a Fond Farewell Column Editor: Ashley Krenelka Chase (Assistant Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law) <akrenelk@law.stetson.edu>

M

any months ago, when I began writing this column, I wrote about Hachette v. Internet Archive and how ridiculous I found the lawsuit to be. To recap, Hachette, Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, and Wiley claimed the Internet Archive was engaging in mass scale copyright infringement by lending electronic copies of their books during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. In July, these publishers claimed that, because the Internet Archive dared to scan paper copies of books — books they have every right to lend under the first sale doctrine — and lend them as eBooks through their online platform, they engaged in massive copyright violations.

The Internet Archive, for its part, called the practice Controlled Digital Lending and rigorously defended its right to engage in that activity.

In our wildly capitalistic society, it was likely surprising to no one that the Federal Judge John G. Koeltl was skeptical of the idea of controlled digital lending and, in their many court appearances, appeared nonplussed by the fair use arguments made by the Internet Archive. Despite the fact that I really wanted Judge Koeltl to decide otherwise, he issued a very predictable, 47-page opinion1 finding that the Internet Archive infringed the copyrights of the four publishers, stating that “no case or legal principle supports [fair use]. Every authority points the other direction.”

In determining the lack of fair use, Judge Koeltl had to evaluate 4 factors: the purpose and character of the use; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion taken; and the effect of the use upon the potential market. In what I’m sure is shocking to no one, the fourth factor regarding impact on the market tends to be the one that most heavily influences judges; after all, nobody likes to see someone lose money!

where publishers are calling even more of the shots than they did before, at least as far as books with both electronic and print copies are concerned.

But surely you’re wondering what I mean by that. Why does it matter whether the books are print, eBooks, or both? Surely that didn’t impact Judge Koeltl! But, my friends, I’m here to throw you a curveball: IT ABSOLUTELY DID IMPACT HIM. The final injunction, signed by Judge Koeltl and made public on August 14, 2023, struck a bit of a blow to the publishers because the judge sided with the Internet Archive on one point: the injunction was limited to the books that had digital editions available, the case didn’t litigate the degree of unavailability of digital library licensing and so an injunction impacting those publications would be overbroad. Koeltl agreed and held that all 127 books focused on in the lawsuit were commercially available with digital editions, adding any other type of publication would go too far.2 For the moment, we’re done dealing with Hachette et al. going after the Internet Archive (though the Internet Archive has filed an appeal with the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York), but they’re facing another lawsuit that could end up in a future column. But for now, be on the lookout for first sale snafus and rocking the boat of the publishing marketplace in the name of ... gasp! ... access to materials.

Koeltl ignored expert testimony that suggested that these four mega-publishers were unharmed by the Internet Archive’s online library, holding that as a matter of law it “deprives the Publishers of reveneus to which they are entitled as the copyright holders” because the process of controlled digital lending incentivized libraries “to offer [Internet Archive]’s bootleg eBooks” rather than to “pay for authorized eBook licenses.” As I wrote the last time I discussed this case, this is exactly my problem with eBook lending. I have never understood (and may never, at this point, as I’m getting older) the desire to license and lend eBooks. And what I said in that column is now true: we are now in a situation

Speaking of the future, this is my last Legally Speaking column for Against the Grain and I want to take a moment to publicly thank the team of folks involved in this publication for everything. When I worked as a law librarian, the Charleston Conference was my favorite time of year. Largely devoid of law librarians, the Conference was (and I’m assuming remains) a safe place for me to learn new ideas and commune with folks who shared ideas about libraries that resonated with me, but without the high and mighty approach some law librarians take to their positions.3 While I was a law librarian for a decade, branching out and writing this column didn’t happen until I moved into a full time teaching role and out of the library, and gave me time and space to look at libraries without any person or professional investment, to present the issues I saw but that I was neither able to nor responsible for fix(ing). Perhaps it’s easier to call out the legal issues in librarianship when you’re no longer in the muck, but it’s been fun.

34 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

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I’d also like to welcome the new Legally Speaking columnist, Abby Deese. She has been an incredible peer mentor and friend to me over the years and I’m delighted to be handing this opportunity off to someone with new, great ideas and fresh perspectives about what libraries should be and how they can achieve those goals with the constant changes in the legal landscape.

Keep in touch, Team, and keep fighting the good fight!

The Against the Grain team would like to thank Ashley Krenelka Chase, Assistant Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law, for her wonderful contributions to the Legally Speaking column for the past year and a half. Thanks also for connecting us with our new Legally Speaking columnist, Abby Deese, Asst. Library Dir. for Reference and Outreach at University of Miami School of Law. This is Ashley’s last column and Abby will take over starting in 2024 for the February issue.

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

Endnotes 1. https://www.eff.org/document/opinion-and-order-4 2. https://www.publishersweekly.com/binary-data/ ARTICLE_ATTACHMENT/file/000/006/6311-1.pdf 3. I say this with a bit of a giggle, as I know this column has frequently taken on a high and mighty tone. You can take the girl out of law school, but it’s awfully hard to take the law school out of the girl (especially when she still works in one).

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Questions & Answers — Copyright Column Column Editor: Kyle K. Courtney (Director of Copyright & Information Policy, Harvard Library) <kyle_courtney@harvard.edu> QUESTION FROM A DIGITIZATION LIBRARIAN: Our institution possesses several 19th Century art prints created in the U.S. that are in the public domain. We scanned them and put them on our library’s online image platform and attached a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. However, we had an internal question about the choice of license. Can we attach a CC-BY to these newly scanned public domain materials?

freely, so long as the rightsholder is acknowledged — thus the “by” in CC-BY is the noting the required attribution part of the licensed permission. When the copyright holder applies a CC-BY license to their copyrighted work, it requires attribution wherever the materials are used or displayed.

ANSWER: Not really. Generally, CC-BY is not useful for works that are in the public domain and can create confusion downstream. Let’s start by exploring what it means for a work to be in the public domain, and then view that through the lens of the CC-BY licensing.

The key, however, is that the copyright owner is the only entity that can make the decision to apply a CC license. If the work is in the public domain, as with the example in the question, no CC licenses should be applied. CC licenses are designed to only operate where copyright exists. So, if the institution applies a CC license to a work that has previously dropped into the public domain, that license is not valid. And it does create confusion.

First, in the U.S., copyright lasts for only a limited term: life of the author plus 70 years. When the period of protection expires at the end of that term, the works enter the “public domain.”

Unfortunately, the term “public domain” is not defined in the Copyright Act! The term “public domain” gained widespread use in the late nineteenth century when an international copyright convention, called the Berne Convention, adopted the term domaine public from the French legal systems. Prior to that, the term “public domain” had only been used in the U.S. by the federal government — mostly to describe physical lands the government owned and intended to sell, lease, or grant to the public. Like many legal concepts emerging from the founding of the U.S., the courts had to define public domain through caselaw. So, when the first U.S. Copyright Act was passed in 1790, it resulted in some lawsuits asserting various claims of copyright ownership. The courts reacted by beginning to define the limits of the copyright owner’s rights. And, as a result, they sketched the outline of what was to become the public domain.

Presently, once a work, such as the 19th century prints in this question, is in the public domain, the exclusive “bundle” of rights of the copyright holder are no longer valid. And all users, no matter what the use, are allowed to do whatever they want with that work. Again, this is not a random free-for-all, but finishing the cycle of copyright’s incentivized right that, in the end of the copyright cycle, benefits the public. As copyright scholar Jessica Litman states, “The public domain should be understood … as a device that permits the rest of the system to work by leaving the raw material of authorship available for authors to use.” Jessica Litman, “The Public Domain,” 39 Emory L.J. 965, 967 (1990). Public domain, then, allows the reprint of books, the creation of a new work based on the original, and, in general, the greater availability of the work for adaptation, citation, quotation, and transformation. There is no permission needed for any use that can be imagined.

Many cultural and knowledge organizations, like libraires, want to know when users access the materials in their collections and use them. And the CC-BY license, because of the attribution requirement, would seem to allow an easy way to provide that information. However, as noted, if the libraires do not own the copyright, then they simply cannot use the CC-BY license. If any of the CC licenses are misapplied, the purpose of the license, to communicate copyright permissions uniformly, is undermined.

Now, if a cultural and knowledge organization wants to indicate the rights status of the digitized object in the question for the public, and the same uniform CC system that is recognized globally, they can use the Public Domain Mark (PDM). The PDM is a special symbol that indicates a work is free of copyright restrictions and therefore in the public domain.

QUESTION FROM A CLASSROOM LIBRARY LIAISON: I am embedded with a few classes on campus to provide assistance as students are working in teams researching their group projects.

Last semester, one of the teams had a copyright conundrum about the copyright ownership of their final project. Students were disagreeing over who owned the copyright in their final project, and what individual students could do with the work.

This was the first time I encountered the concept of “joint ownership” under copyright law. Does each student own a part of the whole copyright in the final project, or is it something different?

ANSWER: In copyright law, there are plenty of scenarios where authors, like the students in your question, may be cocreators or are writing under assignment or employment in some capacity. These situations have different outcomes for determining legal ownership, so it is important to understand how the law views the rights in these situations.

The CC-BY is a special license created by Creative Commons, a global nonprofit organization, to allow the copyright owner to use a uniform license to enable greater sharing under specialized license terms. All the CC licenses grant a kind of “auto-permission” for users to use the materials under varying conditions in the license. For example, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) provides the ability for the users to share and adapt copyrightable works

While many authors may make up a work, not all of them may be joint authors in the eyes of the law. The definition of a joint author is one who contributes original expression to a work with the intention that the contribution be “merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.” As is common with statues, you’ll find that the language used here for joint works is not particularly clear. To complicate matters, the Copyright Act does not define the term “author” directly. However, we know that copyright exists in “original works of authorship.”

36 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

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As explored in the U.S. Supreme Court copyright case Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service, 499 U.S. 340 (1991), there is clearer direction in what constitutes an “original work of authorship.” The Feist case was about white pages phone book companies locked in litigation over their competing products.

The U.S. Supreme Court held that even though the defendant phone company worked hard to create the original white pages phone book, the alphabetical collection of facts (name, address, and phone number) did not have enough sufficient to warrant copyright protection. By the court’s decision, the original white pages phone book was not a “work of authorship.”

From this decision, we can surmise that potential joint owners of a copyrighted work must contribute to some original expression. However, they also must have the intent to be a joint author. This is an important qualification. A potential joint owner of a copyright can’t be a joint owner by accident.

This legal reality is based on the fact that 17 U.S.C. § 201(a) of the Copyright Act gives the same rights to each creator in a joint work. So, the law must measure intentionality if it is going to give two or more authors shared copyright of that joint work.

The joint authors of a joint copyrighted work have a sort-of “tenancy in common” relationship with one another. Like the property law from which it gets its name, tenancy in common can be generally defined as a concept where each party owns 100% of copyright’s exclusive bundle of rights, unless the parties agree differently in writing. As a result, each individual joint author can sell, license, or utilize his or her undivided copyright interest without the approval of the other joint authors.

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

While the concept of joint authorship is straightforward, if there is a conflict, proving the existence of a joint work can be complex. If this joint ownership conflict ever came to court — and certainly, the hope is that it does not — there are more than a few cases to rely on where one joint owner claimed that the copyright is not a joint work. The courts have laid out factors required to prove a joint work. One factor is a mutual intent to create a joint work.

Courts examining the record for mutual intent look for evidence that both parties considered the work a joint work.

However, this mutual intent does not have to be an intent to share copyright, it can be simply reflected in the actions of the creators. Courts tend to focus on all parties’ intent to work together in the creation of a single product, not on the legal results of the collaboration. For example, a contract which reflects the intent to be co-authors is certainly a clear expression of intent. Other factors used as evidence include attribution, credits, and other forms of acknowledgement.

The final portion of the joint ownership language is about the “unitary whole.” In other words, the contributions made to the work must be inseparable. If, in the example in the questions, these students wrote a large article together, in a way that their respective contributions can’t be divided or distinguished in any practical way, the law could view that as an inseparable unitary whole. Thus, all the student co-authors could be joint authors that all hold a copyright.

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Learning Belongs in the Library — myfilmfriend, A New Library Streaming Option for International Film Column Editor: David Parker (Publisher and Founder, Lived Places Publishing; Phone: 201-673-8784) <david@livedplacespublishing.com>

I

t is not often that a new streaming platform is introduced with a specific focus on serving public and academic libraries. My goal with this column for the past 10 years has been to explore and expose new people, products, and platforms that drive learning in the library. I was thrilled to discover myfilmfriend in a recent survey of new and emerging film distributors with a specific focus on bringing international film to North America.

What follows is an interview with Nora Abbott and Benoit Calvez of myfilmfriend.

Tell us about the founding mission of myfilmfriend. What makes you different from other library streaming services in Europe, the UK, and now in North America?

The founding mission of myfilmfriend (myfilmfriend.com) is centered around the idea of “Discovery & Entertainment.” myfilmfriend aims to provide access to entertainment and culture for as many people as possible, anytime, free to users and at a reasonable cost for libraries. In the digital age, after the decline of physical media like DVDs and Blu-rays, myfilmfriend offers unlimited streaming access to films, documentaries, series, kids content, and so much more. What sets myfilmfriend apart from the competition is that it doesn’t limit library users with a monthly viewing ticket system. The entire catalog is available for streaming to all users as many times as they want (downloads for offline use are also possible through our app), without additional costs to libraries each time a user presses the “play” button. This allows libraries to better budget for the service without unexpected expenses. myfilmfriend’s pricing is not tied to the continuous expansion of its catalog each month.

Have you seen increasing demand, especially in North America, for films from around the world and, in particular, from across Europe and Africa?

