Against the Grain V36#1 February, 2024 Issue

Enabling Open Access In The Humanities

Guest Edited by Anthony Watkinson

(Principal Consultant, Ciber Research)

Begins on Page 12

If Rumors Were Horses

Little glimmers of the coming spring are appearing here in SC — daffodils and crocuses are blooming already, and some of us are dreading the approach of mass quantities of pollen that will be blanketing our cars, porches, and anything that sits still more than a few minutes outdoors soon. Good for bees, bad for allergies!

New Jobs and Retirements

Like WOW! Ruth Knight, Anthony Watkinson’s high-flying daughter, has been appointed The Royal Household’s first Head of Sustainability. Ruth previously worked in similar roles at English Heritage, the Church of England, and the Greater London Authority. King Charles III has been a long-time advocate for environmental sustainability, and Ruth’s appointment will help strengthen this commitment across The Royal Family’s properties and practices. Cool!

And here’s another cool story! The eagle-eyed Ramune Kubilius sends us word of the retirement of JP Marton at UVM Davis Center. JP Marton, a retired custodian at the University of Vermont, is a well-loved figure in the community. He noticed that students had a passion

ACS READ AND PUBLISH

UK

41% published OA pre-agreement

94% publish OA currently

ITALY

14% published OA pre-agreement

89% publish OA currently

SPAIN

11% published OA pre-agreement

80% publish OA currently

SWEDEN

26% published OA pre-agreement

95% publish OA currently

POLAND

7% published OA pre-agreement

92% publish OA currently

TÜRKIYE

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

Digital Archives Options

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Journal Titles

Advances in Optics and Photonics (launched 2009)

Applied Optics (launched 1962)

Journal of the Optical Society of America (1917-1983)

◊Journal of the Optical Society of America A (launched 1984)

◊ Journal of the Optical Society of America B (launched 1984)

Optics Express (launched 1997)

Optics Letters (launched 1977)

Optics and Photonics News (launched 1990)

Optics News (1975-1989)

Conference Papers (launched 1979)

◊ Also includes Journal of the Optical Society of America (1917-1983) * 1997-2005 only

Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094), Copyright 2023 by the name Against the Grain is published five times a year in February, April, June, September, and November 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.

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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

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.

From Your (bird watching) Editor Emerita:

Living on the water you see and hear all sorts of birds. It is amazing how birds adapt to their environments! There are so many bird sounds and sight apps. One of my favorites is the Merlin Bird ID app from the Cornell Ornithology Lab. Did you participate in the Great Backyard Bird Count?

This issue is chock-full of great information about enabling open access in the humanities. Guest edited by Anthony Watkinson (Principal Consultant, CIBER Research and Conference Director for the Charleston Conference), these articles are based on the panel of presentations he convened at the 2023 Fiesole Retreat at the University of Basel, Switzerland. It includes the funder perspective, from Niels Stern (Managing Director, OAPEN Foundation), and the small-to-mid sized publisher perspective from Emily Poznaski (Director, Central European University Press). Charles Watkinson (Associate University Librarian, Publishing, University of Michigan Library) shows us why we should look beyond the assumption that HSS publishers are lagging when it comes to OA, and Ros Pyne (Global Director, Research and Open Access, Bloomsbury) discusses moving beyond the

Letters to the Editor

BPC model at a larger press. And finally, we see a view for collection action towards OA through a consortia group from Kate McCready (Visiting Program Officer for Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing, Big Ten Academic Alliance; Librarian, University of Minnesota).

We have a special report, the third installment of a report on Librarian Futures from Matthew Weldon (Library Patron Consultant, Technology from Sage). The report focuses on the library skills landscape and includes commentary from authors, librarians, and more.

This issue also includes an ATG interview with Becky Lenzini and George Machovec about The Charleston Advisor — a look back over 25 years and a look forward to new plans for this important industry publication. Matthew Ismail also provides a fascinating conversation with Zack Ellis of TheirStory taken from an episode of ATG the Podcast.

Okay, let’s get into it! And don’t forget to take some time to listen to the birds today, if you can. It’s good for you!

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 Leah:

Wow, that was a masterpiece — congratulations to a very successful Charleston Conference. I can imagine you are exhausted, so I hope you find time and space to recover. Just FYI and for after recovery: Katina asked me to curate a Charleston in Between on Research Integrity. Happy to do this, we can discuss in February after APE. I think we can involve libraries through research evaluation, and we can hone that by involving high-caliber librarians. We wanted to get

Love, Yr.Ed. AGAINST

VOLUME

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT

Toni Nix <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Phone: 843-835-8604

a panel with researchers (maybe a fraudulent one to speak anonymously?) to talk about their views. This will be REALLY difficult, but I am happy to take the challenge….

All best and talk soon, Sven

Dr. Sven Fund (Managing Director, Fullstopp GmbH, Maximiliankorso 66, 13465 Berlin) <sven.fund@fullstopp.com>

Hi Sven:

Thank you so much, it was great to see you in Charleston as well! I love the idea and topic, and appreciate your inclusion of the importance of the library perspective. I’m especially interested in the concept of the anonymous presentation from someone who published fraudulently. That would be difficult to arrange, I’m sure, but our audience would appreciate hearing that point of view and I’m sure the Q&A would be lively! Let’s move forward and start making plans.

Best, Leah

Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub) <leah@charlestonlibraryconference.com>

Editor’s Note: A Charleston In Between virtual conference will take place March 19-20, 2024 as we take a deep dive into publishing integrity. Visit https://www.charleston-hub.com/ the-charleston-conference/welcome/charleston-in-between/ for the full schedule, speaker list, and to register. Hope to see you there!

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

for reading, so he created the Book Nook in Brennan’s Pub. The Book Nook is a collection of donated books that encourages the exchange of literature and ideas. Since it started in 2010, it has tripled in size. Check out the article to learn more about JP and the literary haven at the Davis Center: Beloved UVM Davis Center Employee JP Marton Retires After 15 Years, But His “Book Nook” is Just Getting Started

Another report brought to us by Ramune — Dan Doody of Doody Enterprises, Inc, has retired. Some excerpts from his farewell letter Hail and Farewell!: “At the end of 2023, we announced that Tim Butzen is now the owner of Doody Enterprises, Inc. and that I am retiring after a fulfilling 46year career in medical publishing. Tim graciously extended to me the opportunity to offer some valedictory thoughts in this space. To have the sustained success Doody Enterprises, Inc. has enjoyed over the last 31 years is attributable to many factors. First, we have had exceptional employees throughout the years, talented, dedicated, and a pleasure to be around. The company’s operations have run on strong foundational software. Plenty of good fortune played a role as well. Often the company was in the right place at the right time when a growth opportunity presented itself.” (DCT Featured ArticleFebruary 13, 2024) ATG has reached out to Dan (via Ramune!) to request an interview. Stay tuned for more!

100th Anniversary Celebration

On February 7th, 1924, the Francis Marion Hotel opened its doors in the midst of the Roaring Twenties, heralding a new era of Charleston hospitality. Over the last 100 years, generations of guests and staff have celebrated special occasions and created lifelong memories.

The Francis Marion is thrilled to commemorate this milestone with the community that has supported and honored it for an entire century! Leah Hinds and Caroline Goldsmith attended the glamorous event and were charmed by the décor, the music, the food, and they even had a red carpet entrance!

Center. Thank you to Gayle, Stephen, Marie, Jaime, and the rest of the team for being so great to work with and for making the conference extra special each year.

Food and Bev

Do you like oysters? How does over 50,000 pounds of oysters sound? The Lowcountry Oyster Festival is the world’s largest oyster festival! This year was the 40th anniversary of this favorite event of many, and was held on Sunday, February 4, at Boone Hall Plantation. Highlights included live music on the main stage, raw oyster eating and shucking contests, wine, a selection of domestic and imported beers, specialty cocktails, a Children’s Area (“Pluff-a-Palooza”) and a Food Court showcasing a variety of local favorite restaurants to satisfy everyone’s taste.

Last time our editor Leah Hinds and her family were in downtown Charleston, they made a pilgrimage to the upper end of King Street to visit Rodney Scott’s Whole Hog BBQ. Their party of 5 ordered one “Pitmaster Combo,” which included whole hog bbq, pulled pork shoulder, smoked chicken, smoked turkey, cheddarwurst sausage, brisket & ribs along with 4 side dishes (mac and cheese, collard greens, French fries, and baked beans). Add to that a dozen smoked dry rubbed wings, and there was more food than the group could hold! All of it was delicious and the leftovers were even better the next day. Highly recommend!

Globetrotters

Matthew Ismail, Editor in Chief of the Charleston Briefings and ATG the Podcast interviewer extraordinaire, has gone from Mexico to Vietnam to Kuala Lumpur! Matthew is traveling the world and has been conducting interviews on location wherever he goes. Sad news, though, that Matthew will be stepping

The delightful Gayle Karolczyk, Executive General Manager at the Francis Marion, has worked with us for years and years to host the conference and make the Francis Marion Hotel our long-time headquarter location. Gayle gave the conference a shout out and we got a round of applause during her speech at dinner since we’re the longest consecutively running event that’s been hosted at the hotel — 25 years since the event moved from being hosted at the College of Charleston Lightsey Conference

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away from his duties with Charleston at the end of this month. From Matthew: “It’s hard to maintain the contacts and the professional currency when you’re out of circulation. It saved my life when I was working in libraries to be able to be engaged with a dynamic environment like Charleston. But now I am more distant from the day-to-day aspects of the work and I’m not sure I am going to be contributing anything of much worth anymore, anyway.” We disagree about his contributions but wish him all the best in his travels as he explores the globe!

Jonathan Michael, CFO of Annual Reviews, and his lovely wife Ellen were also traveling to Vietnam recently. They enjoy riding bikes and took a long bike trip across the country. Ellen has a bakery with the MOST delicious middle eastern cookies and cakes, and they’re as healthy as they are delicious. She brought some to South Carolina when they attended the Charleston Conference last November!