Yes, many American librarians have expressed their desire to showcase more European films and how difficult it is to access them in the United States. European cinema is very rich and diverse; in Europe, we have 28 countries, each with its own different and interesting culture & cinema. French romances, Danish action films, British comedies, and classic treasures from Italian, German, French, and British cinema are very popular in Europe. Not to mention contemporary European animated films for young audiences, which are very different from the typical American production and are great for families who wish to introduce different types of programs to their kids. All

Key Contacts for myfilmfriend: Nora Abbott, Project Coordinator <nabbott@myfilmfriend.com> Benoît Calvez, CEO <bcalvez@myfilmfriend.com>

38 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

these films just need to cross the Atlantic with myfilmfriend.

There is also significant demand for African cinema. In general, there is a lot of interest in the United States for cinema that reflects the diversity of the country and its origins. The United States has always been a great nation of immigrants, whether voluntarily or involuntarily through the violence of European colonial slave powers several centuries ago. These countries of origin are very active and dynamic in the field of film production. I am thinking particularly of Africa with its excellent directors from Kenya, Senegal, and South Africa, for instance, or Asia with big production countries like South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. And what about Latin America, with highly active countries in the film industry like Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Venezuela, or Argentina, to name a few? With myfilmfriend, we strive to reflect the global film production in our offerings, which translates into an impressive number of countries of origin and original languages, which continue to expand our catalog.

How is your collection curated, and what is your approach to presenting different categories of film?

We aim to have our collection be diverse, giving a voice to creators from as many countries as possible while showcasing different topics, ideas, and film making techniques. We want minority populations to be visible and represented in our collection. I must admit that I am somewhat alarmed and dismayed by the recent wave of banned books in the United States. Our curation with myfilmfriend goes against that trend.

We strive to bring together as many films and viewpoints as possible through entertaining and/or educational collections.

We work with curators who have many years of experience in the field of film and fiction series, documentaries, or children’s content. We still work with real curators, humans who select content to counter the effect of algorithms that often end up offering the same things, with no possibility of broadening our horizons and end up being boring.

What is different and unique in your platform user design that will be of particular interest to libraries, librarians, and library patrons?

Most of the feedback we receive from libraries offering our service is that our design is clear, clean without being cold, and is attractive and user-friendly. You can be inspired by the daily recommendations from our curators or conduct your own search by audio language, subtitles, country, or keywords. Whether on the web version, our mobile app for iOS or Android, our Apple TV, Google TV, Fire TV applications, or soon on Roku, we maintain the same standard of clarity and attractiveness in design.

Furthermore, we have nothing to hide — all the titles available on the platform are accessible to everyone without being logged in. You can rest assured that what you see is available for

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streaming once you are connected with your library credentials.

You can already navigate our platform in four languages in the United States and Canada: English, Spanish, French, and German. This includes menus, as well as the names of thematic collections and, most importantly, the descriptions, anecdotes, or comments from our curators and writers about the films.

Lastly, the Accessibility Conformance Report Based on VPAT Version 2.4 is freely accessible in the menu of our platform, myfilmfriend.com.

What is the total size of your catalog and how does this break down across documentary and feature film, and what percentage of content is exclusive to your platform?

In the past year, we have already licensed a thousand titles on myfilmfriend. Our collection is already a very mature and interesting catalog, and can you imagine if we continue to add films at this pace? We are adding new films every day! What we also observe is that in the digital age, it is not necessarily the size of the catalog that matters, or the number of DVDs and Blu-rays on the shelves, as it might have been in the physical and analog world. In Europe, for example, after six years, we maintain an offering of around 5,000 titles on the platform, which is quite close to what large companies like Netflix offer, I believe. What is important today, and what we emphasize with our curators, who are always real people and not algorithms, is the rotation of titles and, above all, regular collections and recommendations for users.

We can all get a bit lost today with what to choose from the profusion and overabundance of online content. In fact,

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

with our few thousand titles, we already notice in the usage of our catalog that the titles being watched are the ones we have carefully selected and highlighted through collections and recommendations on the homepage. If the titles remain in the catalog like a database, they are not watched, which is of no interest to libraries that want a service to be used.

Regarding the current distribution of the catalog, we are following a 1/3 x 1/3 x 1/3 strategy. One-third consists of feature films and series, one-third is documentaries, and one-third is children’s content.

How many libraries, academic and public by category, are using myfilmfriend across Europe and the UK? Over 1,000 libraries in Europe are already offering our service to their users. We have become a leader in six countries that are significant within Europe and the European Union: Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Belgium.

It’s important to understand that we started with just one library in July 2017, a single library in Berlin. Clearly, the quality of our service quickly encouraged other European libraries to adopt it.

How long have you been active in the United States and are there some prominent US institutions that are trialing your platform?

Depending on how you count, you could say that we’ve been active for ten months (since the creation of our American branch in Austin) to 1 year. This is when we began reaching out to libraries in the USA and Canada and negotiating our first film

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39

licenses for North America. We are relatively new to the market, which is why our European platform, particularly in terms of the catalog, is more developed now. However, our offering is rapidly expanding in the USA, and I believe we are already able to bring a breath of fresh air to the library streaming field for users in the United States and Canada.

When we started myfilmfriend in Berlin in 2017, we had a single library that had the courage, foresight, and curiosity to start with our new service. The initial catalog had 300 titles and has now grown to over 5,000. For myfilmfriend in North America, we started in January with 400 titles and by October our catalog had reached 1,000 titles.

This illustrates the speed of our “ ... many progression and the potential for American growth in the field.

librarians have expressed their desire to showcase more European films and how difficult it is to access them in the United States.

European cinema is very rich and diverse; in Europe, we have 28 countries, each with its own different and interesting culture & cinema.”

What also speaks for our platform is the swiftness with which many American libraries have wanted to test our platform. They are currently in the trialing phase.

These libraries include public and/ or university libraries, colleges, schools of art or design, and cultural centers.

We a l r e a d y h a v e s e v e r a l subscribers, including the GoetheInstitute in Atlanta. The GoetheInstitute is the most successful nonprofit German cultural center in North America, and they collaborate with the Alliance Française, another well-known cultural institution in the heart of the business district of Atlanta. In addition, there are developments in Canada, where three public libraries have also subscribed to our service. The myfilmfriend train is now rolling in North America, and I hope that many more libraries and librarians will be convinced by our service in the coming weeks and months. They also could visit us at the upcoming ALA LibLearnX conference in Baltimore in January, where we will have a booth.

We look forward to meeting librarians!

How are you approaching pricing and access for your platform for academic libraries and what length of trial can a library undertake before making a purchase decision?

Our pricing policy has always been based on a win-win model. The pricing is designed to allow libraries to subscribe without going into the red in terms of their budget. For academic libraries, we have implemented a progressive pricing system based on a very simple logic. It’s not the same price whether you’re a small or a large university, although the price remains reasonable for large universities. The price of myfilmfriend is based on the Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) of universities or colleges. You pay more with a larger FTE and less with a smaller one.

compensate our international team (we work with people from America, Germany, France, Ireland, Mexico, and more) for the quality, competence, and work they have put into myfilmfriend over the years and in the years to come.

Regarding the possibility of trialing myfilmfriend, we generally allow a one-month to two-month trial period. We believe this is enough time to form a more comprehensive understanding of our service and to avoid postponing a decision that can be made now or later.

How is your platform, content collection, and access and pricing different from the most prominent platforms in places in the United States?

This should not be considered as misplaced pride or criticism, but due to our history and origin, we can say that if you are looking for European films, turn to Europeans. I believe that our experience and the network of contacts we have established with distributors, producers, and filmmakers in Europe allow us, and will continue to allow us, to offer you even more European films than we have envisioned. Thus, we can vouch for their quality. This applies to feature films, TV series, documentaries, and youth content.

What we mean by cinema is quite different in Europe, I think, less focused on Hollywood, whose success is undoubtedly very impressive to us. European cinemas and platforms have quickly developed a desire to showcase world cinema and have gained knowledge and competence in this area. It’s a culture and curiosity that is very important for each of our colleagues, curators, and film negotiators.

Regarding access, as we explained earlier, our catalog is transparent and can be accessed by anyone by logging into myfilmfriend.com. We prioritize privacy, and we do not collect any personal data about library users who log in to myfilmfriend. myfilmfriend users do not need to create an account on myfilmfriend with their personal email address; everything is done through their library account, for which we do not request or access any data. If a library has a policy regarding youth borrowing privileges, they will provide us with user ages to prevent young audiences from accessing overly violent content, for example.

Lastly, in terms of pricing, as we mentioned earlier, we do not use a pay-per-view system or a premium content access system. The entire catalog is available for libraries, both public and private, as many times as needed, for an annual fee that considers their size, offering an adapted price. We do not charge extra for the films we are continuously adding.

Finally, what do you see as the role of film in education and how does this inform your acquisition and curatorial strategy?

In our personal view, film is one of the most accessible, expressive, and entertaining learning tools available. Its images allow us to discover the world, educate ourselves, and learn about a multitude of subjects. This can be achieved through a historical film, a biopic, a documentary, or even a children’s animated film.

As a private medium-sized company, we aim to establish ourselves on North American soil because we believe we can offer a new, different, or complementary and satisfying solution for American library users. As a private enterprise, our primary goal is to cover our costs and, obviously a bit more, to fairly

The unique characteristics of film, combined with library access, is a winning combination for a more enlightened society.

It allows people to entertain themselves while becoming more knowledgeable, just as it is with another powerful medium, the book or eBook. Both books and films are journeys and invitations to explore languages and different cultures. They open the mind to new horizons and demonstrate that there is not just one way to be or do things but a thousand possibilities for thinking and finding happiness on this earth.

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Libraries, Leadership, and Synergies — Artificial Intelligence: Thoughtful and Deliberate

By Antje Mays (Coordinator of Collection Development, University of Kentucky Libraries) <antjemays@uky.edu> Column Editor’s Note: Welcome back to this revived column on positive strategies for library futures. Originally named “Mayflower: Ode to New Beginnings,” new post-pandemic realities call for a new name. Although pandemic-era triaging pushed the original column into hiatus, the column is back with a new name: “Libraries, Leadership, and Synergies.” Despite the column’s new name, its original mission of positive library voices continues. Come join the conversation — article proposals are welcome! — AM

Introduction In a recent interview, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke of his commitment to “thoughtful and deliberate” approaches toward artificial intelligence (AI) implementations (Savitz, 2023).

Libraries are similarly thoughtful and deliberate in a vast range of operational evolutions, making libraries uniquely poised for leadership in well-considered AI initiatives. Much of the recent worldwide attention to AI has largely focused on ChatGPT and generative AI’s ostensible facility for replacing human labor in content creation and other data-intensive production. Yet the prevailing discourse around AI’s potential as labor replacement belies the need for human domain expertise and overshadows the 1950s roots of AI as a productivity tool for enhancing human insights through large-scale data processing and analytics.

Current public discourse around generative AI overshadows the broader need for human ownership of strategic thinking in partnership with (rather than replacement by) machinepowered large-scale analytical processing capabilities. Libraries have a long track record as early technology adopters for the meaningful enhancement of education and research information services and operational functions. Importantly, this experience includes evaluating potential technologies for their real-world effectiveness in elevating outcomes and supporting mission and purpose. Powered by established practices of intentionality and discernment in navigating technology challenges and adoptions, libraries are uniquely positioned for leadership in thoughtful AI deployment.

AI and Mass Perceptions With increasingly widespread media coverage of ChatGPT (Marr, May 2023) came mass awareness of AI’s potential capabilities. Yet for many, the awareness spawned by GPTfocused media exposure meant only that large populations were suddenly awakened into awareness of AI’s existence — uninformed of prior AI developments over decades as productivity enhancements across a wide sweep of functional areas (Wooldridge, 2021; Wooldridge & Roberts, 2018). Distorted perceptions of generative AI pose the risk of short-sighted infatuation with labor replacement and easy pathways to automated content creation (Yilmaz et al, 2023). As short-sighted focus on convenience overshadows

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the importance of informed human discernment derived from intellectual depth and content knowledge, workplaces and educational settings are increasingly concerned with the risk of intellectual laziness and declining human possession of skills in the face of rising reliance on algorithmic output (Bearman, 2023). Higher education grapples with ChatGPT and parameters for its meaningful educational deployment. Educators and trainers are concerned with the risk of human learners’ and workers’ intellectual laziness posed by generative AI’s convenient outputs (Cooper et al. 2023). Computer scientists and ethicists are concerned with risks of harm posed by algorithmic opacity and lack of transparency around the underlying logic producing the AI outputs. Algorithmic bias, psychological manipulation, disinformation, risks to security, confidentiality and privacy, the specter of flawed conclusions drawn from faulty AI outputs, and the resulting risks of human and societal harm are among fundamental concerns cited by AI experts and ethicists (Marr, June 2023; Ridley, 2022). While planners with surface-level AI awareness view generative AI tools as expedient laborreplacement and cost-saving devices, technology experts with deeper understanding of the extent of actual work required for quality production see in the current AI debate more hype than panacea (Adario, 2023; Vinsel, 2023).

Libraries’ Advantageous Positioning for AI Leadership Libraries are poised for leadership in the AI conversation for two key reasons: Firstly, libraries are among the highest-trust professions as an objective partner in connecting learners and teachers with knowledge, research skills, and critical evaluation of information (Horrigan, 2015; Ipsos, 2021). Secondly, as learning organizations with many operational components, libraries have long-enlisted automation to scale operations and enhance the reach of outreach efforts. As early technology adopters during the early rise of computer systems, libraries honed experience as automation pioneers in harnessing technologies to manage and analyze information at scale, even before business productivity suites became ubiquitous and information technology departments began systematically supporting organizations’ departmental operations and business functions (Warnken, 2004). Libraries were early to incorporate the Internet for operational functions and create patron-facing websites, further cementing libraries’ expertise in meaningful technology adoption in contexts of practical and philosophical considerations (Borgman, 1997). While libraries’ early automation and library networks paved the way for improved discoverability of information resources, libraries’ purposedriven technology deployments evolved to encompass a wide range of user-supporting systems, automation and analytics for internal business functions, vendor and platform interfaces, bibliometrics, and research metrics. This technology evolution has concentrated a large body of expertise in libraries: In the

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course of meaningful technology deployments, libraries have solidified the important skill of critically evaluating technologies and potential solutions against the broader intellectual aims of the knowledge enterprise and the tools’ usability (Burns, 2014).

suites, data normalization and cleanup, and decision-supporting analytics. Together, these tools support libraries’ operational functions through processing-powered efficiency gains and provide enhanced insights through high-volume analytics.

Library experience with user protections, copyright, and intellectual property translate well to broader AI concerns: Libraries, long-accustomed to configuring systems around user privacy and data confidentiality, are finely attuned to current AI concerns around user protections. Libraries’ longstanding experience with copyright and intellectual property directly applies to ethical concerns around generative AI practices of training models on information sources without the originators’ express consent (Kennedy & Waraksa, 2019; Stahl et al., 2023).

Through long-standing experience across this wide range of technology implementations, libraries are well-versed in crafting sustainable, purpose-tailored AI projects and leading the conversation in meaningful choices and deployments.

Technology evaluation and philosophical consideration in equal measure, effective planning around artificial intelligence requires starting with defining purpose and intention in order to ensure the deployments’ sustainability and to avoid the trap of vaguely defined AI initiatives.

Library Wisdom and Generative AI Libraries have firmly established expertise in connecting scholars and learners with knowledge by fostering skills in pursuing topic-related information and evaluating discovered materials. This information-infused pedagogical heritage fittingly equips libraries to guide researchers through skilled interpretation of AI outputs, discern the outputs’ relevancy and quality (Ridley & Pawlick-Potts, 2021), and consider broader ethical implications (Eiseman & Ortiz, 2023).

Amidst noisy proclamations of prompt engineering as the future, libraries’ pedagogical expertise is well-suited to offer considered guidance for generative AI as a teaching tool: On one hand, prompt engineering, the act of perfecting prompts toward better outputs through iterative fine-tuning, shares similarities with the reference interview’s characteristic back-and-forth dynamic of clarifying the true and often unspoken information need to inform information-seeking strategies. Libraries’ expertise with research skills informs how best to execute the mechanics of AI prompting. On the other hand, perfecting prompts focuses on the mechanics of prompting with a view to information extraction while higher-order intellectual steps in vetting the AI outputs are easily lost in the mechanics (Hosseini & Holmes, 2023). And what constitutes “better” AI outputs?

How is “better” to be determined without the human user’s possession of the requisite knowledge for assessing the outputs’ quality? Libraries bring pedagogical expertise in building bridges between researchers as information seekers, information as raw material, and knowledge production as synthesis between inquiry and understanding (James & Filgo, 2023). This library expertise enriches partnerships in designing assignments so that human learners are empowered to understand the subject material in their own right (Ridley & Pawlick-Potts, 2021).

Such knowledge ownership then empowers learners to vet AI outputs against the full range of their context-pertinent knowledge, which in turn provides intellectual protections against indiscriminate acceptance of AI outputs fraught with incompleteness and inaccuracies (Badke, 2023; Ditch that textbook…, n.d.).

Library Wisdom and Other Forms of AI In addition to curricular and research expertise, libraries’ operational work encompasses tasks and workflows analogous to business operations. Functional operations include project and workflow management, administration, human resources, financial management, purchasing, receiving, and distribution, back-end inventory management and front-end inventory presentation to users, and user-oriented services. These functions rely on business productivity and computational

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Several library examples illustrate AI implementations suitable for practical application: • Chat reference in a closed system to avoid ChatGPTstyle ingest of sensitive user behavior and query data as training data: A closed system protects from power future Internet-wide outputs powered by these sensitive user interaction data (Adetayo, 2023).

• Recommender systems for suggesting resources related to users’ searches and interactions with the answer bot (Brown & Kane, 2023).

• Machine learning projects to assist large-scale data cleanup and normalization for knowledge organization, classification, controlled vocabulary concept labelling (Greenberg et al., 2021; Mödden, 2022), and AIpowered cataloging (Brzustowicz, 2023).

Closing AI Considerations AI initiatives tied to practical library tasks and outcomes can offer guideposts for other AI-interested campus offices: Starting small with a focused purpose ensures manageable project scope by targeting a clearly bounded task context. Choosing AI implementations to support specific functions focuses the tools on tangible task families, thereby reducing the risk of distraction and mission creep. Successful implementation of such projects enhances library leadership stature in campus AI strategies. And discerning when AI implementation does and does not make sense in a given task context reflects the mature decision-making appropriate to AI leadership.

References Adario, Sharon. “Survey Finds Half of Tech Workers Think AI Is a Bunch of Hype.” Futurism, November 23, 2023, https:// futurism.com/the-byte/survey-tech-workers-ai-hype.

Adetayo, Adebowale Jeremy. 2023. “Artificial Intelligence Chatbots in Academic Libraries: The Rise of ChatGPT.” Library Hi Tech News 40 (3): 18–21.

Badke, William. 2023. “AI Challenges to Information Literacy.” Computers in Libraries 43 (3): 41–42.

Bearman, Margaret, Juliana Ryan, and Rola Ajjawi.

“Discourses of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: A Critical Literature Review.” Higher Education 86, no. 2 (August 2023): 369–85.

Borgman, Christine L. 1997. “From Acting Locally to Thinking Globally: A Brief History of Library Automation.” Library Quarterly 67 (3): 215–49.

Brown, Kelsey, and Danielle Kane. 2023. “Virtual Readers’ Advisory Using BANTerbot Code.” Computers in Libraries 43 (6): 9–12.

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Brzustowicz, Richard. 2023. “From ChatGPT to CatGPT: The Implications of Artificial Intelligence on Library Cataloging.”

Information Technology & Libraries 42 (3): 1–22.

Burns, C. Sean. 2014. “Academic Libraries and Automation: A Historical Reflection on Ralph Halsted Parker.” Portal: Libraries and the Academy 14 (1): 87–102.

Cooper, Danielle Miriam, Ruediger, Dylan, Schonfeld, Roger C. “Making AI Generative for Higher Education.” Ithaka S+R, March 14, 2023.

Ditch that Textbook: It’s time to rethink “plagiarism” and “cheating.” Infographic, Web. N.d., https://ditchthattextbook. com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/2023-CHAT-GPT.png.

Eiseman, Jason, and Nor Ortiz. 2023. “Generative Ai & Machine Learning In Law Libraries: The Benefits, Risks, and Ethical Issues Surrounding These Potentially Transformative New Tools.” AALL Spectrum 27 (5): 14–17.

Fruhlinger, Josh. “What Is Generative AI? Artificial Intelligence That Creates: Generative AI Models Can Carry on Conversations, Answer Questions, Write Stories, Produce Source Code, and Create Images and Videos of Almost Any Description.

Here’s How Generative AI Works, How It’s Being Used, and Why It’s More Limited than You Might Think.” Computerworld (Online Only), August 1, 2023.

Goudarzi, Sara. 2023. “Popping the Chatbot Hype Balloon.”

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 79 (5): 293–98.

Greenberg, Jane, Xintong Zhao, Michal Monselise, Sam Grabus, and Joan Boone. 2021. “Knowledge Organization Systems: A Network for AI with Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary Engineering.” Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 59 (8): 720–39.

Horrigan, John B. Libraries at the Crossroads: The public is interested in new services and thinks libraries are important to communities. Washington, D.C.: Pew Research Center, September 15, 2015. http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/09/15/libraries-atthe-crossroads/ Hosseini, Mohammad, and Kristi Holmes. 2023. “The Evolution of Library Workplaces and Workflows via Generative AI.” College & Research Libraries 84 (6): 836–42.

Ipsos. Ipsos MORI Veracity Index: Trust in professions survey, November 2021.

James, Amy B., and Ellen Hampton Filgo. 2023. “Where Does ChatGPT Fit into the Framework for Information Literacy? The Possibilities and Problems of AI in Library Instruction.” College & Research Libraries News 84 (9): 334–41.

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Kennedy, Mary L., and Elizabeth A. Waraksa. Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. Research Library Issue, no.299. Washington: Association of Research Libraries, 2019. https://publications. arl.org/rli299/ Marr, Bernard. “The 15 Biggest Risks of Artificial Intelligence.” Forbes, June 2, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/ sites/bernardmarr/2023/06/02/the-15-biggest-risks-ofartificial-intelligence/?sh=655136502706.

Marr, Bernard. “A Short History Of ChatGPT: How We Got To Where We Are Today.” Forbes, May 19, 2023.

Mödden, Elisabeth. 2022. “Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Bibliographic Control. DDC Short Numbers Towards Machine-Based Classifying.” JLIS.It: Italian Journal of Library, Archives & Information Science 13 (1): 256–64.

Ridley, Michael. 2022. “Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI): Adoption and Advocacy.” Information Technology & Libraries 41 (2): 1–17.

Ridley, Michael, and Danica Pawlick-Potts. 2021. “Algorithmic Literacy and the Role for Libraries.” Information Technology & Libraries 40 (2): 1–15.

Savitz, Eric J. “Apple’s Tim Cook Sees AI Rules Coming. That’s What He Told Pop Star Dua Lipa.” Barron’s (2023, November 27).

Stahl, Bernd Carsten, Doris, Schroeder, and Rowena, Rodrigues. Ethics of Artificial Intelligence Case Studies and Options for Addressing Ethical Challenges. 1st ed. 2023. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2023.

Vinsel, Lee. 2023. “Don’t Get Distracted by the Hype Around Generative AI.” MIT Sloan Management Review, 64 (4): 8–9.

Warnken, Paula. 2004. “A Reflective History of Gophers, Mice, and Missions.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 30 (1): 73–76.

Wooldridge, Michael J. A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence: What it is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going. First U.S. edition. New York: Flatiron Books, 2021.

Wooldridge, Michael J., and Alice Roberts. Artificial Intelligence (The Ladybird Expert Series). London: Penguin Books, 2018.

Yilmaz, Erdem Dogukan, Ivana Naumovska, and Vikas A. Aggarwal. 2023. “AI-Driven Labor Substitution: Evidence from Google Translate and ChatGPT.” INSEAD Working Papers Collection, no. 24 (June): 1–59.

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Wandering the Web — Resources for Alternative Living Spaces, Part 2

By Roxanne Myers Spencer, MSLS (Retired, Associate Professor and Coordinator, Beulah Winchel Education Library, Western Kentucky University) Column Editor: Lesley Rice Montgomery, MLIS (Catalog Librarian, Tulane University Libraries’ Technical Services Department) About the author: Roxanne Myers Spencer retired in 2021 as associate professor and coordinator of the Beulah Winchel Education Library at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Will Boarding Houses Reach into the 21st Century?

Revisiting the Rooming or Boarding House Approach in Modern Urban Housing Once upon a time in the USA, roughly between the 1830s-1860s, when there was an overall worldwide decline in the financial well-being and quality of life for many people, boarding houses grew in popularity as affordable housing for ambitious (or destitute) single women, traveling salesmen, itinerant workers, widows and widowers, and families vacationing in the mountains or seaside, and sometimes were the only housing options available to poor immigrants. Rich fodder for novelists, many famous fictional characters have lived in various types of boarding or rooming houses, from Sherlock Holmes to an American Girl doll to The Bell Jar to Little Women to True Grit.

Let’s define some terms: LawInsider — https://www. lawinsider.com/dictionary/rooming-or-boarding-house# — According to LawInsider.com, the definition of a rooming house or a boarding house: “...means a dwelling or part of a dwelling where lodging is furnished for compensation to five or more persons living independently from each other. Meals may also be included.”

Different municipalities have differing regulations for boarding or rooming houses. Tighter housing regulations over the decades have made boarding houses more difficult to license and to manage profitably. Traditionally, boarding houses provided some variety of room and board, whether three meals per day or just breakfast or dinner. Rooming houses, in other cases, only provided a room to sleep in and shared facilities.

Because affordable housing currently is a crisis worldwide, in some urban environments, modern-day “boarding houses” are little more than decrepit, dangerous flophouses for the housing insecure elderly, for mentally and physically disabled citizens, as well as for others who live in extreme poverty. There is some hope, as real estate investors, urban planners, and young professionals seek solutions to the housing crisis in inventive ways, including reinventing the boarding house concept.

house is more along the lines of pod housing or tiny house living, or studio apartments in managed complexes.

Forbes Small Business Entrepreneurs — https://www. forbes.com/sites/annefield/2019/04/30/can-a-modernday-rooming-house-solve-the-affordable-housingcrisis/?sh=734f23606990 — This 2019 Forbes piece highlights PadSplit — https://www.padsplit.com/ — an Atlanta-based business that seeks partnerships with homeowners to renovate larger homes to provide affordable housing to low income residents. Their model is to “help real estate investors leverage under-utilized space in their existing properties to make it more profitable for them and more affordable for community members.” Currently, PadSplit operates in Atlanta, Baltimore, Austin, and Dallas.

Chicago Magazine online — https://www.chicagomag. com/real-estate/july-2020/boarding-houses-are-back-baby/ — During the COVID-19 pandemic, a few property investors in Chicago began rethinking the boutique hotel approach and other managed urban lodgings. Renting a bedroom for $1,000 per month in managed, shared apartments does not address the need for more affordable, lower income, urban housing.

But it does fill a niche, whether it is known as pod housing, micro-housing, or co-living, for young professional singles who cannot afford a place of their own in high-demand cities where housing is chronically short. (Don’t, however, use the phrases boarding house or rooming house for these more upscale accommodations.)

The history of boarding houses in the USA is an inescapable part of Americana — for better or for worse. To follow are a few resources on the development of boarding houses, as well as their role in a segregated society.