Upcoming Events

He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere! Sven Fund is organizing our next installment of the Charleston In Between virtual conferences on the topic of Publishing Integrity on March 19-20. Featuring an anonymous presentation from someone who published with a papermill, Curtis Brundy (Iowa State University) presenting on Institutions, libraries, & their pivotal role in research integrity. Nandita Quaderi (Clarivate) will define industry standards in integrity. We’ll have a small publisher’s perspective from John Chen of Tech Science Press,

the large publisher’s perspective from Michael Streeter at Wiley, and ask the question “Can Technology Help? Why Hasn’t It So Far?” with Phill Jones of More Brains. See the full agenda and register — you won’t want to miss this!

The 2024 Fiesole Retreat will meet in Cape Town, South Africa, to discuss “Connecting Global North and Global South: African Perspectives in Scholarly Communications” May 7-8. This exciting program will feature a keynote presentation from Kepi Madumo, National Librarian & CEO – National Library of South Africa, Gauteng, South Africa, as well as several panels on topics such as Framing current scholarly communications challenges and opportunities for Africa, Equity and Inclusion in the Journal Ecosystem: Access, Discovery and Exploration, North and South Partnering for Academic Open Access Monographs, and Empowering Narratives: Bridging Gaps in African Research, Knowledge Dissemination, and Cultural Preservation. The focus will be on presentations by African librarians and researchers on the unique issues and challenges they face. Registration is open at https://www.fiesoleretreat.org/capetown_2024 , and scholarships are available for local librarians and researchers to attend through generous sponsorships from The Elsevier Foundation, Cambridge University Press, and OCLC.

That’s it for now, but please send your “Rumors” our way for publication here or on the Charleston Hub in Katina’s “Tea Time” blog: <editors@against-the-grain.com>. Take care and see you next time!

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>

Devon is Christie Country

Agatha Christie was born to a wealthy American but Anglophile father and spent her early life in fashionable Torquay. She met her first husband at Ugbrook House in Chudleigh and wrote her first detective novel at the Moorland Hotel on Dartmoor.

Burgh Island and its Art Deco hotel with a glass-domed palm court was the setting for And Then There Were None and Evil Under the Sun.

The Royal Castle Hotel — renamed Royal George — in Dartmouth is the setting for The Regatta Mystery and Ordeal by Innocence.

Greenaway is her open-to-the-public home with a brassbound chest that inspired The Mystery of the Baghdad Chest.

See: Hillary Macaskill, “Agatha Christie’s Devon,” Britain, Jan. 2024, p.66.

Let’s Read About Genius

(1) Peter Shaffer, Amadeus (1979) (Salieri’s hatred of Mozart’s greater talent); (2) Pierre Michon, Rimbaud the Son (1991) (brilliant poet is also dissolute, sulky wretch); (3) George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871) (girl thinks she’s marrying genius, but he’s a mediocrity); (4) Translated by Anne Carson, If Not Winter: Fragments of Sappho (2002) (genius is impersonal to the one who has it); (5) Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach (1979) (hot book from dawn of mass computing).

See: Patrick Mackie, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, July 15-16, 2023, p.C8.

Food History

Thomas Mann called marzipan “remarkable and mysterious.” The almond sugar paste was his favorite confectionary.

And curiously, he grew up in the marzipan making town of Lubeck. But he always considered it to be Turkish and exotic. Indeed, it was a sweet brought to Europe by the Crusaders.

The first mention of it is by the 10th century Persian physician Rhazes. It is also found in the One Thousand and One Nights. The Spanish city of Toledo, once part of the Moorish kingdom of Al-Andalus is today a center of marzipan making.

The high sugar content made it a costly sweet only for the rich. Henry VIII loved it and likewise his daughter Elizabeth I. In Romeo & Juliet, a Capulet servant asks that a piece of “marchpane” be saved for him after the table was cleared away.

See: Matthew Dennison , “Hitting the sweet spot,” Country Life, Nov. 29, 2023, p.115.

Henry James and the Country House

Anglophile wordsmith Henry James loved the English country house. In English Hours (1905) he called it the only thing the English had mastered completely.

In The Lesson of the Master (1888), he describes the décor and architecture and dwells on the Adam-designed gallery of Osterley Park now in West London. In The Sacred Font (1901), he writes of the thrill of travelling by train for a weekend escape and the pleasure of long walks in the garden.

Portrait of a Lady (1881) opens with a resonant description of Gardencourt with its lawn running down to the river. This, in fact, is Hardwick House, Pangbourne, Berkshire. He goes on to enthuse on the splendors of an afternoon tea set on the lawn on a perfect summer afternoon.

His famous chilling work The Turn of the Screw (1898) is set in a remote house where the Gothic horror of the house is well contrived.

See: Matthew Rice, “Mastered in every detail,” Country Life, Nov.29, 2023, p.78.

Obits of Note

Norman Jewison (1926-2024) served in the Canadian Navy in WWII, worked for the BBC, became a director of musical variety shows in NYC.

This led to movie directing. His breakout was The Cincinnati Kid and then In the Heat of the Night.

He ended up directing hits in every genre: The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), Rollerball (1973), the labor union drama F.I.S.T. (1998). His biggest hit was Moonstruck, Italian Brooklyn romantic comedy starring Cher.

See: “The versatile director who made Moonstruck,” The Week, Feb. 2, 2024, p.35.

Peter Schickele (1935-2024) studied and then taught at Julliard. He composed chamber pieces, film scores, Broadway showtunes, and folk songs.

But his famous work was his “antic alter ego” P.D.Q. Bach. Calling himself a “musical pathology scholar at the University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople” he would direct his orchestra in classical music with a comic twist like the cowboy opera Oedipus Tex or “Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle, and Balloons.”

He and Philip Glass designed oddball contraption instruments like the “tromboon” and the “left-handed sewer flute.”

The multi-layered compositional japes brought down the house in bellylaughs.

See: Id.

continued on page 13

New Technologies for Ancient Languages

An integrated and intuitive Latin platform, to be completed by 2025

Realized by the Centre “Traditio Litterarum Occidentalium” (CTLO), Brepols’ in-house Digital Humanities lab developing and producing full-text and dictionary databases for Latin and other ancient languages

Full Text

Library of Latin Texts

Aristoteles Latinus Database

Archive of Celtic Latin Literature

Electronic Monumenta Germaniae Historica

Sources Chrétiennes Online

Tools Dictionaries

Cross-corpus searches

Tailored text comparison

N-gram viewer & other statistics

Morphological analysis (incl. probability)

Database of Latin Dictionaries (27 dictionaries of various types)

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources

Syntactic parsing (incl. visualization)

Interface for advanced corpus analysis

Links to other resources on BREPOL i S and elsewhere

L’Année Philologique Clavis Clavium a gateway to Christian literature

Didactic tools

Enabling Open Access In The Humanities

By Anthony Watkinson (Principal Consultant, Ciber Research; Phone: +44 1993 811561; Honorary Lecturer Department of Information Studies University College London; Director Charleston Conference) <Anthony.watkinson@Btinternet.com>

This is an informal introduction written by me as guest editor for the February issue of Against-the-Grain. The informality of an editorial addition, usually in the form of an editorial (not uncommonly used by editors), makes it possible to begin with an explanation of the origin of this special issue on this topic. All the contributors were part of a team I convened to speak about this topic for a session at the Fiesole Retreat 2023 held in Basel [Session 2 May 3rd https:// www.casalini.it/retreat/2023/#program]. I was honoured when, after the session had finished, Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub) who was in the audience, asked me to be a guest editor for an upcoming ATG issue based on this session, drawing upon some of the presenters for contributions. This is the result, one which I am pleased with and which represents a good approach point to the topic produced by people who know what they are talking about. I think the articles you will be reading show that my judgement was sound. When I convene a session of this type, it is my practice to ask people to take part whose knowledge I am aware of and whom I trust to do a good job rather than asking people to fill in particular roles in a schema presented as comprehensive.

One other point about the Fiesole Retreats in general: the aim is to bring together a group of people who buy into a “desire to foster and stimulate dialogue and collaboration within the scholarly communication sector.” Hence, in planning this session, I provided time to make possible not only interaction among the speakers but also among the audience, thus, bringing into play further experience and perceptions. This went well in Basel but does not fit well within the structure of a journal. The contributors have touched on some points that came up but as far as others are concerned, I shall take editorial privilege to mention some of those that I would personally like to stress and hope that readers may wish to follow up with contributors who (in my opinion) represent an unrivalled body of knowledge.

A key reason for a session then and a publication like this one has been highlighted recently in a report from Ithaka that “the differences between scientific (STEM) journal publishers and humanities and social sciences (HSS) publishers have grown only starker” (The Second Digital Transformation of Scholarly Publishing: Strategic Context and Shared Infrastructure by Tracy Bergstrom, Oya Y. Rieger, Roger C. Schonfeld. DOI: https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.320210).

As some of the contributors have pointed out, Humanities scholars characteristically use monographs preferentially for the dissemination of their research findings, which is an obvious focus for the differences from STM researcher, but even more important is that funders and government take STM article-based publishing strategies to the norm. The values of humanities scholars are ignored as irrelevant and (as I have personally observed at a meeting between government, funders and publishers not long ago) as even being deliberately difficult.

Another part of the picture (also often overlooked) is that humanities researchers often work on their own whereas STM researchers invariably work in groups. Funders provide money for research groups which can be used for article publishing charges. Book publishing charges are prohibitively expensive for authors on their own. This is clearly expressed by one of the publishers: “The high costs involved in publishing a scholarly book and the low levels of direct grant funding in the subjects that most rely on monographs … mean that if we are to make open access a reality for more than a small proportion of scholarly books, we are likely to need solutions that go beyond the prevailing open-access fee model.”

It will be observed that much of the difference between the OA models presented by contributors concern how other parts of the ecosystem are asked to bear the burden. Other players in the ecosystem are among those writing in this issue which provides a broader perspective. The emphasis is on collective access to foster open access publishing.

Another additional perspective reflects the origin of this collection. In the year before we met in Basel, we were in Athens where I convened a humanities-related session entitled “Delivering Humanities Scholarship” https://www. fiesoleretreat.org/athens_2022. See Session 3. Both in the presentations on that occasion and in the discussion afterwards (and in the discussions in Basel), the use of other outputs were given a place. One of our current contributors tellingly references Pierre Mounier (a speaker in Athens) as follows: “The diversity of publication venues reflects the epistemic diversity of social sciences and humanities communities.” If I may add a personal note here: in introducing both these sessions under the Fiesole banner, I asked speakers to explain the role of humanities journals for humanities scholars. They are not (traditional wisdom assures me) just vehicles for recording research findings. Is this the case? I do not think we have an answer in this issue.