From Bloomberg CityLab comes “A Brief History of Co-Living Spaces” — https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2016-02-22/a-brief-history-of-co-living-spaces-from19th-century-boarding-houses-to-millennial-compounds — taps into the historic female boarding houses, which housed young seamstresses, milliners, factory workers, and other women who did not have the time or the means to search for places of their own. During the two World Wars, boarding houses provided lodgings for women serving the war efforts in large cities. Walt Whitman and Edgar Allan Poe also were boarding house residents in their respective times.

In recent years, the concept of boarding houses has been revived as some of the few remaining affordable housing options in large urban areas and along the coasts, where housing prices have soared for the past decade or more. The modern boarding

The Colored Conventions Project, from the Center of Black Digital Research, #DigBlk, at Penn State University — https://coloredconventions.org/boardinghouses/ — offers the perspective of 19th century African American women who lodged travelers to state and national Colored Conventions. The women who operated boarding houses, providing meals, housekeeping, and a place to sleep, reflect a different aspect of social and political life through the lens of domestic labor in “What Did They Eat? Where Did They Stay? Black Boardinghouses and the Colored Conventions Movement.”

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Boarding Houses Revisited

In the City of Brotherly Love, Elfreth’s Alley Museum’s podcast 2.05, “Boarding Houses” — https://www.elfrethsalley. org/podcast/2021/7/12/episode-205-boarding-houses — dated July 21, 2021, offers a unique look at this corner of Philadelphia’s long history of boarding houses. The opening sequence does not bode well for the reputation of boarding houses: a welldressed man inquires about a room, is accepted, moves in, and upon being called to dinner, is nowhere to be found. All that is left behind is his fine leather satchel, stuffed with sailcloth…

Interviews in this podcast include United States social and cultural historian, Dr. Wendy Gamber, of Indiana University Bloomington, author and well-known scholar on the history of boarding houses in the United States, and Nikia Boyer, coadministrator of Affordable Housing: Philadelphia Facebook group — https://www.facebook.com/groups/777105052300821.

This Facebook group currently has 46,000 members with an active interest in seeking or helping to provide more affordable living spaces in Philadelphia.

Co-living and Co-housing Communities Co-housing, shared housing, co-living, and similar terms reflect a growing movement since the 1960s. More recently, with the lack of affordable housing for seniors and younger generations alike, co-living and co-housing provide opportunities to live intentionally, more economically, and to build a community of shared values. These alternative living situations are not communes, but at the heart of these living options are several relevant concepts: lowered housing expenses, opportunities to build friendly communities and, in many cases, an interest in sustainability and smaller carbon footprints.

Coliving.com — https://coliving.com/ — started as a way to find housing available for the new generations of tech workers and digital nomads working in high cost of living areas like Silicon Valley. Its mission is “...to provide a community-driven, cost-effective and sustainable housing solution for the 21st century, fostering meaningful connections and promoting a sense of belonging.” The Coliving.com blog — https://coliving. com/blog/coliving-vs-cohousing — shows some differences between modern co-housing and co-living arrangements: “Comparing coliving and cohousing, it is essential to understand the differences in terminology and living arrangements. Coliving is a residential model that accommodates three or more unrelated people sharing a dwelling, often with shared values or intentions. In contrast, cohousing provides self-contained private units and ownership by individual residents, with shared areas for events or communal meals.”

A 2014 piece on the AARP — https://aarp.org/ — website, “6 Creative Housing Options” — https://www.aarp.org/livablecommunities/info-2014/creative-age-friendly-housing-options. html — is a good place to start for those thinking about how best to spend their senior years. Links to similar topics provide a broader look at housing alternatives for the curious and the over-60 crowd.

A 2017 news item from the T. H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University — https://www.hsph.harvard. edu/news/hsph-in-the-news/shared-housing-benefits-oldyoung/ — notes an interview with Dr. Lisa Berkman, director of the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, on a PBS NewsHour Weekend program, “Cohousing Communities Help Prevent Social Isolation” — https://www.pbs.org/newshour/ show/cohousing-communities-help-prevent-social-isolation — broadcast on February 12, 2017.

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The Co-housing Association of the United States (CohoUS) — https://www.cohousing.org/ — holds a free, open Zoom session the 10th of each month at 10:00 MT, to introduce those who are new to the idea to those with experience in co-housing. The mission of CohoUS is to promote a more cooperative society by “…supporting cohousing communities and educating the public about the benefits of cohousing.”

This site contains a resource library, information on senior co-housing, how to create co-housing from the ground up, the skills and tools necessary to manage building a co-housing community, and more.

Pocket Neighborhoods — https://pocket-neighborhoods. net/ — A less intentional but similar concept is pocket neighborhoods: a cluster of small homes bought in an existing neighborhood or built for this purpose, with common areas, such as a small park and nearby amenities.

Where there is interest, there is investment and commerce.

As noted above, start-ups like PadSplit — https://www.padsplit. com/ — and June Homes — https://junehomes.com/ — and Latitude Regenerative Real Estate — https://chooselatitude. com/ — which is home to the Latitude the Regenerative Real Estate podcast — https://chooselatitude.com/the-regenerativereal-estate-podcast — These businesses are part of the growing property technology (known in real estate as proptech) movement, which connects real estate investors, property owners with space to rent, and those seeking affordable housing.

These sites include a variety of resources and how-tos for wouldbe tenants and investors. Though some operate regionally in the USA, these proptech companies are growing across the nation.

Affordable housing efforts for lower socioeconomic elders and workers are still very much a work in progress in most urban areas. Local, state, and federal agencies’ definitions and requirements, along with urban housing costs, continue to rise. The affordable housing movement as a whole offers some hope and opportunity for this diverse population. More efforts like this one from the House Beautiful website — https:// www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/entertainment/a45495362/ millennials-turn-abandoned-high-school-into-apartments/ — highlights a story about a viral TikTok video in which three Millennial investors bought and converted an old high school into affordable apartments.

Ever-expanding ideas, concepts, and opportunities have made a variety of living choices more available to many Boomers and Gen-Xers as they age. Co-housing and co-living options can be conceived in many ways, from real estate investors to future residents’ investments to private owner-leasing arrangements to managed properties. The housing crisis is very real across the country. Lower income families, seniors, young adults and families just starting out are still struggling to find affordable housing in cities where job opportunities and other amenities are more plentiful than in rural areas. There are more opportunities now to build more economic, sustainable, and stable housing environments by venturing outside the box.

“Wandering the Web — Resources for Alternative Living Spaces, Part 1” by Rosemary Meszaros and Roxanne Myers Spencer is available on the Charleston Hub at https://www. charleston-hub.com/2023/09/wandering-the-web-resourcesfor-alternative-living-spaces/.

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Biz of Digital — Teaching Research Data Management to Future Researchers

By CJ Gracia (Research and Instruction Librarian, Creighton University Libraries, 3100 N. Central Ave., Suite 220, Phoenix, AZ 85012; Phone: 602-812-3148) <cjgarcia@creighton.edu> Column Editor: Michelle Flinchbaugh (Digital Scholarship Services Librarian, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250; Phone: 410-455-3544) <flinchba@umbc.edu>

L

ike many institutions, A.T. Still University (ATSU) has been ramping up its outreach and instruction around research data management (RDM) and sharing as open science becomes more popular. As a health sciences university, the NIH data sharing policy that took effect on January 25th, 2023, was a particularly strong push that got the librarians, the faculty, and the university as a whole talking more about RDM. While the focus of such conversations has typically been on faculty research projects, the increased attention to data management practices also had the faculty and librarians thinking about how to teach future healthcare professionals and health sciences researchers about RDM. As ATSU is a teachingfocused institution with less research output than many other universities, teaching current best practices around scholarly research is just as important, if not more so, than supporting current faculty research. While having a rather freeform conversation about the curriculum and opportunities for librarian involvement with an Athletic Training faculty member, we found ourselves talking about RDM best practices and how best to approach teaching students about data management and sharing.

This conversation soon escalated from a theoretical conversation to a collaborative project, where I would develop a course-integrated project, working with the faculty member, that would teach athletic training students about best practices in RDM and sharing. As the program in question is a postprofessional program for practicing athletic trainers looking to upskill and expand their professional opportunities, teaching current research practices was particularly important, as the program’s students might go on to become faculty and researchers in the near future.

We both agreed that simply teaching students about best practices once, and then expecting them to remember them, understand their importance, and practice them indefinitely into the future, was unlikely to be successful. After all, there is a wealth of resources available on the internet that can walk researchers step-by-step through RDM best practices. The tricky pedagogical question was how to get future researchers to care about these best practices and understand their importance. It wouldn’t matter if we taught students RDM best practices if they didn’t have the incentive to learn more about them and practice them in their research careers going forward. This perspective was particularly important, as the students for the program are all practicing and experienced healthcare professionals and came to the coursework with their own motivations and goals. If students didn’t see the value in the project, they were unlikely to engage with it thoughtfully. Further complicating the instructional goal was

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the fact that we were teaching in an entirely asynchronous, online program, with limited opportunities for one-on-one engagement and feedback, not to mention a tight curriculum that could easily be made overwhelming by the addition of too much more work.

This led me to focus my attention on androgalogical principles, focusing less on the instructional content of the lesson, and more on the instructional design challenge of creating motivation among the students. This conceptual concern, combined with current best practices in online instruction, led my design of the project from the onset.

With all of this in mind, we decided we wanted to craft an assignment that focused on illustrating the importance of RDM best practices through negative examples, believing that this would build a foundation that later practice could build upon. The assignment focused on exposing students to an intentionally messy dataset, having them struggle to answer questions and derive information from the dataset, and to supplement that experience with background readings and a reflective exercise.

The assignment started with two background “readings”, the first, the well-known Data Sharing Snafu in 3 Acts video, and the article What Could Possibly Go Wrong? The Impact of Poor Data Management by Chris Eaker. Both of these were chosen as they teach through negative example, showing students what happens when RDM best practices aren’t followed from the perspective of a downstream data user, clearly demonstrating the importance of following best practices.

Next came the core of the assignment. In collaboration with the faculty member, I created an intentionally messy dataset with vague file names, bad versioning, and a lack of supporting documentation. The students were given a worksheet with questions to fill out based on the dataset, some of which were intentionally unanswerable given the current state of the dataset. Again, the goal was to teach through negative example, putting students in the role of a downstream researcher trying to use a poorly documented dataset, so they understood just how confusing poorly documented research can be for users not involved in the research itself.

Only after being exposed to this dataset were students tasked with reading an RDM best practices primer. By exposing them to a messy dataset first, they could better understand the context of those best practices and why they benefit future researchers. Following this reading, students completed a short written reflection asking them how they would implement some of those best practices to improve the dataset, giving students exposure and practice with the execution of best practices.

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The assignment was received well by the faculty member, who both liked the concept of the assignment and felt that the students received the lesson well based on the work they turned in. End-of-course feedback from students never explicitly discussed the assignment, which was assumed to be a good thing as that means there were no major complaints, although there is room to implement a more robust assessment for the assignment.

In fact, the assignment was received so well by the instructor that I was asked to expand upon it for future runs of the course.

As part of this expansion and reimagining of the assignment, it was also moved to another, more advanced course later in the curriculum. Originally part of the Health Information Technology course, the assignment was moved to the PracticeBased Research course. Both the faculty member and I felt that this course was a better fit for the assignment, as the course tasks students with designing a point-of-care research project.

This meant that we could tie the skills directly to a research project, as well as expand on it by having students utilize the RDM best practices in the context of a larger research design assignment. A few small alterations were made to the original assignments, correcting initially missed typos and renaming

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

some file names and variables, but the original assignment did not change in any significant pedagogical change.

For the next run of the assignment, it was expanded upon by having students draft a data management and sharing plan (DMP) to go along with the research proposal they write as part of the course project. This gives students a chance to tie RDM best practices into their own research goals, and a chance to further practice using RDM best practices in a slightly different context. To streamline and simplify the process for novice researchers, I created a DMP template (modeled off the NIH 2023 data sharing policy requirements), created an example of a completed DMP based on that template, and recorded a short instructional video going over each element in the template and providing tips and advice. Unfortunately, I left ATSU before the next run of this course, so I was unable to see how the expanded assignment played out. However, both the faculty member and I felt that the newly created material complemented the original assignment and the course it lived in well, and I think it will help instill research data management and sharing best practices in the next generation of health science researchers.

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The Digital Toolbox — Publishers Meet Academic Libraries’ Unique Demands Through Audiobooks (Part 2/2) Column Editor: Steve Rosato (Senior Manager, OverDrive Academic, Cleveland, OH 44125) <srosato@overdrive.com>

I

n this second installment of a two-part series exploring the growing role of audiobooks in academic libraries, we take a look at the publisher side of the industry. In the first installment, found in Against The Grain’s November 2023 issue, we interviewed two librarians on their perspectives and experiences. In this issue, two publishers discuss how they are working with higher ed institutions to maximize audiobooks’ impact on their academic missions. In addition, the publishers explain the innovative channels being leveraged to promote audiobooks and consider the potential impact AI technology may have on audiobook production and, ultimately, availability.

Danielle D’Orlando (Curator of Audio) and Kim Williams (Digital & Audio Publisher) from Princeton University Press (PUP), and Jennifer Rubins, Associate Director of Library Marketing, Penguin Random House/Books on Tape provided invaluable input on this crucial discussion.

OverDrive: How does your audiobook catalog align with the academic needs of college students? Do you have specific titles or genres that are popular in academic markets?

Danielle D’Orlando & Kim Williams: We have a robust catalog of history, science, social science and philosophy audiobooks and always focus on diversifying our output in terms of subject, author and narrator. We recently published nine books in audio format from PUP’s backlist and used course adoption data to refine our selection from the many deserving books that could work in audiobook form. One of them, Racism

by George Fredrickson, is one of our top 20 titles most used in courses, and we hope the audiobook will make the scholarship even more accessible and appealing to students.

We also take every opportunity to meet with scholars who are interested in the world of audiobooks, or who assign audiobooks in their classes, as it is such a wonderful opportunity for us to learn about this fast-moving space. We consistently hear that teachers are eager to include audiobooks into their reading lists, but that access to the audiobooks remains a barrier.

And, of course, we hear regularly from our authors how useful audiobooks are to keep them up to date with broad ideas in their subject area. We keep a close eye on reviews from listeners, too, as their feedback about what did and didn’t work well in audio guides our process in the future.

Jennifer Rubins: Audiobooks, in addition to levelling the playing field of accessibility, can broaden any student’s comprehension and connection to a book thanks to carefully cast voices, exposure to vocabulary, proper pronunciations and the ability to hear the intended cadence and rhythm of a text.

From Shakespeare’s Sonnets to Jane Austen, Lincoln in the Bardo (read by a record-breaking 166 narrators) to In the Heights (featuring the voices of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes themselves), Spanish-language editions and award winners, there’s countless collegiate discoveries to be made to enrich one’s reading experience via listening. One good example of a fiction title often used in current college curriculums is There, There by Tommy Orange, which is read by an ensemble of four authentic voices. This recording allows listeners to hear contemporary Native American characters in both first- and third-person perspectives, offering a powerful invitation to enter the world Orange so colourfully writes about.

Audiobooks can also expand a professor’s ability to literally take a work or concept off the page and bring it to life in a classroom setting, inviting “guest speakers” into their students’ world and education.

Whether a listener is an ESL student or a native speaker, an English major or a psychology student, acquiring a business degree or one in theater performance — anyone benefits from hearing correct dialect, from experiencing the emotion of a memoir read by the author, from multiple perspectives portrayed by a full cast or from the intimacy of an expert’s teaching in their ear ... the list goes on.

OD: In what ways do you actively promote your audiobooks to college librarians? Are there specif ic channels you utilize to increase awareness and adoption of your audiobook offerings within the academic market?

DO/KW: We are active participants in OverDrive’s excellent monthly editorial promotions. These are a wonderful way for librarians to see the diverse range of our publishing and the exciting array of books available in audio format. We are still exploring ways in which we can usefully reach librarians with information about our audiobooks (do sign up to our mailing list at https://press. princeton.edu/newsletter-subscribe or follow our “Ideas” podcast for regular audiobook extracts) and we are always delighted to hear directly from librarians with feedback.

We have a terrific Library Advisory Board informing our decisions, and we always try to ask questions which span print, ebook and audiobook formats. PUP also has excellent and informative social media accounts which reach librarians with information about audiobooks.

Approximately 30% of the population consists of auditory learners. And we can listen and comprehend above our reading level. These inherent benefits of audiobooks, combined with the fact that audio delivers a unique and specific experience — rooted in the human tradition of oral storytelling — means that it can easily align with the needs of college students.

We have marketing colleagues here at PUP who are responsible for audio marketing and promotions. Our dynamic team engages with social media, promotions and reviews from entities like Choice, Kirkus and Library Journal.

As our list continues to grow, we look forward to exploring the promotion options available to us. Princeton Audio enjoyed its fifth anniversary in October 2023, and we now have more than 130 audiobooks available under our own imprint.

48 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

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JR: We have multiple Penguin Random House (PRH) websites geared to aid college librarians and educators.

PenguinRandomHouseHigherEducation.com divides titles into disciplines and areas of study, making it easy to locate topical titles in all formats. The new PenguinRandomHouseLibrary. com offers an audio blog and landing pages to highlight both adult and children’s titles on audio, in addition to providing our entire PRH catalog — searchable in all formats for librarians serving any type of library. Librarians can also create wish lists based on their curriculum title needs, search curated collections or search by BISAC, listen to audiobook clips and sign up for a monthly audiobook newsletter for librarians. Additionally, our website, CommonReads.com, offers lists of popular college and university reads in all formats, and is searchable by course topic, and provides audiobook clips.

We attend multiple conferences across the country that are open to academic librarians including (but not limited to) the American Historical Association (AHA), Conference on the First Year Experience (FYE), National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the American Library Association Annual Conference (ALA), providing audiobook info and resources via programming, panels and our PRH booth.

“Approximately

30% of the population consists of auditory learners.

These inherent benefits of audiobooks … mean that [they] can easily align with the needs of college students.”

— Jennifer Rubins, Penguin Random House

We host frequent and FREE online events that provide an inside look at upcoming titles such as our staff-hosted monthly PRH Morning Book Buzz, as well as offer the opportunity to hear from authors and narrators in conversation with librarian or educator moderators such as our twice-a-year Book & Author Festival (in partnership with Library Journal and School Library Journal). Our Library Lunch & Learn webinars range in topic each session, highlighting various disciplines from business to music, cooking and more.

We also offer access to our PRH Audio app to verified academic librarians as a modern and digital way to request an audio edition of a “desk copy” when considering a title for adoption or for inclusion in your academic library’s collection. Email us at <library@penguinrandomhouse. com> if you are interested in learning more and gaining access.

OD: Audiobooks have seen years of unabated growth for popular fiction and nonfiction. What opportunities do you see for academic libraries that have not utilized audio to the same extent, noting some genres are not a practical application in an audio format like a math or chemistry textbook?

DO/KW: We are genuinely excited to explore the abundant opportunities for audio in academic contexts. We are already hearing from students and readers about how audiobooks offer increased accessibility for many people, including people with visual and reading challenges, physical constraints on holding books or people who find it easier to process auditory rather than visual information. Audio is also more accessible to people whose primary language is not English and to first-generation students encountering material for the first time, which is one of the reasons why we invest so much time and research

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

into getting the pronunciation of technical and subject-based language exactly right. Our record to date is researching 1,500 pronunciations for Ronald Gregor Suny’s 28-hour audiobook, Stalin, with much assistance from the author and our studio partner. We frequently hear that audiobooks make our scholarship more available to students who work, commute or travel, allowing them to augment their reading with listening to audio editions.

Our mission as a university press is to bring scholarly ideas to the world, and we are acutely aware of the importance of libraries in fulfilling that mission. Our aspiration is that audiobooks will make our scholarship more accessible to a broad audience of readers across all age groups, and we rely on the support of academic and college libraries to make this possible.

There are, of course, limitations to audio, and we have found that mathematical equations do not easily lend themselves to audio recitation — though with the right research and narrator, anything is possible. We push at the boundaries of what is possible in audio, supplementing the audio narrative with a PDF at times, always ensuring the audiobook itself makes sufficient sense without reference to the visual material. We work with authors to edit the text to make it suitable for audio, and it is often possible to describe something like a graph or chart instead of pointing to the visual element. We’re intrigued to explore the possibilities for alt-text to inform our audio descriptions of visual content, too.

JR: Increasing the availability of audiobooks in your academic library not only provides vital options for the aforementioned 30% of auditory learners and those with special needs who require a listening experience, but it also supports the scientifically proven idea that “Audiobooks are NOT cheating!” Cognitive scientists have studied and shared this oft-debated topic for years. An academic library that promotes and encourages audiobook listening promotes inclusivity, and serves a broader population, inviting more students to join the conversation, participate in a campus-wide reading selection or simply fit more reading into their day. Plus, as the most recent Audio Publishers Association survey shows, per 2023 consumer data, more than half of the U.S. population 18+ has now listened to an audiobook. So, if a library is not including audiobooks, they are missing out on a huge percentage of readers at their university.

Many audiobooks include a PDF when there is a visual component that is helpful or necessary to the reading or learning experience or include an author’s note read by the author themselves, giving additional insight to the listener that enhances the educational takeaway, and can enrich classroom conversation. It’s also a chance to introduce an iconic or revered voice to any student, giving them a front row seat to an expert’s teachings in their own words or via interviews, from Phil Stutz and Barry Michaels, to Neil deGrasse Tyson, to Adam Grant, to Brené Brown, just to name a few, or sometimes even through their music like in Bono’s Surrender.

OD: What is the opportunity for machine-read/AI audiobooks that can allow for inexpensive but quality audio editions for titles or parts of your catalog that would have never been possible under the traditional audio production costs?

DO/KW: As a university press, it is our mission to uphold the integrity of IP. Readers can trust that publications from a university press have been peer-reviewed and that the books are contributing to academic discourse.

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The same holds for all formats, including audio; we strive to ensure our audiobooks have the same level of quality control and production. Along with the rest of the industry, we are attentive to the development of AI in audio and can see the potential of using synthetic voices for books which may have a narrower readership, but which nonetheless could increase the accessibility of scholarship. Our mission also guides us to embrace the highest standards of inclusivity and diversity — and humanity — in our publishing, so we are acutely aware of our responsibility to balance our experiments in the latest technologies with our respect for human expertise and work.

Audiobooks are expensive to produce — significantly more so than eBooks — and require a great deal of expertise in preparing and honing the text, selecting the narrator, proof-listening and correcting, designing the cover, managing the metadata and so on. Narration is a critical piece of the puzzle, but is by no means the only cost consideration and, of course, AI voice technology has its own fees. We are fortunate to learn from our fellow university presses who are experimenting in this space, just as we have shared our own experiences in audio over the past five years with them.

We currently publish audio editions of books that we are confident will have a larger audience to offset the cost of production; if AI can produce consistently high-quality audio, with accurate pronunciations and inflections where applicable, we can imagine its contribution alongside our existing program.

We can imagine being able to offer more choices to readers as a potential application of AI.

Audiobooks on college campuses — and in general — show no signs of slowing down. Academic librarians, the champions of reading for their campuses, have in turn shifted to continue to meet readers where they are and with the format they prefer.

With this surge in demand in both academic and consumer markets, publishers have increased their focus on audiobook production and promotion to bring more books to market in audio. To what extent will AI-assisted production play a role?

While open questions about quality control and integrity still need examination, many believe it can be a key part of increasing choice for readers.

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50 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

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Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with David Myers Column Editor: Darrell W. Gunter (President & CEO, Gunter Media Group) <d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com> DARRELL GUNTER: I’m pleased to interview a very longtime, industry friend and colleague, Mr. David Myers. He’s the CEO of the Data Licensing Alliance and the CEO of DMedia.

David, welcome to the Innovators Saga. I appreciate you coming on to talk about the Data Licensing Alliance.

DAVID MYERS: I appreciate it, Darrell. It’s always great to see you and have conversations. We’ve known each other for a long time, so happy to be on the show.

DG: Yeah, we didn’t have gray hair back then.

DM: Yes. Trials and tribulations of the industry, you know what I’m saying!

DG: There you go, there you go. So, if you could, for our audience, could you share a little bit about your education background so our audience can get to know you a little bit?

DM: Absolutely. I’ve had a really varied background and I think that, interestingly enough, I didn’t have a vision of how all the pieces would fit together, but it interestingly works for what I do. Education-wise, I have an undergraduate degree in genetics and business. I received my MBA from Pepperdine University and went to work for Texaco, a Fortune 10 company, doing strategic planning and then was a commodity trader for them.

At the same time, because of the timing of that, I was on the West Coast, I worked for them in the morning, and then I did investment banking at night and then went full-time investment banking for a number of years, came back to the East Coast and went to law school at night and started my first company. I was part of a great little venture in the dotcom era that we ended up selling to a New York company. Then I got recruited into the publishing industry where you and I got to know each other.

That was in early 2000. I went to work for Wolters Kluwer. At the time it was Ovid, but I was one of their first hires when Ovid was acquired by Wolters Kluwer. I worked for them for seven years and then left and started my own consultancy, DMedia Associates, and still have that company to this day.

We’re a bespoke consultancy helping very large, or really companies of all sizes, but very large organizations with their data licensing needs as a service business. Well, let me take a step back. I know firsthand how complicated and inefficient the licensing of data is from my consultancy. And, so, during COVID, I came up with an idea — I’d been struggling with this idea actually for a long time — of how to make licensing more efficient. I came up with Data Licensing Alliance. It’s like the product side of my service business. It’s the yin to the yang, and it is a marketplace for licensing data specifically for AI. We’re focusing on AI. We have since the beginning, way before ChatGPT and all this generative AI noise that has come into the marketplace, but we’ve been doing it for a better part of three years. And that’s me in a nutshell.

DG: This is very interesting. You said that the Data Licensing Alliance is to make the process more, is it more transparent, would you say?

DM: That’s a great question. It’s certainly more transparent.

Our tagline is we make AI smarter, but really what it is, is, it’s the

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

marketplace that makes it easier for data science to license data for their efforts. And it’s applicable to any type of data. We happen to be focusing on the sciences and drug discovery as a first niche, but we have other niches as well. If you think about it, just like Amazon matches somebody selling T-shirts to somebody wanting to buy T-shirts, DLA will match buyers and sellers of data. So, just like you go on Amazon and you find different products that you want to add to your cart, and then you check out. It’s essentially the same thing on the DLA marketplace.

DG: Wow, that’s awesome. So, who sets the price? Does the publisher set their own price or is there a negotiation on the platform between the buyer and the seller?

DM: We put the power with a licensor, or seller in more layman’s terms. Absolutely. We make it more turnkey. There is no real negotiation. When you’re on Amazon and you see again a T-shirt for $12.95, you’re not negotiating with the seller. You either like that price or you don’t like that price. The licensor has the ability to price their products in multiple different ways on our platform, and they’re the one that sets the price. We really see ourselves as a channel to democratize data.

DG: I guess in one sense you’re also an aggregator of data that people can then search, find and decide they want a license.

DM: Absolutely, yes. An aggregator in that sense, just like Amazon is an aggregator of, again, I use that analogy of T-shirts and everything else. We are, too.

DG: Wow. And how long has the platform been in service?

DM: We started about three years ago, actually about three and a half years now. And great timing with COVID, of course, but it didn’t really affect us by and large because the whole industry is moving towards digital, it’s moving towards virtual.

And so our problem doesn’t go away. My DMedia business, the DLA business, it’s all been pretty steady since then.