Another question I asked and which may not have been answered was the strength of enthusiasm for open access among humanities scholars. My own work has demonstrated to me that STM researchers want to publish open access more actively (gold) than they once did [https://ciber-research.com/ harbingers.html]. It is no longer the case that library advocates of open access seemed to some to be trying to force an unpopular model on mostly unwilling research communities. I am aware that a problem facing publishers in the humanities used to be that first reluctance or even distrust among the scholars had to be overcome but has this now changed.

Finally, in inviting this group of contributors, I have encouraged them to concentrate on providing routes to open publishing and have not probed what they have committed to paper (as us older people would once have phrased it) to discern the sort of competition which is (properly) endemic to this business. There is clearly a divide between the university

presses who have a special role in monograph publishing. One of our contributors writes: “I worry that larger publishers with better resources to handle complexities like transformative agreements are sucking away the resources to support openaccess books and journals. Small, independent publishers (barely for-profit, if commercial) face similar challenges to university presses. We must ensure that funder and library policies don’t accidentally erase the bibliodiversity that independent and institutional presses have brought to their regions and disciplines for decades.” This comes from an interview back in March, and not in his contribution here, but it reflects a concern not confined to humanities publishing that the big and even smaller commercial companies have somehow managed to leverage open access offerings so that they come out on top.

Bet You Missed

It continued from page 10

Let’s Read About Education

(1) Charles Murray, Real Education (2008) (hard truths about failure of higher ed.; half the students are always below average; too many people going to college); (2) Frank Bruni, Where You Go Is Not Who You’ll Be (2015) (Ivies sell over-priced credentials; rigged admissions; no relation to later success; corp CEOs come from state U); (3) Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott, The Cancelling of the American Mind (2023) (mind-numbing homogeneity; brutally enforced conformity; the campus can’t be reformed; urges biz to look beyond Ivies); (4) U.S. National Commission on Excellence in Ed, A Nation At Risk (1983) (note date; unheeded warnings and continual educational decline); (5) Julie Schumacher, Dear Committee Members (2014) (finally some comic relief with the dreadful life of a bedraggled faculty members at a Tier-2 college).

See: Mitch Daniels, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 20-21, 2024, p.C8. Daniels is the famous former president of Purdue and author of “Boiler Up: A University President in the Public Square.”

Research Funders and the Transition to Open Access Books

By Niels Stern (Managing Director, OAPEN Foundation; Phone: +45 31384208) <stern@oapen.org> https://oapen.org https://doabooks.org

Why is the transition to open access (OA) for academic books happening at a much slower rate than for journal articles? We know that OA policies are key drivers to change, so how can we help those making OA policies include books as well?

What is a Book?

A book is a book is a book … In conversations with colleagues about OA and books, we have often had to pause and reflect on how we define the book. Even though we focus on academic books, agreeing on a definition that captures the varied typology of the academic book shaped by disciplinary traditions, culture, language, digital technology, etc., is difficult — if not impossible. However, in the PALOMERA 1 project, which I will tell more about below, we have agreed on a generic yet operational definition of the academic book: “monographs, book chapters, edited collections, critical editions, and other long-form scholarly peer-reviewed works.”

With an educational background in both the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), books have always played an important role in my life. But it was not until I joined a small Danish university press more than 20 years ago2 that I really began to understand the role of the book in the many — sometimes very niche — disciplines of SSH. Writing a book — especially a monograph — is very different to writing an article. We published around 60 books annually; some were 150 pages, others 1,500 pages. We also published around ten humanities journals. It goes without saying that the mere length of the book differentiates it from the article. But, moreover, as some SSH researchers put it, the writing of a book is part of the research process itself. Furthermore, the peer review process is often more extensive for books than for articles and the publisher is typically very involved in the editorial development of the book manuscript. Additionally, there is production, marketing, and distribution. Book publishing is special and exciting. I have had many, many meetings with authors about their book manuscripts and research projects, and the overwhelming engagement and excitement that mostly filled the air during such meetings was both inspirational and educational.

Bibliodiversity and OA Book Publishing

Although academic books mainly play a pivotal role in the SSH, they are also an integrated part of many STEM disciplines. As an example, in the OAPEN Library,3 which hosts more than 30,000 OA books, around 20-25% of the titles are STEM titles or STEM related, e.g., interdisciplinary. Over the years, studies have continuously highlighted the relevance of the book in scholarly communication.4

Following the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI),5 many OA policies were developed and adopted by research

funders and institutions. However, books were rarely included in these policies and strategies — despite their importance to the many disciplines within SSH. What were the reasons for this? What are the bottlenecks and challenges that prevent research funders and institutions from including books in their policies and strategies? Good guesses could include the abovementioned typology variation, the profound editorial engagement in book publishing, challenges related to publishing in non-English languages, potential royalties gained by authors, the symbolic capital of the book, the nature of the book industry and so on. All of this makes up a rich and diverse book landscape often referred to as bibliodiversity This is what makes books and book publishing complex to deal with from an institutional and funding perspective but at the same time essential to the nurturing of many researchers and research disciplines across the SSH domains. Moreover, the high institutional expenses relating to journal acquisitions and licenses, APCs, and Transformative Agreements have maintained the focus on open access to journal articles rather than on books.

Some research funder policies for OA books do exist in Europe (e.g., in the UK, Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands). The European Commission also has a clear OA mandate for books. But considering Europe as a whole, let alone the rest of the world, OA book policies are still few and not really aligned. Why is this so?

Searching for Answers — the PALOMERA Project

In the Horizon Europe work program 2021-2022, 6 an investigation into this question was called for. A group of 16 organizations led by OPERAS 7 and OAPEN 8 successfully answered to the call with a project named PALOMERA — Policy Alignment of Open Access Monographs in the European R esearch A rea — a two-year project that was kicked-off in January 2023.

Halfway into the project, over 600 documents relevant to the analysis of the OA book policy landscape in Europe have been collected. These documents have been included in an open Knowledge Base 9 attached to the OAPEN OA Books Toolkit. 10 The Knowledge Base is fully searchable and contains links to the documents that have been collected, including abstracts in English often attached with extracted snippets translated into English when required. The Knowledge Base will continue being developed through the second and final project year and sustained beyond the project by OAPEN. 11 In January 2024, invited stakeholders assisted in validating the data collection to minimize the risk of missing important documents and to ensure that the views and voices of all relevant stakeholders are represented as best as possible, promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Furthermore, PALOMERA has also issued a survey which saw 454 responses and performed 39 in-depth interviews, and three group interviews. The data have been collected in European countries, but the methodology could equally be applied to other regions. It would indeed be a very valuable extension of the Knowledge Base to collect data from other regions in the world.

The collected data is currently being studied and analyzed using the PESTLE analysis framework which provides a methodology to investigate complex environments (like the OA books landscape) using an analytical lens around Political, E conomic, S ocial, Technological, L egal, and E nvironmental

factors.12 This analytical framework will help us understand the importance and the nuances of each PESTLE factor for each major stakeholder group — both locally and internationally.

What Else to Expect from PALOMERA?

Based on the analysis that will be conducted, PALOMERA will provide actionable recommendations and concrete resources to support and coordinate aligned funder and institutional policies for OA books, with the overall objective of speeding up the transition to open access for books to further promote open science. The recommendations will address all relevant

Figure 2: The PESTLE analysis framework is central to the PALOMERA project.

Figure 1: PALOMERA approach includes three validation events.

stakeholders (research funders and institutions, researchers, publishers, infrastructure providers, libraries, and national policymakers).

One important resource that PALOMERA has already created and will further develop is the Funder Forum. It is a forum that convenes research funders and policymakers to discuss and exchange experiences on OA book policy development and implementation. The first Funder Forum meeting took place on 23 May 2023 and the second meeting on 20 November 2023. Both meetings saw participation from over 40 research funders and policymakers representing more than 20 countries. The engagement of the participants in the meetings was significant and showed a clear need for funders to come together to discuss policymaking for OA books amongst peers. From these first meetings, it has already been quite clear that some funders are advanced and experienced in their policymaking efforts in this field while others have not even considered developing policies. However, they all seem interested in learning and exchanging knowledge and experiences.

See You at Charleston?

During the final year of the project, the Knowledge Base will be technically improved, and more content will be added (for instance anonymized interviews). We will also see new content about funding and funder policies written for the OAPEN OA Books Toolkit that will draw on the findings of the project. The Funder Forum will continue to bring together funders and policymakers to increase the understanding of their needs and explore with them which resources are needed to align their efforts in developing and implementing OA book policies. We will also provide actionable and evidence-based recommendations for all stakeholders in the OA books landscape.

The project has an international dimension and seeks to interact with stakeholders beyond Europe. We have been very pleased to include North American participants in our Funder Forum meetings and our hope is to attract more international funders and policymakers and also to share our work with the library community. One concrete idea is to propose a North American funder panel at the Charleston Library Conference in November 2024. Fingers crossed. If all goes well, I will see you there!

We look forward to sharing all our results and recommendations with you. Stay tuned via our news service https://forms. gle/6DptBc8qSvhkP3AaA

Endnotes

1. https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101094270 and https://operas-eu.org/projects/palomera

2. Stern, Niels. (2021). A brief saga about open access books. https://doi.org/10.7557/11.5751

3. https://oapen.org

4. For example: Crossick, Geoffrey. (2015). Monographs and Open Access. http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/rereports/Year/2015/ monographs/, Ferwerda, Eelco et al. (2017). A Landscape Study on Open Access and Monographs. https://doi.org/10.5281/ zenodo.815931, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. (2019). Researchers’ perspectives on the purpose and value of the monograph. https://global.oup.com/ academic/pdf/perspectives-on-the-value-and-purposeof-the-monograph, Shaw, Philip et al. (2021). Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Monographs: A Report on Publishing trends. https://www.oxfordpublish.org/news/item/monograph_ publishing_-_oicp_report_now_published/

5. https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/

6. https://cordis.europa.eu/programme/id/HORIZON_ HORIZON-WIDERA-2022-ERA-01-42/en

7. https://operas-eu.org/

8. https://oapen.org

9. https://knowledgebase.oabooks-toolkit.org/

10. https://oabooks-toolkit.org/

11. https://oapen.org

12. Aguilar, Francis. (1967). Scanning the business environment. https://www.worldcat.org/title/scanningthe-business-environment/oclc/166317

PALOMERA is funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

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

How Publishers Can Navigate Open Access (so it doesn’t navigate us)

By Emily Poznanski (Director, Central European University Press, Hungary/ Austria) <PoznanskiE@press.ceu.edu> https://ceupress.com/

CEU Press

Anyone working at a small- to mid-sized publisher knows that it has both its rewards and its challenges. I experience both of these myself as director of CEU Press, a university press based out of Budapest and Vienna — a small but dedicated team, we put out around 35-40 books a year on topics ranging from International Relations to Literature; History to Economics. What drives my passion for the press amidst the difficulties is that we give voice to the unique perspective from Central Europe, which is essential and yet underrepresented on the global stage.

A region that has historically been, and continues to be, at the faultline of global and ideological tensions, scholarly perspectives concerning countries such as Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Russia can serve as a window into making sense of some of the wider issues of our time. While these places are sometimes portrayed as homogenous entities in global and popular discourse, they are, in fact, distinct cultures, with complex histories and traditions, which have been the theater for the major trials of the 20th century. I believe we need to better understand this region and all of its complexities to understand our world, which is what inspired me to join the press.

The challenges of running a small press in a digital age have driven us to think beyond traditional formats and sales channels. The team has worked hard to increase our reach through social media, audio with podcasts and audiobooks (forthcoming), short form monographs, as well as the recently launched CEU Review of Books.

Open Access at CEU Press

One of the key pillars of our business model and plans for the future is open access. For the last decade, I’ve worked on the various emergent digital models as well as different ways to implement them. Open access is a strategy that definitely has its positives: among others, increased citation for authors, higher readership and usage, decreasing our carbon footprint, and equal and immediate access to research, regardless of institutional affiliation.

While the comparison isn’t perfect, for practical purposes, it’s perhaps simplest to think of open access as the Spotify of publishing. Open access, like Spotify, gives smaller publishers, scholars and authors immediate, global digital reach. Just as record labels turned to these models to resist the pirating of music, so publishers can turn to open access as a legitimate way of combating illegal downloading of research through SciHub and LibGen. It is particularly beneficial for small to mid-sized publishers, as well as emergent scholars and authors, because it is a platform that levels the playing field with the bigger fish in the pond.

One purpose of this article is to explore some of the various models for implementing open access for books, including the one that made most sense for us at CEU Press. As an emergent avenue in publishing, there are new models appearing in the market, each with their benefits and potential drawbacks.

However, my other purpose is more broad, but perhaps more prescient. As each individual press decides what business model works best for them, I believe it’s important for publishers and librarians to reflect and discuss the potential impact of these emergent technological and economic developments on publishing and scholarship as a whole.

Opening the Future — One Model

Our model is called Opening the Future — a model that is particularly suited for presses that have a substantial backlist and no other institutional funding for digital reach. It was founded by Frances Pinter, Executive Chair of the press, together with Martin Paul Eve and Tom Grady as part of COPIM, a Research England and Arcadia funded initiative, and partners MUSE, Lyrasis and Jisc. This model removes author facing fees, Book Processing Charges (BPCs), to allow any author to publish in open access at no cost. It also allows presses to move to full open access gradually, avoiding an immediate and potentially risky or disruptive switch.

The way the model works is that we sell packages of backlist content to libraries, libraries subscribe for three years, and after that time they own the titles DRM-free in perpetuity. We use that funding to support forthcoming frontlist titles in OA. It combines a membership and a subscription model to allow all librarians to participate, irrespective of whether they have dedicated OA budgets or not. The model also allows for dynamic scaling, which means the more funding that is generated, the more books that can be published in open access.

Three years later, now at the end of its first cycle, we have sold over 100 title packages, which allows us to fund around half our frontlist in open access and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the usage of the books published in OA has soared. The first book funded through Opening the Future was Tomasz Kamusella’s Words in Space and Time, a richly illustrated historical atlas of the region, which, on the MUSE platform alone, was downloaded almost 15,000 times in its first year of publication.1

Other OA Transition Models: Books vs Journals

There are many different models for OA books emerging and there are numerous ways to assess these, including the introduction from Sharla Lair on the OA books network, 2 OAPEN’s OA book toolkit, and helpful guides for institutional assessment of OA models.

Looking at models transitioning presses from selling “closed” eBooks to open access, there are those experimenting with delayed OA like JSTOR’s Path to Open and Cambridge University Press’ Flip it Open; and others that use backlists as a leverage to create funding to publish immediately in OA. The second group includes models like Michigan University Press’ Fund to Mission, MIT Press’ Direct to Open, Bloomsbury’s Bloomsbury Open Collections and COPIM’s Opening the Future

Aside from larger publishers attempting to reach transformative agreement-like deals for books, the majority of models looking to move books from “closed to open” rely on collective funding and remove BPCs which, as a result, decouples the contingency on author affiliation. They also use existing workflows (no APC payment systems needed) and, in general, in their conception ask the question of what funding is needed to publish a series or entire collection in open access.

This is different to journal transformative agreements which mostly work with Article Processing Charges (APCs) and, by nature of the model, encourage publishing more articles — as the more you publish, the more you earn — or the less quickly you have to flip a journal to OA, if the OA articles are in addition to existing subscription content. Having worked on journal transformative agreements, I can see that these are some of the unintended consequences of the model.

While some may long for the halcyon days of publishing, open access is here to stay. But this doesn’t mean we can’t reflect on the significance and impact of these different models, and consider their unforeseen consequences for our industry as a whole.

As we consider the costs and benefits of different routes to open access, stories of Wiley’s Journal in Political Philosophy and its reaction among scholars3 serves as a warning to us all. Other news on the estimated numbers of “fake” papers published in journals4 leads to the question of what is driving publishing today.

What’s more, with higher usage for OA publications, as shown in numerous studies and our own MUSE data, is there a more urgent need to engage communal agency and integrity in OA publishing as this research is more likely to be read by the public?

If academic publishers cannot guarantee accurate and veritable results, and introduce waste — with new research being built on false results, then what value do we bring? Though publishers and librarians have tried to answer these issues with calls for further transparency and more robust peer review, should we also be asking broader questions — on how to keep our agency in a confusing and changing world.

Conclusion

As we consider these various models, and what might work best for our individual businesses, I think it is important for us to reflect on some of the bigger questions these developments pose to the future of publishing as a whole.

On one level, the history of publishing is nothing if not a history of change. Like so many industries, academic publishing is downstream from technological and economic realities that are typically beyond our control. In an unpredictable market, with declining profit margins, publishers have understandably turned their focus to improving efficiency, increasing output and diversifying revenue streams. In these regards, open access has obvious benefits for keeping our businesses vital and meeting external demands.

But on another level, it’s important to consider who and what is driving these changes, and who will bear the brunt of their impact on publishing and its future. Do publishers have any agency over the future of the industry, or are we simply passive respondents to a rapidly changing and increasingly confusing world? Is there space for communal reflection and dialogue on the long-term and unintended consequences of these developments?

As we meet the demands of a changing world, it’s important to keep one eye focused on the essential role that publishing has, and continues to play, in the world. While equity and democratization of information should remain an ethical priority, we are also living through a global moment of political upheaval and social confusion where sources of quality, trustworthy information and scholarship are desperately needed and yet can be all too difficult to find. The unprecedented explosion of information within the digital sphere has left the public bewildered as to what they can trust. As an example, the unintended global impact of social media platforms can serve as an important word of caution for our industry. As artificial intelligence technologies are increasingly blurring the lines between fact and fiction, these platforms have created social conditions in which the public can no longer be sure of what they can trust. Could the same phenomenon occur in academic publishing with paper mills and large retractions occurring within journals?

From this perspective, I think it’s important for publishers to resist being pigeon-holed as service providers by outside forces, and reflect communally on our agency, integrity, and public responsibility. We should take our role as publishers seriously, not merely for the future of the industry, but, because our integrity plays an essential role in intellectual, political, and social life.

While there is a dimension of our industry that will always be downstream from changing technologies and social and economic conditions, this should not prevent us from reflecting on the unintended consequences of these new developments, and on what is within our agency, individually and collectively, to preserve the integrity of our industry and safeguard its future. Our industry has undeniable social, political, and intellectual value. What if there were channels of discourse within our industry for us to reflect on how to translate this value into economic value?

Endnotes

1. Tom Grady, “Opening the Future at CEU Press: an update on Progress,” May 2023, https://ceup.openingthefuture. net/news/98/

2. Sharla Lair, “Open Access Book Programs: Answering Libraries’ Questions,” Open Access Books Network, October 2021, https://openaccessbooksnetwork.hcommons. org/2021/10/27/open-access-book-programs-answeringlibraries-questions/

3. Justin Weinberg, “Solidarity among Philosophers Leads to New Journal: Political Philosophy,” Daily Nous, January 2024, https://dailynous.com/2024/01/12/solidarityamong-philosophers-leads-to-new-journal-politicalphilosophy/

4. Richard Van Noorden, “How big is science’s fake-paper problem?,” Nature, November 2023, https://www.nature. com/articles/d41586-023-03464-x

Dis-counting Open Access in the Humanities

By Charles Watkinson (Associate University Librarian, Publishing, University of Michigan Library; Phone: 734-936-0452) <watkinc@umich.edu>

When Peter Suber, who literally wrote the book on Open Access (MIT Press, 2012), asks, “Why is open access moving so slowly in the humanities?” his refrain is typical of many commentators on open scholarship (Suber 2012, 2017). However, the assumption that arts, humanities, and qualitative social science (AHSS) disciplines are “lagging” in open access (OA) publication may reflect biases in our data sources rather than disciplinary realities.

Look beyond what libraries can easily “acquire” and catalog, and a vibrant, expanding ecosystem of OA publishing activities and outputs in AHSS disciplines is revealed. Rather than caricaturing AHSS as an OA backwater, librarians, publishers, and other information professionals should address their responsibility for neither adequately describing OA species (even keystone species) in the AHSS environment nor facilitating relationships between them.