DG: Absolutely, absolutely. And if you can publicly disclose this, if you can’t, I understand, but how many customers do you have on the platform currently?

DM: I don’t want to get too far into that. We have a number of very prominent sellers like John Wiley and Sons, and American Medical Association and a bunch of others. We’ve been focusing really on the supply side and we’re onboarding a number of others before we really roll out too hard to the buy side.

DG: Okay. Wow. And so what do you see as your main selling point to the licensor?

DM: So, on the supply side, right? You’re asking why would they want to do that? Great question. There’s a number of issues that data owners have, and it’s because, number one, data licensing is very complicated. And I would say the majority do not have any experience or comfort level in licensing data.

They understand how to sell subscriptions. People have been doing it for a long time, but licensing data, especially for AI, it’s a different animal. We offer expertise. We offer simplicity.

We offer a channel to be able to target different layers of the ecosystem.

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As you and I both know, many publishers or data owners sell to consortia and to institutions, but they stop at the institutional level. We have the ability to go down to the department or even the researcher themselves and target them. We can get much deeper, much more granular, because of the way the platform is structured. So, again, we are a channel and we offer those types of services to our partners. And lastly, what’s really kind of the salient point about AI is comprehensiveness. So, when somebody goes and wants to train their algorithm on data, they need data from a bunch of different sources to eliminate bias and improve diversity. And this is a one-stop shop for them.

The rising tide, as they say, will raise all boats.

DG: Wow. And that’s fascinating. In an article I recently wrote for research information on AI, there was a story about the Samsung engineers who actually were trying to speed up their development process and they put Samsung code into chatGPT which meant that now everybody has access to their code. How do you manage those situations of when people license some data, and what are the limitations. What are the most common things that they need to be mindful of when licensing your data so that someone doesn’t take your data and then create another derivative product?

DM: Well, there was a number of questions within that question. On DLA, the whole process is regulated or controlled by contract. It’s all about contract. One of the steps in licensing data, you add your products to the cart, and when you check out, the first thing you do is sign a license electronically. And it’s that license that controls the relationship between the seller, or the licensor and the licensee, or the buyer. We are just the conduit, but we are not party to that contract. So, contract controls it, which is an important element. Part of the reason that’s an important element, under contract law, fair use is not an option.

So, just interestingly enough, but really the things that control the arrangement, it’s about the supplier. We have a governing law, we have the prohibitions and the rights that they have. Most of the people that license data for text and data mining or AI will be creating a derivative product. Barring that almost eliminates the need or the use case for licensing data. So, that is a right granted. What they can’t do certainly is utilize the underlying copyrighted product that the licensor has. That’s an important fact. And it’s controlled by contract.

Certainly, when the contract’s over, they have to remove their data and a bunch of other items that I’m happy to talk about.

DG: Interesting you should mention that. A few years ago, when I was a consultant for STM and one very large open access publisher was dropping their membership to STM because they felt that, since they’re open access, that STM really wasn’t supporting open access as maybe they probably should have at that point. They do now. But, he felt that there was nothing for him because he wasn’t concerned about anybody stealing their material. And I said to him, “that’s interesting, but what if,” and this conversation was in 2016, I said, “what if someone based upon your product, they ingested all of your information, but they created a derivative product? Would you be concerned about that?” He goes, “oh, I never thought about that.” And now we see, of course, with AI, that happens. Have you seen any agreements lately where people are saying, “okay, you can use my product for a derivative product, but I want you to wet my beak. I want a piece of that pie.” Have you seen folks say okay?

DM: Oh, absolutely. And what I caution them on is how do you audit and even account for that? Because if you remember what I just said, it’s about the comprehensiveness. Somebody’s

52 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

creating a derivative product, but it’s most likely been trained on countless amounts of data, not only from one supplier. So, how do you know? ChatGPT has been trained on billions of data points. How do you split that up? How do you know the percentage? It is rife with it. What data owners should really think about is what is the value of this to that license and worry more so about that. Trying to get a long tail of payments off of derivative products is rife with problems. I’m not saying it’s not possible. And yes, I’ve seen it, I constantly see it, but it is problematic. However, if I may go off on a tangent for a second, if that’s okay with you.

DG: Absolutely.

DM: So, I have two soapbox issues. One of them is really about subscriptions. And within the subscription is a multitude of rights and responsibilities. And the second of them that is under a subscription is the rights for humans to read and potentially the right for machines to mine. And a lot of publishers, at least today, are giving away their text data mining rights as part of a subscription. My argument should be, those should be decoupled. So, a subscription is the right for humans to read. A license is that for machines to mine.

And if you understand and agree with that concept, what ends up happening is you don’t necessarily have to charge.

You can charge for both. You can charge for one and not the other. But, what’s interesting is it solves the OA problem, or at least one of the OA problems, especially with federally funded information.

What ends up happening is there’s this movement that any federally funded research that becomes an article, that article should be given away for free. And publishers are having a hard time getting their head around it because that’s where they make money. My argument is, great, no problem. It’s federally funded and you want us to give it away for free? Great. Here’s a repository. As a subscription, you can read it for free, but if you want to mine it, different use case, you can still charge for it. Now there’s an interesting answer to that problem. And, so, that’s my strategy, or at least my argument.

DG: I love this. First time I’m hearing this, this is great. But, so, how do you read something without... Now, it depends upon the definition of what is mining, right? Is that a fundamental search?

DM: I’m talking about machines to mine, right? So no human is looking at this. And machines will do it in a nanosecond where it could take humans days, weeks, months to ingest it.

DG: That’s right, that’s right. That’s right.

DM: It’s a completely different use case. It’s like if you remember way back in the day when we first got started, print was everything, and then digital came along. If you think about it as like a pyramid, the tip was the digital, and the big part was print. And then when digital came around, people said “Oh, it’s okay, we’ll just give away the digital to save print.” Well, as time went on, digital became more important, and that pyramid got flipped on its point. People were giving away print just to save the digital. We’re at the same inflection point now in the evolution of publishing where it’s digital and AI. Or when I say digital and print, I mean print’s still there, but it’s such a minor part for most, at least in professional and scholarly. But, what’s going to end up happening is this industry is moving all to machine learning.

DG: Absolutely.

DM: In my opinion.

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DG: I agree. It reminds me of back in the day when I was at Dow Jones and we had Dow Jones News Retrieval, which is now called Factiva, and it was charging what, a buck thirty or a buck sixty per minute, and it was moving at the blazing speed of 150 baud per minute, something exceptionally slow.

But what they wouldn’t allow you to do is store the information so that you can re-search it. You couldn’t create your own sub database of that. But I think this is kind of like deja vu with what’s happening with AI because of newspapers back in the day when the Internet came around. The newspapers allow Google to mine all of their data for free. And then you think about saying to Google, pay us for this because they didn’t want to do the investment.

And Peter Kahn of the Wall Street Journal, the chairman CEO, it was 1998, he had invited me back to Dow Jones. He wanted me to come back, but I was at Elsevier. I was happy, but he was sharing with me how they did it right with the Wall Street Journal.com and how he felt that the local and regional newspapers would really hurt themselves. So, now, I hope that they’re smart enough to realize that our data is very, very important, and we need to get some fee for it. I understand that there are discussions with Google about Google giving them some money because Google got all the money from the hard work of all of the newspapers.

DM: Well, so you’ve undoubtedly heard that Google’s changed their terms of use; they basically are saying that we will mine any publicly available data on the Internet, and it

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is free game for us to mine and own. And that’s caused some waves. As a matter of fact, I saw an announcement, I believe today, where Elon Musk adopted the same policy for his social media. So all his social media outlets, anything that’s publicly available, he claims he has the right to mine it for free. And I think that is problematic. I think that there’s certainly a public good that will come of it, but at the same time, there’s clearly going to be some violations to copyright and that’s an onion you can’t unpeel.

DG: Well, I guess Zoom has learned from that as well, because Zoom was taking all of our information from our individual video group and putting it into an AI machine.

DM: Yeah. It’s unbelievable. I mean, I’m so in awe of all the products that are being created with AI. It is unbelievable and those could not be accomplished without some of these activities that we’re discussing. But at the same time, there’s got to be a balance.

DG: That’s right.

DM: There’s risk and rewards. It’s interesting. So I created a facilitation course on licensing data for publishers, for them to create their AI policy for licensing their data to others.

DG: Oh, nice.

DM: So, it’s not a policy for internal use for what employees can do with generative AI and all. It’s about the policy for licensing your data out. There’s a lot of pitfalls and challenges that I discuss and I have senior management think about

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when they’re creating their policy. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t, and a lot of publishers have stopped doing that because they’re unsure or afraid, but the world’s changing and we need to keep pace.

DG: There you go. Wow. Any final words you want to share with our audience about the Data Licensing Alliance and how they can get in touch with you? What is your website, et cetera, et cetera?

DG: What you’re doing is so fascinating, David. Are you on course to do any speaking or panel discussions at any of the upcoming fall meetings?

DM: We have two websites — our marketplace is open and ready for you at DLAdata.com and our marketing website is info.dladata.com. You can find us there or email me at <dave@ dladata.com>. Those are three ways you can certainly find me.

And I would say as parting words, the thought of the day that I posted on LinkedIn was with AI, especially with data. Data, as they say, is the new oil. I mean, it’s really more than the new oil, it is the most prized commodity.

DM: At the moment, I do not have plans to speak. I will be certainly at a number of them, but do not have plans at the moment. I normally facilitate a quarterly or biannual preview session for SSP, but other than that, at the moment, I don’t. But I’d love to. Anybody listening that needs somebody to talk about AI and licensing, I’d love to.

DG: Absolutely. That’s something I’ll pitch to someone and say, I got the perfect speaker for you.

DM: I appreciate it.

DG: You talked about your initial target market. Could you review that again in regards to your initial target market, as well as your plans for further expansion?

DM: I have a bunch of targets. In the short term, we’re looking to solve problems, especially drug discovery, because it’s quite huge. It’s quite a huge market. It’s quite an untapped market. As many people know, pharma has a hard time collaborating. Because of regulation, they can’t. But they have what’s called a treasure in the attic problem. They have tons of data that they have, and a lot of it they can’t use. So, failed clinical trials, for example. If there were a way to unleash some of those treasures, the world would benefit a lot. So, we’re looking at that. We’re looking at food science and crop safety.

Solving big human problems is one of the things that we’re also looking at. The last one is public health policy. Problems that humanity needs to be solved. We’re not solving them. We see ourselves as the modern-day Levi Strauss. We’re standing at the mine entrance and giving everybody pick axes and shovels.

N E W

E P I SO DE S

As Gordon Gecko said, information is the most important commodity I know of. With that, there’s new opportunities, new revenue opportunities. Certainly there’s challenges with that, but with those challenges, the opportunities can far outweigh it. The other side that I’ve seen is hiding your head in the sand like an ostrich, and that’s the current state of the dichotomy of publishing. And I urge everyone out there to consider experimenting a number of small bets out there. See what works. You have to push the envelope a little bit because the world is changing and the publishing industry is changing, and they say you’ll either be distinct or extinct.

DG: That’s right.

DM: With that, I’ll leave it be.

DG: I really appreciate it. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re here with my good friend, Mr. David Meyers, the CEO of Data Licensing Alliance and DMedia. David, thank you for coming on the program.

DM: Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Transcribed from the radio interview Leadership with Darrell W. Gunter.

EV ERY

M ON DA Y

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People to Know — Paul Killoran and Exordo Column Editor: Matthew Ismail (Editor in Chief, Charleston Briefings; Founder, Dost Publishing) <matthew.ismail@icloud.com> “To date, Ex Ordo has powered research conferences in nearly 60 countries. We count 13 of the top 20 universities and some leading global associations among our customers.” — Paul Killoran, CEO of Ex Ordo

W

hen I chatted recently with Paul Killoran, CEO of the Galway-based company, Ex Ordo, for ATG the Podcast, I was struck by some unexpected aspects of our conversation, such as the effect of Ex Ordo being an Irish company, the influence of having an entrepreneurial father, and the strands of the famous Irish geniality, inventiveness, and storytelling (think: Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, W. H. Auden, George Bernard Shaw…). It is almost always the case, with entrepreneurs in the scholarly communication space, that they drop into that space quite by accident, no matter how large of an impact they may subsequently have — and Paul is no different.

Ex Ordo, as Paul describes it, “is a technology company that works with scholarly conferences. We partner with scholarly societies, because running events at scale is an enormous challenge. And with our platform, through integrations and through our partnering services, we make that so much easier for them.”

So, what background and circumstances might one imagine inspired Paul to found Ex Ordo? A career organizing society journals and scholarly conferences? A career in Silicon Valley?

Decades of faculty work? Well, there’s some of that in his background, of course. As Paul said: “The way that I found myself in this scholarly industry is quite by accident. So, if we roll the clock back to 2006 or so — I probably shouldn’t admit this here — I was submitting to an IEEE conference and I’d missed the deadline and I hacked the system to get my paper in. And it was accepted and published. And, so, then in 2008, when I was invited to work on my first scholarly conference, I remembered the quality of the software that was available. And I told myself, there really has to be a better way than what is available today.

“And that was my motivation. And it remains my motivation because we work with some of the smartest minds on the planet. And when they come together, that is at a conference, that’s the embodiment of a community.

And so I don’t want to replace that. I don’t want to digitize that. I famously said, there are certain things we should never digitize. Falling in love is one of them. And that beautiful moment when two peers or researchers come together and discuss their work over a beer or coffee — I never want to get in the way of that. But I want more of that to happen. And the best way we can do that is to make the logistics and the challenges facing societies, make that work easier, make the data flow better. And then we can allow more conferences to happen because the greatest barrier we have is the limited time that the people that work in societies have, and it’s my job to maximize that time.”

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P a u l ’s b a c k g r o u n d i n electrical engineering and the conference experience is obviously relevant to founding a software-based company.

But it is also interesting to learn that Paul is not the first entrepreneur in his family.

“College Road Florists is a family run business that has been proudly serving the people of Galway since 1982.

We believe in the importance of high quality floral arrangements, and our care, attention to detail, and personal touch ensures this quality in every last flower.

Whether it’s a bouquet of red roses, lilies, get-well flowers, birthday or funeral arrangements, your satisfaction is our number one priority.

We opened our doors in 1982 and the shop is owned by Mark Killoran.” www.collegeroadflorists.com Paul’s father, Mark, is the very successful owner of a florist shop in Galway, Ireland, where Paul is also based. And since entrepreneurship is more than domain knowledge — there’s business sense and knowhow, a willingness to work hard and independently of a salary and the protection of a company, the ability to move into a market ripe for one’s attentions, the focus on customers — it’s hardly surprising that Paul grew up in an entrepreneurial atmosphere he describes so beautifully: “So, I would have grown up looking at my dad, who ran a flower shop here in Galway in the West Coast of Ireland.

You know, working long days, evenings, weekends, and it’s all I’ve really ever known … I had the opportunity to take over the shop that my father had created in 1983 and become a florist — and in some ways that would have paid my father a huge level of respect. But the other thing that I could do is truly follow in his footsteps and create something else out of nothing in 2011 … So that’s where my background and entrepreneurial life began.”

Ex Ordo, then, is the product of both domain experience and life’s longer lessons. Paul is no longer motivated to be a conference participant, but rather to solve the interesting problems of how to make conferences work better. He’s no longer a researcher, “But we [Ex Ordo] do know technology very well. And we do know how to bring people together. Generally, we know what works for conferences, and we know how to get people in and out of systems. We know how to design great user experiences … And we know how to play nicely. Like there’s an ecosystem of tools and services. And there’s so many silos out there. We don’t need to be another island.

The onus is on us to connect with our peers so that when a society comes to us, we’re plug and play with the rest of that ecosystem, and they get to use what they know…”

When I ask Paul whether being an Irish company has an effect on how Ex Ordo operates, he has no doubt that this is the case. He remarks that the Irish market is very small, so that he is immediately required to fly out to Europe or the U.S. in

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order to expand his business. But he also remarks on the fact that Ireland is a country that has a long history of producing great storytellers and is famous for its generous and welcoming spirit–and this spirit comes easily to him and his staff. Whether it is the storytelling that is marketing or the helping spirit of customer support, Paul has no doubt that the Irishness of Ex Odo is helpful.

As we at Charleston were so well aware, COVID created huge problems for conferences and called for a lot of creativity and thinking on-the-go, including creating virtual and hybrid events. But societies have been facing challenges for many years, particularly those that rely on a journal to generate revenue.

Societies have also lost some independence by being integrated into big publishing platforms. I asked how Ex Ordo can help societies, and this is where Paul becomes passionate — and you should listen to the podcast to get the full answer — about the possibilities of integrating the annual conference with powerful conference software such as Ex Ordo.

And are societies not missing an opportunity to regain some of their independence by drawing their members in with such ongoing engagement? Are they perhaps missing opportunities to identify research that could be turned into an article for their journal, to identify engaged researchers who may be able to generate excitement throughout the year–and who may not be able to come to the annual conference at all? And similarly, could societies not benefit from generating data throughout the year through this engagement — about who their members are, what their interests are, where they come from and what virtual events and sponsors they most engage with?

Paul’s focus, when working with scholarly societies, is on adding value. Societies need to think about their members, think about what the new conference technology like Ex Ordo makes possible, and to see how they can innovate to add value to the careers of their members. Subscriptions that encourage engagement throughout the year, employing a platform such as Ex Ordo, sound like a great place to start.

The annual conference has always been the centerpiece of the event planner’s calendar. The society books a venue and then brings in thousands of people from all over the world to meet for a week or so. And then the planning begins again for next year’s conference. What COVID showed us is that, while the annual conference is a wonderful opportunity for colleagues to meet, there are also other opportunities for engagement for societies and journals throughout the year. Why don’t societies use a virtual platform to increase engagement across the year in sync with the research and publication cycle? Why not integrate the society’s journals into a membership fee that would also cover recurring virtual events, allowing members to discuss and critique published materials together in a more ongoing manner?

Back Talk continued from page 62 wrote about the work in this column) on the Offline Internet Consortium, a band of innovators and explorers working hard to bring network-quality information to the half of the world’s population that doesn’t have or can’t properly use broadband networks. The idea for that consortium was born out of a session at WLIC in Wroclaw, Poland, in 2017 when we happened to hear Japri Masli from Sarawak in Malaysia (he was then a rising star and now director of the state library there) describe a low-tech and high-touch project he was leading to bring offline internet to rural Sarawak. I had already heard of two similar projects, one based in Arizona and another based in France, and had the impulse to see what we could do to identify more such groups and bring them together with common interests.

an organizing meeting in Kuala Lumpur; and since then hosting exciting programmatic meetings in Dublin in 2019, in Oslo in 2020 (the week before the pandemic landed on us), and Rotterdam in 2023. In 2024, we’re looking at Istanbul as a venue, because we’ve seen the energizing results of librarians finding ways to support modest but targeted publishing projects — usually open access in distribution — that give voice to communities not advantaged by the mass media and record and disseminate cultural history of people who might otherwise be forgotten.

I’ve served on multiple IFLA committees in various roles, including three stints on the IFLA Professional Council that oversees the work of many hundreds of volunteers who come together in the professional sections (committees, one could call them) and special interest groups that facilitate meeting, information sharing, and collaboration among like-minded people from around the world. The Library Publishing Special Interest Group is close to my heart — starting with an IFLA preconference in Ann Arbor in 2016, when the main WLIC was in Columbus, Ohio; then taking off two years later with

Istanbul has been chosen because of its fledgling library publishing programs, because of its location straddling Europe and the Middle East, the relative ease of attracting a wider audience (beyond Europe and North America), and in lieu of gathering for the annual WLIC. We’ll be sorry not to see as many friends and colleagues as we usually do. These networks of people brought together around the world are precious opportunities for librarianship to find ways to reach out further and support users more effectively in communities of every kind. You might not be reading this column if the Charleston Conference weren’t some part of your life and you know what is possible on that scale. The global work of IFLA is like Charleston but with hugely wider horizons.

56 Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

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IMF eLibrary Essential Reading Guides

Curated lists of relevant publications on timely topics eLibrary.IMF.org/essential

ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED Brittany Blanchard

Research Programs Librarian Cline Library, Northern Arizona University 1001 Knoles Drive Flagstaff, AZ 86011 Phone: (928) 523-7248 <Brittany.blanchard@nau.edu> https://nau.edu/library/ BORN AND LIVED: Born in Rock Springs, WY. Raised in Elko, NV. It gets more complicated after that.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: Research interests include Open Access, OER, how evolving data sharing policies effect the research landscape.

FAMILY: Married with one human child and one canine child.

IN MY SPARE TIME: I travel, enjoy the outdoors, and collect books that I totally plan on reading.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis and The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Libraries will continue along as they have in the past, by adapting to technological changes and addressing patron/community needs. I see an increasing need for nuanced digital literacy as AI and deepfakes become easier to use and more accessible.

Jennifer E. M. Cotton

Course Reserves Coordinator University of Maryland, College Park Libraries McKeldin Library, 7649 Library Lane College Park, MD 20742-7011 Phone: (301) 405-9087 <jecotton@umd.edu> https://www.lib.umd.edu/ PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: My professional interests include supporting equity, accessibility, and affordable learning efforts, as well as developing data-informed decision making practices.

IN MY SPARE TIME: I enjoy embodying a variety of librarian stereotypes by engaging in activities like reading, knitting, and catering to the whims of my cats.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of specific predictions; there’s a good deal that seems too far up in the air for me to predict how it’s likely to settle.

What I do expect is for libraries to continue to do our best to support the information needs of our communities, and hopefully continue (or even expand!) our efforts to make education accessible to anyone interested in learning.

Travis Mann

Librarian W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research 300 S. Westnedge Avenue Kalamazoo, MI 49007 Phone: (269) 385-0413 <mann@upjohn.org> https://www.linkedin.com/in/travis-e-mann/ BORN AND LIVED: Michigan, Louisiana, and Wisconsin.

EARLY LIFE: Raised in southwest Michigan, moved to Louisiana to find a job, and then Wisconsin for graduate school after my wife and I realized we didn’t want to be in Louisiana.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: At various points I’ve been in archives, academic libraries, and special libraries and go to conferences where I feel awkward and mildly out of place.

FAMILY: One wife, two children, two kittens, one puppy.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Annoy my children and wife, waste the time of telephone scammers so they have less time to scam people, play video games and Dungeons and Dragons, argue pedantically with other pedants.

FAVORITE BOOKS: It depends on my mood, but my heart lies with the book (…series) that made me like books: The Belgariad by David and Leigh Eddings, even if I found out later in life that they weren’t pleasant people to children.

PET PEEVES: People who stop in the doorway immediately after entering a building and don’t move to the side (and people who are inconsiderate of others in general), people who use some variation of “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you” or “just Google it, it’s not my job to provide evidence supporting my claim.”

PHILOSOPHY: “It’s ok that some things may take you longer than other people!”

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Learning that trying to give a flash drive with my presentation on it might constitute bribery, so avoid doing that.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: Understanding economics.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Dealing more with AI, both with it being a helpful tool and fighting against it in a similar way to the fight of “just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s accurate…”

Antje Mays

Coordinator of Collection Development University of Kentucky Libraries Lexington, KY 40506-0456 <antjemays@uky.edu> EARLY LIFE: An early start with reading, design, and collaborative creative projects spurred a lifelong quest for knowledge. One of my earliest volunteer work was serving as a math and language tutor for children with academic struggles. I got to see their breakthroughs to understanding the material — this was very inspiring and taught me the power of service and working to make a positive difference.

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PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: My library career has been in collections, acquisitions, liaison and instruction across a wide range of disciplines, sharing knowledge through publications and presentations, and a variety of elected faculty leadership roles, with other work around foreign languages, business, design, management, and data analysis and visualization.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Anything brainy, design-related, community service around historic preservation and mentoring, experimenting with software, learning (for example, just finished artificial intelligence courses), events and activities involving brainy conversations.

FAVORITE BOOKS: War & Peace by Leo Tolstoy, plus his other works — he had a deep understanding of human nature and motivations.

His characters transcend their time, place, and historical and cultural settings; his insights were timeless. I also enjoyed Ray Dalio’s recent series of books on business principles and countries’ economic histories and geopolitical trajectories (Principles: Life & Work; Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail; Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises).

PET PEEVES: Dishonesty, mediocrity, imitation, blind trend-following.

PHILOSOPHY: Have courage and be kind. Perseverance rules — there’s no shortcut to anywhere worth going.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Hard to pick just one, so here are a few favorites: moving large complex projects to completion (especially with purpose-designed data analysis for insights), finishing my doctorate, coming to my R1 university library… I’m growth-oriented and not one to rest on old laurels — always working toward new career achievements! So… my most memorable career achievement will be my next one!

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: Keep learning and make a difference through servant-leadership, work on meaningful AI applications for operational and societal contexts, and solve complex problems. What exactly will this look like in five years? Too early to know — so many moving parts in our profession!

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Good question — our industry is at a crossroads. The answer could go in several directions, depending on how well the industry as a whole finds common ground around licensing, access, business models, pricing models, knowledge production and dissemination, infrastructure funding, and library services. Geofencing for digital media and eBooks is outdated and a barrier to education and knowledge-sharing in the 21st century.

Our industry should adopt world rights — perhaps with differentiated pricing pegged to regions’ income levels and stages of development (similar to cost-of-living index formulas). Will library science education and the practical work of library and information professionals grow further apart, or grow closer through dialog and mutual understanding?

Scholarly communication is rapidly changing — will library operations adapt and will mutually beneficial industry collaborations evolve?

Libraries are rapidly branching out into new areas, while users also lean on traditional services. New areas include data librarianship, digital humanities, scholarly production (publishing, institutional repositories), affordable course content, technologies, assessment, analysis, just to name a few. Will the industry find balance and common ground around Open Access (OA)? Will universities develop campus-wide frameworks for OA as libraries intersect with multiple OA interests? Will library funding support libraries’ evolving roles and skill development to the extent required by the far-reaching shifts across the industry? Will campuses and communities engage libraries as strategic partners? If industry players collaborate in a spirit of shared interest, the next five years will see mutually beneficial frameworks. If, however, industry players pull apart in pursuit of narrow interests, trust will erode and financial frameworks will become irreconcilable and unsustainable.

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Emily Moran

Instructional Designer University of Wisconsin-Superior Jim Dan Hill Library, Belknap & Catlin Avenue Superior, WI 54880 Phone: (715) 394-8233 <emoran4@uwsuper.edu> https://www.linkedin.com/in/emilyamoran23/ HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: I recently changed careers from academic librarianship to instructional design because of new opportunities that appeared with the rise of online learning since 2020. I hope to see inclusive instructional design and critical information literacy become even more prominent components of academic libraries’ instruction programs due to their direct impact on students’ academic and social lives.

Stephanie Warden

Associate Director/Information Literacy Librarian, Jim Dan Hill Library University of Wisconsin – Superior Phone: (502) 542-0159 • Fax: (715) 394-8462 <swarden1@uwsuper.edu www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-warden108b7751 BORN AND LIVED: Born and raised in West Virginia.

EARLY LIFE: Attended college in Georgetown, KY.

Professional career and activities: Research interests include Open Educational Resources, Information Privilege, Artificial Intelligence, and Information Literacy.

FAMILY: Family lives in West Virginia and Kentucky.

IN MY SPARE TIME: I read, cook, and volunteer with Twin Ports News of the Air Radio.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Catch 22 and Invisible Man. PET PEEVES: Long surveys.