AHSS scholars today value equity, openness, collegiality, soundness, and community. Through workshops with hundreds of researchers, the HumetricsHSS initiative has articulated these values as foundational to AHSS research cultures (Agate et al., 2020). The organizational structures that manifest such values are usually articulated as having the form of a “commons,” not a “firm.” However, we continue to support a classification and reward system that rewards competition over collaboration, the dominant individual rather than the collective whole, and industry over community.

As Pierre Mounier has pointed out, the fragmented, multimodal, and (to our publisher and library systems) messy nature of AHSS publishing output compared to the consolidation in STEM fields is not an accident. Instead, “the diversity of publication venues reflects the epistemic diversity of social sciences and humanities communities” (Mounier, 2018, p. 299).

Dis-counting “Traditional” Formats

Consider keystone species in the scholarly communication ecosystem like “The Book.” Even when OA outputs come in traditional forms, our systems fail to recognize them, especially if the languages and publishing houses authors use are unfamiliar. While only 5% and 10% of the books published by U.S. and UK university presses are open access, it is unsafe to assume that this low percentage extends to the ca. 86,000 monographs published annually (Grimme et al. 2019, Shaw, Phillips, and Gutiérrez, 2023).

In Europe alone, Agata Morka and Rupert Gatti identified vibrant (if not always well-supported or coordinated) OA book publishing activities across 14 countries in their 2021 landscape study (Morka & Gatti, 2021). While not all are in AHSS disciplines, over 1,000 OA books in Portuguese alone (with many Brazilian publishers) are available through the SciELO platform, which celebrated a decade of accomplishment in 2022 (Packer, 2022). Despite the efforts of the Directory of Open Access Books and the individual libraries and librarians that support it, records for OA books from English language publishers are presented confusingly in library acquisition tools such as OASIS and GOBI, RIALTO and MOSAIC, and foreign language OA book materials hardly at all.

The implications of the invisibility of OA books in library workflow tools extend beyond bibliographic search. Presence in a library catalog is a proxy for a broader landscape of essential metadata flows, including whether a book is preserved, reviewed, cited, or considered during its author’s career advancement reviews. Preservation is a precondition to long-term discoverability. Mikael Laakso found that only 19% of a sample of almost 400,000 OA books were included in a preservation system (Laakso 2023, 157). Discoverability is a precondition to credit in an increasingly metricized academic environment. Rebecca Bryant and Becky Welzenbach recently illustrated how an OA book drops out of the information supply chain between its publication and its (lack of) appearance in the Research Information Management (RIM) system that higher education administrations increasingly use to measure their faculty members’ productivity (Bryant et al., 2021). Meanwhile, two political scientists, Kim Hill and Patricia Hurley, have described how citation indices misrepresent disciplines that include notable book scholarship (Hill & Hurley, 2022). In the latter two case studies of dis-counting humanities literature, the outputs described are in English and published by longestablished U.S. university presses. The obstacles facing smaller or newer publishers, foreign language publishers, and publishers in non-anglophone countries are even more significant.

When AHSS scholars publish in OA journals (the “Journal” is another keystone species), information professionals again discount their work. A December 2023 catalog search reveals that Scopus identifies only 18% (2,000) of its indexed HSS journals as OA. That number is hardly representative. The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) shows over five times more high-quality OA journals in AHSS (11,000), publishing in over 80 languages. Reflecting on the importance of a global perspective, Mark Huskisson recently described the wealth of OA research published on the Public Knowledge Project’s OJS platform. PKP data suggests at least 20,000 active OA journals in HSS. OJS platforms host the majority of diamond open-access journals, publishing research in 60 languages from more than 146 countries (Huskisson 2023, Public Knowledge Project 2022).

If it’s not “counted,” a journal article and its authors incur a similar sequence of negative consequences that affect books.

An individual case study illustrates the challenges: Dr. Arsim Canolli, the editor of a new Kosovar archaeology journal, Kosova Anthropologica, is committed to publishing bilingually in Albanian and English and retaining ownership within the academy. He and his fellow founders initially planned to make a PDF of the print edition available for free download from their website, a recipe for gray literature. Learning about PKP’s excellent OJS software and the requirements for DOAJ inclusion happened because of a personal connection. The experience of obtaining an ISSN was initially complex and dispiriting (e.g., his country is not part of UNESCO), although the agency came through in the end. Crossref initially quoted a prohibitive charge for membership before he learned about the Global Equitable

Membership program. Without specialist advice, serendipitously obtained, would the first issue of this journal become robustly accessible through U.S. library catalogs? No. Does that lack of discoverability mean the journal is low quality? No. In sum, the challenges that an individual AHSS scholar still faces in making their research discoverable through the infrastructures we have created reflect our collective failure as information professionals to respect the culture or needs of AHSS disciplines.

Dis-counting “Non-Traditional” Formats

In the AHSS ecosystem that we as information professionals currently recognize, “The Book” and “The Journal” have long been considered the apex predators. The challenges of publishing these formats OA, especially using author-pays models, have been well reviewed (Martin Eve provides an excellent recent overview [with postprint OA online] at Eve 2022). However, books and journals have never been the most critical outputs in practice-based disciplines such as music, theater, or dance. The flat, print facsimile, electronic versions of books and journals are also increasingly peripheral to community-centered scholarship in many AHSS spaces. Exhibits, albums, videos, podcasts, and story maps are not just part of the process of doing AHSS research but also its product. When AHSS scholars prioritize the values of equity, openness, collegiality, soundness, and community, it is natural that many of these outputs are open access. None of this is new. Formal, juried exhibits open to all have been an output of the arts since at least 1769, when the first Royal Academy summer exhibition of contemporary art opened in London. Now, the exhibits are online, and the formats take advantage of digital affordances (e.g., 3D models instead of simple maps).

Pragmatically, when outputs are manifestations of the same underlying research project, OA availability facilitates a seamless connection between different outputs. Dave Hansen and collaborators at Duke University Libraries have called this “expansive digital publishing” (Hansen et al., 2018). In Figure 1 of their report, the “Expansive” team shows how two humanities research projects (“Project Vox” and “Fraud: An American History”) produce a range of outputs ranging from open educational resources, monographs, articles to exhibits. They plot these multiple formats on a spectrum, showing how they meet the needs of different audiences. Such digital scholarship outputs do not have to be open access, but they can leverage the affordances of networks such as the Internet if they are.

Making AHSS OA Scholarship Count

So what can information professionals do to make AHSS OA outputs “count”? How can we dispel the belief that humanities disciplines are slow to adopt open practices and outputs? What should we do to show the funders who care about openness that most AHSS scholars are not laggards or reactionaries but may indeed be using the affordances of digital, open dissemination more fully and authentically than many of their STEM colleagues, stuck as the latter are in economic and political structures that often reward secrecy and competition? A number of community leaders are showing the way.

• Jenny Evans at the University of Westminster is working with colleagues to reenvision repository architecture to promote portfolios of practice-based research (Evans et al., 2023). As an information professional, Evans is extending the use of existing standards, like the Research Activity Identifier (RAiD), to ensure that the works of arts researchers and practitioners are discoverable and counted on their own terms.

• Jeremy Morse at the University of Michigan uses the EPUB3 and other standards to expand what can be packaged in a “booklike” container. In deep collaboration with AHSS authors and their publishers, he facilitates the distribution of new scholarly formats, such as hip-hop albums or interactive 3D models, through familiar discovery channels (Morse, 2023; Berkery & Windhorn, 2019, p. 185).

• Katrina Fenlon at the University of Maryland works with community-centered projects in AHSS to find sustainability pathways they define rather than having these defined for them. She shows how knowledge infrastructures need to support the well-being of individuals and cohesion among communities, not just the user’s priorities (Fenlon et al., 2023).

• Karen Hanson at Portico is working with a team of information professionals (including colleagues from CLOCKSS) to embed preservability early in the construction of multimodal publications, working with publishers, authors, and platforms to adopt best practices that will ensure the longevity of new forms without sacrificing their richness (Hanson 2022).

• Javi Arias at Open Book Publishers is a technologist leading the development of the Thoth system for metadata management and distribution of OA books, with a focus on helping small and scholar-led publishers feed their works through the complex scholarly communication plumbing. The system includes a free tier (Arias et al. 2024).

In the spirit of AHSS scholarship, none of these individuals work alone. Indeed, they would be quick to defer credit to their collaborators. However, they all model a commitment to deeply embedding with scholars in their work, deeply listening to the communities at the center of scholarship, and using information science expertise to twist traditional infrastructures of exclusion to those scholars’ advantage. Their values-based work benefits everyone by advancing a more humane, collaborative, constructive ecosystem for research dissemination. As Pierre Mounier and Simon Dumas Prombault write, “It is high time to shift focus from heavily material, physics-informed infrastructure inherited from wartime Big Science and driven by supposed non-values (such as rationality, efficiency, emergency, short-term) to something else, notably for the humanities and social sciences” (Mounier & Primbault, 2023, p. 32).

References

Agate, Nicky, Rebecca Kennison, Stacy Konkiel, Christopher P. Long, Jason Rhody, Simone Sacchi, and Penelope Weber. 2020. “The transformative power of values-enacted scholarship.” Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 7, no. 165 (December). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-020-00647-z.

“All Journals Archives.” n.d. bepress. Accessed December 21, 2023. https://bepress.com/categories_jnl/all-journals/. Arias, Javier, Ross Higman, Hannah Hillen, Rupert Gatti, Vincent W. Van Gerven Oei, Brendan O’Connell, Amanda Ramlho, and Toby Steiner. 2024. “Thoth Expands Team and Collaborations, Introduces New Services.” COPIM , (January). https://copim.pubpub.org/pub/new-team-memberscollaborations-services-update-from-thoth/release/1

Berkery, Peter, and Annette Windhorn. 2019. “How university presses are learning to serve digital humanists.” Information Services & Use 39. 10.3233/ISU-190043.

At the University of Michigan

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Bryant, Rebecca, Charles Watkinson, and Rebecca Welzenbach. 2021. “Guest Post: Scholarly Book Publishing Workflows and Implications for RIM Systems – The Scholarly Kitchen.” The Scholarly Kitchen. https://scholarlykitchen. sspnet.org/2021/12/06/guest-post-scholarly-book-publishingworkflows-and-implications-for-rim-systems/.

“Directory of Open Access Journals.” n.d. Directory of Open Access Journals. Accessed December, 2023. https://doaj.org/ search/journals.

Evans, Jenny, Adam V. Moore, Rachael Kotarski, and Alan Stone. 2023. “Telling a story with metadata or Always drink upstream from the herd: What if your metadata isn’t properly represented in the stream?” Information Services & Use 43, no. 3-4 (December): 257-267. 10.3233/ISU-230208.

Fenlon, Katrina, Alia Reza, Jessica Grimmer, and Travis Wagner. 2023. “Mutual Sustainability among Communities and Their Knowledge Infrastructures.” Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 60, no. 1 (October): 133144. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.775.

Grimme, Sara, Cathy Holland, Peter Potter, Mike Taylor, and Charles Watkinson. 2019. “Digital Science Report: The State of Open Monographs.” Digital Science. https://www.digitalscience.com/blog/2019/06/the-state-of-open-monographsdsreports/.

Hansen, David, Liz Milewicz, Paolo Mangiafico, Will Shaw, Mattia Begali, and Veronica McGurrin. 2018. A Framework for Library Support of Expansive Digital Publishing. https:// expansive.pubpub.org/.

Hanson, Karen. 2022. “Preserving Innovation: Ensuring the Future of Today’s Scholarship.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 25, no. 1 (April): 00. https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.1852.

Hill, Kim Q., and Patricia A. Hurley. 2022. “Web of Science Book Citation Indices and the Representation of Book and Journal Article Citation in Disciplines with Notable Book Scholarship.” Journal of Electronic Publishing 25, no. 2 (https:// doi.org/10.3998/jep.3334). https://journals.publishing.umich. edu/jep/article/id/3334/

Huskisson, Mark. 2023. “Guest Post – Scholarly Publishing as a Global Endeavor: Leveraging Open Source Software for Bibliodiversity – The Scholarly Kitchen.” The Scholarly Kitchen. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2023/02/16/guest-postscholarly-publishing-as-a-global-endeavor-leveraging-opensource-software-for-bibliodiversity/.

Laakso, Michael. 2023. “Open access books through open data sources: Assessing prevalence, providers, and preservation.” Journal of Documentation 79, no. 7 (June). https://doi. org/10.1108/JD-02-2023-0016

Leopold, Aldo. 1972. Round River. Edited by Luna B. Leopold. 1st ed. New York: Oxford University Press, USA.

Morka, Agata, and Rupert Gatti. 2021. “Academic Libraries and Open Access Books in Europe: a Landscape Study.” COPIM, (January). https://doi.org/10.21428/785a6451.f710a335

Morse, Jeremy. 2023. “What is Fulcrum? What is Heliotrope?” GitHub. https://github.com/mlibrary/heliotrope.

Mounier, Pierre. 2018. “‘Publication favela’ or bibliodiversity? Open access publishing viewed from a European perspective.” Learned Publishing 31, no. S1 (September): 299-305. https://doi. org/10.1002/leap.1194.

Mounier, Pierre, and Simon D. Primbault. 2023. “Sustaining Knowledge and Governing its Infrastructure in the Digital Age: An Integrated View.” HAL, Open Science (preprint), (November). https://hal.science/hal-04309735.

“Open Access in the Humanities Disciplines.” 2022. In The Bloomsbury Handbook to the Digital Humanities, edited by James O’Sullivan, 223-231. 1st ed. London, UK: Bloomsbury Publishing. https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/40856/1/21_eve.pdf

Packer, Abel. 2022. SciELO Books 10 Years. https://books10. scielo.org/en/

Public Knowledge Project. 2022. “Annual Reports 2022.” Public Knowledge Project. https://pkp.sfu.ca/about/annualreports/.

Shaw, Philip, Angus Phillips, and Maria B. Gutiérrez. 2023. “The Future of the Monograph in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences: Publisher Perspectives on a Transitioning Format.” Publishing Research Quarterly 39 (February): 69-84. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12109-023-09937-1.

Suber, Peter. 2012. Open Access. 1st ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9286.001.0001.

Suber, Peter. 2017. “Why Is Open Access Moving So Slowly In The Humanities? – Blog of the APA.” Blog of the APA. https://blog.apaonline.org/2017/06/08/open-access-in-thehumanities-part-2/

Watkinson, Charles. 2018. “The academic eBook ecosystem reinvigorated: A perspective from the USA.” Learned Publishing 31, no. S1 (September): 280-287. https://doi.org/10.1002/ leap.1185

Moving Beyond the BPC at Larger Arts and Humanities Presses

By Ros Pyne (Global Director, Research and Open Access, Bloomsbury) <ros.pyne@bloomsbury.com>

Innovative approaches to funding open access for arts and humanities books have until recently mostly been the preserve of smaller presses. What are the implications of offering a subscribeto-open model for books at a larger publisher such as Bloomsbury, and what factors need to be taken into account as a result? What can we learn from existing trends in OA books funding, and where might this funding fit into a future where collective-action or subscribe-to-open models are more common?

The high costs involved in publishing a scholarly book, and the low levels of direct grant funding in the subjects that most rely on monographs to publish to research — that is, the arts, humanities, and social sciences — mean that if we are to make open access a reality for more than a small proportion of scholarly books, we are likely to need solutions that go beyond the prevailing open-access fee model.

Innovative approaches to funding open access for humanities monographs, such as membership and subscribe-to-open type models, were initially led by smaller presses.1 But how will these models work at scale when implemented by multiple smaller publishers simultaneously, or across the monograph lists of larger publishers?

four funded more than one title in this four-year period. (“University funding” includes both central OA funds managed by a library or research office and departmental funds.) Public research funders — organisations like the European Research Council and the Dutch, Austrian, and Swiss national research funders — also funded a substantial number of books, and were more likely to have funded multiple Bloomsbury OA books over the time period, an average of two each. The remaining OA fees were provided by private funders such as the Wellcome Trust and Open Society Foundations, or were self-funded or funded by learned societies.

At Bloomsbury, we have been experimenting with a collective-action approach to funding open access for books. In March 2023, we launched Bloomsbury Open Collections, a subscribe-to-open pilot. Our aim was to establish a route for Bloomsbury monographs to publish open access without the need for author-side fees, and thus to offer a more equitable and inclusive open access option. In this article, I’ll share some of the decisions we made in putting together our approach, and through this look at the implications of trying to design this kind of model for a larger press.

Funding Trends for Open Access Bloomsbury Books

Before we launched Bloomsbury Open Collections, we, like many other arts and humanities presses, were already publishing a proportion of our research monographs open access via a fee model. An examination of the funder trends demonstrates the uneven distribution of open-access publishing that results. For context, Bloomsbury has editorial offices in London and New York, and our academic authors are predominantly in the UK, the U.S. and Canada, northwest and central Europe, and Australia.

Funding for Bloomsbury’s OA monographs is highly distributed (Fig. 1). Between 2019 and 2022, 67 organisations were responsible for funding 96 Bloomsbury OA titles. Universities funded approximately half our OA titles, but only

By far, the majority of the organisations funding OA were based in Europe (Fig. 2), as were the authors they funded. We do publish authors based in the Global South, and they are not represented here. Under the fee model, only a small proportion of books are published OA — about 5% of Bloomsbury’s monograph frontlist in 2022. The fee model is thus effectively conferring the benefits of OA on authors who are already in advantageous, well-funded positions.2 See Figure 2 page 24.

Designing Bloomsbury Open Collections

Seeking a more inclusive, more equitable, and more scalable route to OA for monographs, we launched Bloomsbury Open Collections. In our pilot year, our aim was to make 20 frontlist monographs in African Studies and International Development available open access.

• We set a funding target of £160,000. Once we achieved this target, we would confirm all titles as OA and would stop accepting participants.

• Libraries that participated in the programme would receive 12 months’ access to approximately 200 backlist titles in related subjects as a benefit for their own researchers.

• Participating libraries would also receive guaranteed access to all 20 frontlist titles in the collection, either as OA titles if we achieved our target, or on a permanentaccess basis if we did not.

Figure 1: Funder type for Bloomsbury monographs published OA 2019-22 via a fee model.

The model asks libraries that are interested in these subjects and that would be likely to purchase these books anyway to commit their funds towards a model that supports OA.

We were not the first publisher to launch a program of this kind — notably CEU Press, MIT Press, and University of Michigan Press had all launched subscribe-to-open type OA book models in the preceding years. But we were the largest publisher to offer a subscribe-to-open model. That difference in scale led us to structure our model somewhat differently.

Subject and Region Focus

It would not be practical or realistic to move Bloomsbury’s entire monograph programme (about 1,200 titles per year) into a subscribe-to-open model at once. We therefore wanted to focus on where a no-fee model could have the most impact. We are known for our African Studies and International Development publishing, and saw a strong ethical need to increase access to research about Global South regions for institutions in the Global South. Institutions in many of these countries are less likely to be able to afford as many of our books as they might like, and local access is valued by authors. When selecting titles for inclusion in the collection, we prioritised authors based in Africa and those who were structurally less able to find OA funding.

Collection vs. Title-by-Title

An early consideration was whether we should confirm titles as OA one by one as we secured additional funding commitments, or if we should only confirm OA once we had secured enough funding to convert a collection of titles. We ultimately chose a collective approach: we wanted to approach the model with ambition, and as a larger press, this model seemed most likely to enable us to publish more of our books OA over time, thereby supporting a faster transition to OA. We were also influenced by arguments about the role of collective action in limiting the “free-rider” problem: that is, we wanted to establish a model in which libraries would need to act together in order for all to benefit, with a relatively large number of libraries contributing a relatively small amount.3

We fixed the pilot collection at 20 titles. This would allow us to retain subject focus and avoid straying into a “big deal” or asking institutions to contribute to OA for titles that were less relevant to them, while still representing a meaningful intervention. There would be the potential to scale up by offering different subject collections in the future.

Backlist Benefits

We also considered whether to offer the full backlist for a year or to offer a smaller number of backlist titles on a

permanent basis. We were aware that some libraries would see a time-limited backlist offer as a disadvantage. However, we in turn had concerns that if we were to give away the backlist permanently, we would reduce the likelihood of future participation. Ultimately, we decided to offer backlist benefit for the participation year only. However, assuming the pilot was successful and we were able to offer a second African Studies and International Development collection, our intention was to offer the same backlist collection as a benefit for that year’s participants, embedding the “subscription” aspect of our model.