PHILOSOPHY: Say what is right, even if your voice shakes.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: I could give a serious one, but I like this entertaining one best. At one point I did a display for the Eyes of March in which I put googly eyes on books in the display, and it was the most I’ve laughed at work in a long, long time.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: I’m hoping to be a full director or Dean.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: In five years I think things will continue evolving at the pace it is evolving now. We certainly are seeing some disruptive technologies (looking at you, AI), but by and large the skills that we cultivate to provide service to our patrons will remain largely similar. That does not mean that we will not see any abatement in the challenges we face now — just that we will have a new set of tools to help, or hinder, our ability to address them.

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LIBRARY PROFILES ENCOURAGED Jim Dan Hill Library

University of WisconsinSuperior Belknap and Catlin PO Box 2000 Superior, WI 54880 Phone: (715) 394-8343 Fax: (715) 394-8462 https://library.uwsuper.edu/ BACKGROUND/HISTORY: The following is our mission statement: The Markwood Center for Learning, Innovation, and Collaboration at the Jim Dan Hill Library supports the University of Wisconsin-Superior liberal arts mission by being more than simply a building; we are stewards of resources that support the scholarly pursuits of students, instructors, faculty, staff, and the larger community. We create learning opportunities for student engagement, quality teaching and learning across all modalities, and varied partnerships that extend beyond the walls of the university. We offer a welcoming environment through equitable access for our diverse community. We foster digital and information literacy, academic integrity, curiosity, creativity, and independence.

University of Kentucky Libraries Lexington, KY 40506

Main University Library: William T. Young Library 401 Hilltop Avenue Lexington, KY 40506-0456 Phone: (859) 218-1881 https://libraries.uky.edu/ BACKGROUND/HISTORY: First established in 1865 as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Kentucky, the University of Kentucky is Kentucky’s flagship institution. Studies, research, and service span arts and sciences, and a vast range of professional and clinical fields including medicine, law, engineering, agriculture and extension services, and more. Supporting this knowledge production, the Libraries comprise the main university library, Special Collections Research Center, four branch libraries serving specific disciplines and located throughout campus, and the Law Library. UK Libraries also manages the Lexmark Library.

NUMBER OF STAFF AND RESPONSIBILITIES: 10

TYPES OF MATERIALS YOU BUY (EBOOKS, TEXTBOOKS, DVDS, VIDEO STREAMING SERVICES, DATABASES, OTHER): eBooks, textbooks, DVDs, video streaming services, databases, board games.

DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE AN ILS OR ARE YOU PART OF A COLLABORATIVE ILS? ALMA, collaborative.

DO YOU HAVE A DISCOVERY SYSTEM? Primo.

DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE A COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT OR SIMILAR DEPARTMENT? We have acquisitions, but have not had a collection development librarian in a long time.

IF SO, WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET AND WHAT TYPES OF MATERIALS ARE YOU PURCHASING? PRINT OR ELECTRONIC OR BOTH? Both.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR LIBRARY WILL BE LIKE IN FIVE YEARS? It is difficult to say since our merger with the Former CETL. As we are now known as the Center for Learning, Innovation, and Collaboration at the Jim Dan Hill Library the emphasis seems to be less on our collections and traditional library services and more on instructional and technology support. My hope is that the departments continue to meld and find ways to work together more fluidly, respecting the library as a place for students, instructors, and the community to study and research while also honoring the tradition of providing excellent professional development opportunities.

WHAT EXCITES OR FRIGHTENS YOU ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? The prospect of using AI as an instructional and work tool excites me greatly. There seem to be so many applications, but the idea that some of our students may be accused falsely of using an AI writing tool because a detector says so frightens me. At a certain point the conversation needs to become how do we empower people to work with the tools ethically, not how do we catch and punish people who may be using them.

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(Photos of the William T. Young Library taken during the Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.)

William T. Young Library, the iconic main university library, opened in 1998 and houses over 1.2 mllion volumes across the majority of disciplines.

The main library was previously located in the in the Margaret I. King Library (opened in 1931 and named after the university’s first librarian).

Before the King Library, the Carnegie Library (opened in 1909) was the university’s first free-standing library. Prior to the Carnegie Library, professors and departments made their localized small book collections available to students for reading and study.

The Special Collections Research Center,located in the Margaret I. King Library, is home to a wide range of historical and specialized resources and learning opportunities.

The four branch libraries comprise the Education Library, Lucille Caudille Little Fine Arts Library (visual arts, theatre & dance, music, architecture, and design), Medical Center Library (health sciences, agriculture and food sciences), and the Science & Engineering Library home to STEMfocused collections.

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SOME BACKGROUND MATERIALS:

William T. Young Library: https://libraries.uky.edu/locations/william-tyoung-library

Margaret King: https://www.ukalumni.net/s/article/Margaret-IsadoraKing, https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt73j960633j_4882_1, https:// uknow.uky.edu/campus-news/sesquicentennial-series-first-ladyliterature Margaret I. King Library: https://efacts.uky.edu/Details?id=king_ library, https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/xt75736m0s6q_103_4 Carnegie Library: https://exploreuk.uky.edu/catalog/ xt75736m0s6q_40_8

Special Collections Research Center: https://libraries.uky.edu/ locations/special-collections-research-center

University of Kentucky – history: https://www.uky.edu/prmarketing/ about-university NUMBER OF STAFF AND RESPONSIBILITIES: The Libraries’ 123 staff and faculty are responsible for access services, collections, analytics and assessment, acquisitions, electronic resources, physical processing, cataloging, technologies and systems, reference and scholarly support, instruction, academic liaison services, digital research and data services, systematic reviews, scholarly communications, affordable course content, special collections and primary sources, oral history, administration and project management, facilities, and emerging trends. In short, we do everything reflecting a research library system’s complex operations and wide-ranging services!

OVERALL LIBRARY BUDGET: $25,095,600.

TYPES OF MATERIALS YOU BUY (EBOOKS, TEXTBOOKS, DVDS, VIDEO STREAMING SERVICES, DATABASES, OTHER): e- and print books, eBook collections, e- and print journals, streaming videos, databases, digital archives, specialized datasets (on occasion).

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES DOES YOUR LIBRARY USE TO SERVE MOBILE USERS? Mobile-compatible design built into our online systems, databases, research guides, online chat, and website.

DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE AN ILS OR ARE YOU PART OF A COLLABORATIVE ILS? ILS (Ex Libris).

DO YOU HAVE A DISCOVERY SYSTEM? Ex Libris Primo VE.

DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE A COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT OR SIMILAR DEPARTMENT? Collections staffing has fluctuated in library

Against the Grain / December 2023 - January 2024

reorganizations over the years. Decades ago, a collections department comprised bibliographers. In more recent years, Collections consisted of a solo collections librarian. A collections unit is being formed, with the collections librarian role being divided into a collection strategy librarian and collection analysis librarians. The separate but related Acquisitions Department comprises monographs, serials, electronic resources, and interlibrary loan.

WHAT PROPORTION OF YOUR MATERIALS ARE LEASED AND NOT OWNED? Estimate that leased (not owned) content is 10%. Estimate is based on the ownership of physical collections, digital content (including eBooks and eBook collections, media, journal archives and backfiles.) purchased with perpertual ownership rights, and UK Libraries-produced and owned digitized materials. Leased content such as databases, subscription-based eBook collections, and subscription-based streaming media comprise a small percentage of overall resources compared to the large proportion of owned content.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR LIBRARY WILL BE LIKE IN FIVE YEARS? The Libraries will continue as a respected and trusted knowledge partner for campus, community, and worldwide researchers. The Libraries’ value in education, technologies, copyright and intellectual property, and artificial intelligence will increase as communities look to the Libraries’ information expertise for making sense of evolving developments and how to critically evaluate and meaningfully deploy them. With ongoing developments and changes, it is difficult to predict the Libraries five years from now!

WHAT EXCITES OR FRIGHTENS YOU ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? Exciting developments bring new library roles at the intersection of research processes and metrics, academic studies, technological developments, and critical thinking. Concerning trends include competing interests and priorities around Open Access, tensions between economic constraints and expanding range and volume of research & discovery supported by libraries, tensions between the enduring need for traditional library services and growing needs around emerging services, the risk of mission creep amidst expanding library roles and services, tensions around staffing priorities, and training and skill-development challenges.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU THINK OUR READERS SHOULD KNOW? As neutral partners, libraries are well-suited for leadership at the intersection of information, knowledge, teaching and learning, research and discovery, discernment of information quality, business models for content production and resource access, and fostering societies of informed and thinking people.

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Back Talk — Around the World with IFLA Column Editor: Ann Okerson (Director, Offline Internet Consortium) <aokerson@gmail.com>

M

y 2024 calendar has a hole in it. When I look forward to August 2024, I keep expecting to see a week blocked out for travel, travel that’s been a turning point of the year for me almost since I became a librarian. Officially, it’s called the IFLA World Library and Information Congress, WLIC for short. That’s the annual in-person meeting of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, the closest thing we have to a world library association.

It is, in fact, an association of associations, as the name indicates, founded originally in Scotland in 1927. When it started, it was international without being at all global, but by my lifetime, it truly has spread its wings around the world.

The annual meetings in August were for many years conducted in Europe, with the first real exception being Toronto in 1967.

Only in 1980 did a convening in Manila go beyond what was conventionally thought of in those days as the “first world.”

Four times in the 80s, six in the 90s: an average of four times a decade since IFLA has met well beyond its original geographical limits.

WLIC has grown and now it brings some three thousand people to a major city with a good-sized convention center for most of a week of meetings and networking. It’s always a high point of the professional calendar.

Some of the success of WLIC is the way it introduces attendees to places we wouldn’t have gone otherwise, but most of it is the people. I’ve always found it enriching to get outside my geographical professional zone. Meeting and getting to know and listen to librarians who follow the library profession in places I’ll never visit, appreciating how so many of our issues overlap and sometimes how our interests compete or even conflict — broadening for the work I do. Over time, because of being involved in IFLA committees and various times having served in officer roles, IFLA contacts there have led to other invitations or travel. There were those exciting times of doing international workshops on coping with the onrushing new reality of electronic journals and books: how to license them, how to make them available to library patrons, how to help library patrons become

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skilled at their use.

Those were some heady times.

Some of the WLICs came with adventures in their own right. My very first came when IFLA met in Moscow in 1991. I jumped with a young professional’s glee on the chance to attend, because it meant I could detour afterwards to Kyiv to meet in person the Ukrainian relatives I’d grown up hearing about in distant San Francisco.

That was the most eventful WLIC in history, because, a day before it was to begin, Moscow was brought to a standstill by the anti-Gorbachev putsch. Everyone was instructed to stay indoors and avoid public spaces. My roommate friend Barbara Von Wahlde and I nonetheless charged out on the (empty) Moscow metro to see what was going on. In consequence, we have astonishing photos taken with Soviet tanks on the streets of Moscow. (WLIC itself was cancelled then, as one country after another called their delegates home, but I did get to Kyiv, and my newly-met cousin Slava and I were able to join the crowd outside the Ukrainian parliament the day that country officially declared its independence.)

The pandemic and post-pandemic years have been challenging for WLIC, when we lost 2020 entirely, had 2021 as an all-virtual conference online, and struggled back with meetings in Dublin in 2022 and Rotterdam in 2023. We were set to convene in Dubai in August 2024 but lost the opportunity when a cloud of controversy over program restrictions was dispelled by the host committee determining the event could not go forward.

That decision has reminded us of the tensions and distances that separate people in the world, but also of the complexities of bringing thousands of people together in any one place. The costs of travel, differences in local laws and customs, and the beady eye of skeptical visa officers all conspire to make almost any location difficult for some and less inclusive than we wish it could be.

I’m sorry to see us come to such a pass. The Moscow sojourn was an adventure, but much of my global cultural and professional education has taken place in these meetings. Two visits to China a decade apart showed us still-Maoist society in 1996 (when we were glad to have the Hard Rock Café across from our hotel for meals) and a very different world for a preconference in Shanghai 10 years later, when we stayed in a sleek hotel on the famous Bund facing the explosively wealthy Pudong neighborhood across the river, before going on to the equally advanced world of Seoul, South Korea, for the main event.

A year after that, we were introduced to the realities of emerging democracy in South Africa with a conference in Durban, a city strongly marked by the difficulties that nation was bravely facing in building a truly inclusive society. Meeting the many African librarians who came to that WLIC (easier for them because it was in their region) was eye-opening.

The professional encounters and opportunities are to be cherished. I’ve now been working for a few years (and continued on page 56

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LIBRARIES SUPPORTING HUMANITIES EBOOKS AND OPEN ACCESS FUND TO MISSION Open Access Ebooks from University of Michigan Press In 2021, the University of Michigan Press began to transition its ebook collection into an open access monograph model called Fund to Mission.

Under this model, the Press converted 75% of its frontlist monographs to open access in 2023. By purchasing one of the collection packages, libraries join the University of Michigan and individual funders in supporting an open access program where no author ever has to pay. Libraries that purchase the collection receive perpetual access to approximately 80 frontlist titles as well as term access to a growing backlist of over 2,200 titles.

Learn more at ebc.press.umich.edu.

ACLS HUMANITIES EBOOK COLLECTION The American Council of Learned Societies Humanities Ebook Collection (ACLS HEB) is a subscription-based collection of over 5,700 scholarly books from over 125 publishers. More than just a group of books, ACLS HEB is a set of titles curated for scholars by scholars with members of ACLS learned societies nominating books to be added to the collection.

Learn more at humanitiesebook.org.

LEVER PRESS Emerging initially from a collaboration between liberal arts college libraries, Lever Press offers a collective solution to open access book publishing. With the participation of more than 50 academic institutions and publishing support from Michigan Publishing, Lever Press produces peer-reviewed, open-access monographs at no cost to authors or their academic institutions.

This collaborative structure allows institutions to have a voice in the future of scholarly communications and academic publishing regardless of their size or amount of resources.

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