Funding Targets and Pricing

Our total funding target is equivalent to 20 x our standard monograph BPC (£8000 / $10,000). We modelled this in detail, looking at the digital sales that we would lose across library, aggregator, and direct consumer sales, and also factoring in a loss of print sales, as on average our OA books do achieve lower print sales than our non-OA books, and print is declining in general.

We created a tiered fee structure based on FTE, taking into account the effective price per title that institutions would be paying. We also pledged that once we achieved our funding target for the collection, we would stop accepting participants, meaning that funding per collection was capped. This was intended to provide reassurance about the transparency of the fees. It also meant that libraries would know upfront what their contribution would be.

Our aim has been to create a trustworthy model. But also, with an eye to the possibility of scaling up in future, we are trying to keep things as simple as we can.

Authors with Access to Independent OA Funding

We excluded any African Studies and International Development titles with access to independent OA funding from the pilot collection. Much dedicated OA book funding is provided by funders that mandate open access; subscribe-toopen models cannot guarantee OA, so are not the best choice for titles that are subject to a funder’s OA requirement. However, an equally important consideration was that we wanted to focus the benefit of our collective action model on books and authors that did not have access to funding. This approach also enabled us to retain funder subsidies in the system, allowing us to publish more books open access.

Responding to Feedback

We held focus groups with librarians in the U.S. and UK, and made some adjustments to the draft model as a result. Notably, we committed to making 10 titles OA once we achieved 50% of the funding target, rather than requiring the full funding target to be achieved in order for titles to be made OA. Authors from the Global South would be prioritised in this scenario. Participating libraries would receive permanent access to any titles not made OA. We also agreed that libraries participating in the pilot would be consulted about subjects offered for future Bloomsbury Open Collections. Finally, in response to feedback, we added a price tier for community/FE colleges to support the widest possible participation.

Figure 2: Funder location and type for Bloomsbury open-access books published 2019-22. Shows only books funded via BPC model.

Final Thoughts

This piece summarises a talk I gave at the Fiesole retreat in May 2023 and reflects our thinking as we were developing the model. The participation period for the pilot ended in December 2023, which means we now know the outcomes. We achieved 50% of our funding target and as a direct result over the next year we’ll be making 10 frontlist African Studies and International Development titles open access immediately on publication — titles that otherwise would not have been available open access. While we didn’t achieve our full goal, this still represents a partial success and a first step to diversifying our open access options beyond fee models. You will find my more detailed reflections on what we learnt from the pilot elsewhere.4 For now, I will note that we are committing to offering a version of this model again for 2024/25, and expect to expand it to further subject areas, with a continued focus on lists where there is an ethical imperative to increase access, and on authors who would otherwise be unable to publish open access.

Subscribe-to-open and purchase-to-open models for books are becoming more common, but it is yet unclear what the effect of this expansion will be. Will we all be competing for limited “open access” funds in library budgets? Or will we see a more transformative shift from libraries and consortia to reallocate existing eBook budgets to support open access models? Ultimately, this shift will be critical if we are to see a more sustainable and wide-spread transition to open access for scholarly monographs and for research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.

Endnotes

1. “Business models for open access book publishing,” OA Books Toolkit, accessed January 5, 2024, https://oabookstoolkit.org/lifecycle/article/10432084-business-modelsfor-open-access-book-publishing.

2. On the usage and citation benefit of OA for books, see Cameron Neylon et al., “More readers in more places: the benefits of open access for scholarly books,” Insights 34, no.1 (January 2021), 27. https://insights.uksg.org/ articles/10.1629/uksg.558.

3. On the role of collective action see for example Raym Crow, “MIT Press Open Monograph Model (Direct to Open),” Chain Bridge Group and the MIT Press, last modified 20 December 2021. https://direct.mit.edu/ books/pages/direct-to-open-report

4. Ros Pyne, “Bloomsbury Open Collections: Reflections on our pilot year”, OASPA blog, January 23, 2024, https:// oaspa.org/bloomsbury-open-collections-reflections/.

BIG Collection Collective Action

By Kate McCready (Visiting Program Officer for Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing, Big Ten Academic Alliance; Librarian, University of Minnesota, USA) <kate.mccready@btaa.org> btaa.org

Abstract

To increase access to materials, reduce storage costs, and leverage their collective buying power, academic libraries are working across institutions to develop and manage their independent collections collaboratively. This collective action affects all disciplines and includes such areas as collaborative collection development, strengthening publishing infrastructure, facilitating shared collection management, enhancing discovery and accessibility, and establishing long-term commitments to preservation. Part of developing shared collections is also harnessing our collective influence to foster the creation of open access content — both through licensing agreement negotiations and direct investments in content creation or open access publishing infrastructure. These emerging practices advance the research needs and practices of Humanities’ scholars through at-scale action that fosters growth and trust in values-aligned Humanities’ publishers.

The Big Ten Academic Alliance [BTAA], a growing consortium of academic institutions across the United States, is deeply invested in building the “BIG Collection.” The BIG Collection is an established commitment across the libraries of the BTAA to an interdependent future; moving the independent collections into one, shared and fully networked, collection of resources. Between the current members, the collective collection of records now contains well over 100,000,000 (100 million records), with over 44,390,000 unique item matches. The 2019 analysis done by OCLC Research reported that the BTAA libraries steward over one fifth of the print titles in the U.S.1 The vision guiding this effort is to create a brimming pool that includes every piece of print and digital content from member universities where every student and faculty member has seamless discovery-to-delivery access to the pool. To realize this vision, the BTAA is relying on collective action.

Unlike in other countries, the U.S. has a decentralized library model; there is little national governmental coordination of infrastructure, services, or development. But, there is a lot of energy at the consortia and state level to coordinate activities that are best done at-scale. The unparalleled scale and relative coherence of the BTAA libraries working together means that the group has extraordinary opportunities to realize their ideals.

Within the framework of building the BIG collection, the BTAA is working to change approaches to developing, managing, and creating our collections. For example, within collection development, the traditional adversarial model has libraries and publishers each working to advance their own interests. The BTAA libraries have an established “buying club” that uses their collective influence to purchase content at a lower cost. This is still a useful tactic, but perhaps libraries are too poised to fight and publishers are too poised to view libraries as just a revenue source. The BTAA is asking what needs to shift when cost savings and revenue generation are not the only value propositions. How do we shift from a “purchasing” mindset to an

“investment” mindset when negotiating with publishers that have aligned values? What must change when the aim is to create more open access content? Additionally, do Humanities publishers require a different approach?

The context for this repositioning is important. As noted in Inside Higher Education in January 2023, academic libraries spend about 80 percent of their materials budget on ongoing commitments to subscriptions (including databases, journals, eBook packages, and streaming audiovisual packages). About 18 percent is spent on one-time purchases (including books and ebooks). The rest of the materials budget goes to collection support through interlibrary loans, copyright fees, and external cataloging fees. As the missions of academic institutions expand, the proportion of the budget spent on libraries has decreased. In 1985, library expenditures made up 4 percent of a research university’s budget. In 2015, they would make up only 2 percent. In that time, those university budgets have increased 750 percent, while library budgets have increased only 230 percent. The cost savings for universities on libraries have tended to come mostly from personnel expenditure savings. Library spending on materials increased about 360 percent between 1985 and 2015, while spending on salaries increased only 180 percent.2 The bottom line is that libraries need to do more with less. Collective action is not only helpful in this context, it is essential.

Additionally, libraries are facing collection management challenges as their physical spaces are no longer sufficient to hold new print acquisitions. As demonstrated by the remarkable growth in shared print initiatives,3 where libraries are making cooperative retention agreements to spread out the responsibility of long-term preservation of materials so that each library can reduce its own collections’ footprint, libraries are simultaneously facing space shortages.

These budgetary and space constraints, combined with reactions to commercial publishing practices, have also created new collection development trends. Academic libraries have increasingly shifted from print acquisitions to e-preferred (except for area studies collections and some other specialized materials where print is still best) to both alleviate the pressure on limited space availability and also provide greater access to the materials (e.g., multi-user eBooks can be used as course materials). Increasingly, licensing ebook collections is being done collaboratively by consortia. While approval plans, (where materials are automatically selected by matches on subjects, publishers, and keywords), are relied on to bring most one-time purchases into the libraries, there is a move to support more “request-based” collection building. Access to materials in digital format remains conceptually “in-print” forever; libraries no longer need to purchase content “just in case.” Consortia are also strengthening their collective investments in journal packages and interlibrary loan operations.

These trends as being examined in the BTAA because each benefit from working collectively at scale. It’s important to note that development of the BIG Collection is not about “buying one copy and sharing it”: it’s about collectively buying permanent, seamless access to content. This work has largely been focused on recurring purchases from larger publishers and has occurred mostly in the Sciences and database purchase areas; however, the academic institution budget trends and library space constraints are causing the need for changes in practices across all library investment areas, including the Humanities.

The BIG Collection effort must look carefully at each area it is impacting. One question being asked today is how can libraries create changes within their Humanities purchasing practices that address these constraints while still supporting the relevant scholars? Based on internal analysis done at the University of Minnesota Libraries, a BTAA member institution, the collection development team learned that the percentage ratio for the Humanities portion of collections budget allocations was roughly equal to the makeup of the Humanities faculty and student body population. While some BTAA organizations reported that they needed to do this type of analysis, many reported similar findings. This indicates that there is (still) significant investments in the Humanities but the constraints, and the makeup of Humanities publishers, are requiring thoughtful changes.

While some are for-profit organizations, many Humanities publishers are university presses or small non-profit publishers who also face budget challenges. Additionally, publishing a monograph, the “extremely important” scholarly communication vehicle for humanists,4 is much more costly than publishing a journal article. Because the stakeholders and the economics are different in Humanities publishing, the methods used thus far by libraries to reduce expenditures will not work to advance the kind of changes needed in the Humanities. If libraries scale back their spending, or collectively negotiate to spend less, university and small presses will have fewer resources to publish the content. A different mindset must be employed here. One that creates investments in partnerships and collective action between libraries and Humanities publishers.

Because they’re both based within the academy, libraries and university presses have aligned values which make them ideal collaborators. Both want to support scholars/authors in their knowledge production. Both want to disseminate access to these works and make the materials fully accessible. Both are working to steward university resources effectively and responsibly. Both are limited in their efforts by the support they receive from their institutions. Despite being able to view each other through a vendor/customer relationship lens, their success depends upon changing viewpoints and approaches.

The BIG Collection’s goal to enable and foster communitycentered scholarship is inclusive of university presses being part of that community. In establishing new consortia agreements for Humanities content, libraries and university presses need to make the deals mutually financially sustainable in order to make the scholarship discoverable and findable, accessible and usable, and well preserved. Open access publishing fits within this mindset perfectly because of the expanded access it provides, while also bringing more readership to Humanities’ fields that are becoming more marginalized. Aligning our organizations to facilitate the work of creating open collections fits within our shared values and facilitates the accomplishment, individually, of our purposes. Greater collaboration is needed. Libraries and presses must work together to create sustainable frameworks.

Libraries must collaborate to make investments and share expertise. Presses must work together to build collections that require less investment overhead for libraries.

The Big Ten Open Books project exemplifies this strategy and is the basis for the collaboration between the libraries and university presses within the BTAA consortium. The Big Ten Open Books’ first collection of 100 open access titles from six different university presses, funded by all BTAA libraries, was published in August 2023. Together, these organizations have the combined expertise necessary to work on Humanities publishing challenges including:

• Developing a business model that supports the creation of open access editions.

• Processing backlist title copyrights to make the works open access.

• Tracking usage data to understand the impact of the content.

• Ensuring the works are fully accessible and preserved; and

• engaging the readers with the works.

Big Ten Open Books is making an impact. Already, in the first five months after publication of the open access editions, these 100 books have been downloaded (either in whole or in part) over 38,000 times.5

The vision for the BIG Collection requires new approaches to support greater and continued access to Humanities’ publications. Collective action among libraries is starting to happen, but the collaborations must expand to include more values-aligned librarians and publishers to sustainably support Humanities scholars in both the production of knowledge and ensuring broad access to important scholarship. This collaborative vision illustrates a future of open access monograph publishing that addresses shared pain points through shared expertise and investment.

Endnotes

1. Lorcan Dempsey, Constance Malpas, and Mark Sandler. Operationalizing the BIG Collective Collection: A Case Study of Consolidation vs Autonomy. (Dublin, OH: OCLC Research, 2019) https://doi.org/10.25333/jbz3-jy57

2. Joshua Kim, “3 Questions on Academic Library Budgets for an Assessment and Planning Librarian” Inside Higher Ed , January 31, 2023. https://www.insidehighered. com/blogs/learning-innovation/3-questions-academiclibrary-budgets-assessment-and-planning-librarian

3. Rick Lugg, “Remarkable Acceleration of Shared-Print,” OCLC Blog Next, March 1, 2018, https://blog.oclc.org/ next/the-remarkable-acceleration-of-shared-print/

4. Rick Anderson and Karin Wulf. “Whither (or Whether) the Monograph? Karin Wulf and Rick Anderson Discuss Some Recent Research.” The Scholarly Kitchen. October 17, 2019. https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2019/10/17/ whither-or-whether-the-monograph-karin-wulf-andrick-anderson-discuss-some-recent-research/

5. “Big Ten Open Books Impact and Usage.” 1/9/2024. https://bigtenopenbooks.org/impact

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ATG Special Report — Librarian Futures Part III: The Librarian Skills Landscape, Author and Librarian Commentary

By Matthew Weldon (Library Patron Consultant, Technology from Sage) <matthew.weldon@technologyfromsage.com> www.technologyfromsage.com

Introduction

Writing about the knowledge gap in academic libraries in Against the Grain last year, we concluded that, though the challenges facing the library in recent years are various and significant, the collected knowledge and skills of librarians mean that the future is ultimately bright. In the intervening months, librarians have consistently proven this conclusion correct, repeatedly demonstrating their capacity to adapt to emerging challenges. The 2023 Charleston Conference provided an excellent platform for those librarians to share and reflect on their own practice and learn from colleagues from around the world.

Appropriately, the 2023 Charleston Conference was also where we launched Librarian Futures Part III: The Librarian Skills Landscape, the third instalment in our series of reports into the future of the academic library. Working with Skilltype, we examined data from over 2,000 librarians worldwide to assess the present state of librarian skills, how librarians think those skillsets will evolve in future, and how empowered librarians feel to develop their own skillsets. Presented below are some key takeaways from our data. Our hope is that these results are useful for both frontline library workers and library leaders, and that they help align both groups’ visions for the future of the library.

Librarian Skills — Now and Future

The Skilltype talent management platform allows librarians to indicate the areas in which they’re currently skilled. By reviewing the most popular skills selected by library workers, we

Skilltype Commentary

The Librarian Futures III report findings show high representation of information science skills across the community, suggesting a comfort zone. Librarians play a large role in connecting their communities as bridges between people and organizations. Information is the tip of the iceberg. The libraries Skilltype works with encourage re-skilling in areas such as AI, online learning, and data literacies so the library can be a full partner in teaching and research. Based on the report’s findings, Skilltype will highlight skills that help information professionals increase their impact and curate their careers in 2024. Skills that I expect to see more of include community outreach, instructional design, project management, assessment, design thinking, marketing, and user experience. These are essential skills to uncover community needs, communicate effectively with stakeholders, and maximize the library’s impact.

Christine Quirion, Chief Operating Officer, Skilltype

were able to produce a taxonomy of core librarian skills. See Skill Domains image below.

These skills can be grouped into three broad categories:

• information management skills

• interpersonal and leadership skills

• skills in personal and community development.

With such a diverse range of skills represented among library workers, the academic library will be both resilient and adaptable when meeting emerging challenges. We also see a clear commitment among librarians to develop their skillsets further, with “training & upskilling” identified as one of the most popular skills on the platform. This will empower the academic library to dynamically respond to new challenges as they emerge.

Through Skilltype’s data, we were further able to pinpoint the specific skills that librarians want to develop in the future. Our findings reflect the often-discussed move from a focus on collections to a focus on services. Though collection-related skills continue to be listed among librarian interests, we also see a great deal of interest in skills relating to services. Here there are areas of alignment between frontline library workers and library leaders — with both groups displaying a clear interest in the library’s role in student success, as well as diversity, equality, and inclusion.

What Librarians Tell Us

In addition to reviewing data from Skilltype, we also conducted a global survey of over 250 librarians. Our survey questions were designed to develop our understanding of librarian perceptions of their own skills, areas in which they were more or less confident, the skills they think are especially important to develop for the future, and what effective learning, upskilling, and development is to them. Our findings provide actionable insights for both frontline librarians and library leaders, and will hopefully be the catalyst for important conversations across institutions.

Confidence in Ability is High — But Not in Career Advancement

We asked librarians to answer several questions designed to assess their confidence in their current skillset. Our data reflects high levels of confidence in day-to-day abilities, and most librarians additionally feel that they are able to meet the expectations both of patrons and managers. We also found generally high confidence in supporting student success, though to a marginally lesser extent. See graph below

However, of real concern was the far more mixed response we received when asking librarians how confident they felt in advancing their career. Slightly less than half of the librarians surveyed agreed with this, with the remainder either being neutral or responding in the negative. The problem was especially pronounced among hybrid workers, who reported being less confident in this area than their on-campus colleagues.

This finding will be of note for line managers and leaders within the academic library. In the 2022 Ithaka Library Survey, over half of surveyed directors reported that “maintaining

existing staffing levels” was a major challenge. These results may offer some insight for line managers and library leaders into why this challenge is being felt so keenly. Retention is likely to be tough when staff value themselves, their skills, and their contributions to the library, and yet see no path to progression or recognition for these efforts. They are likely to look elsewhere for these, whether this is in other academic libraries, other library settings, or outside of the sector entirely.

Librarian Commentary

If I may be honest, the report left me with more questions. I was intrigued but not fully surprised by the different perspectives of library leaders and frontline librarians. This shows not only difference of priorities (which is expected), but it may also show the opportunity for a gap in communication or understanding. Are they communicating these priorities to each other? Does this impact the availability of or support for professional development? Furthermore, I’m curious as to the breakdown of “library leaders,” as there are various levels of library leaders with different priorities in the same institution (i.e., medical library director vs dean of libraries). Now that the librarian skills landscape has been identified, what is the next step? How can we help librarians advocate for the training and development they need? What additional work is needed to accurately identify those interests, needs, and opportunities?

Hannah Rutledge, Director of Library and Information Services, Longwood Gardens

Generative AI Presents a Challenge — and An Opportunity

We asked questions specifically pertaining to librarian confidence with technology and found once again that confidence was high but with a notable exception. Generative AI seems to represent a significant challenge for many librarians, with a plurality reporting that they do not feel confident answering patron questions on the topic. We later asked librarians how confident they would be advising students across a range of topics, and over half responded negatively to the phrase “using generative AI responsibly”, with similar results for advising staff, too. Clearly then, upskilling related to generative AI is necessary. See graph above.

Librarians themselves recognise this, as reflected in their responses to questions about skills for the future. Digital literacy is overwhelmingly seen as one of the most important skills to develop in the short term, with over 90% of respondents selecting this. They continue to see this being a critical skill in the medium and long term, too. Skills for critical thinking were also seen as important to develop in the near future. Both of these skills will equip librarians well for responding to AI in a thoughtful, considered, and proportionate way.

Results from elsewhere suggest that the time to upskill staff in matters relating to AI really is now: our own internal research (undertaken by a student intern working with Technology from Sage in 2023) suggests that almost 80% of students have not used AI in their studies. Other more recent results similarly show that students using generative AI are in the minority, with a McGrawHill survey showing 35% having used generative AI to help with coursework, while Chegg.org showed 40% of undergraduates have used AI. Student use of generative AI is only likely to grow, and effective support from the academic library will ensure that it is used effectively and ethically.

Librarian Commentary

Looking from the vantage point of December 2023, to meet the challenges that 2024 will bring, I have reflected on the skills, or the understanding, I will need to ensure 2024 (and beyond) is a success and that the library I lead at Lancaster continues to be at the vanguard of sustainable innovation. It would be remiss of me not to mention AI as a starter — the shift it will bring to all parts of society is akin to the changes wrought by the industrial revolution, and I need to begin to better improve my understanding of the opportunities and challenges (in that order) it is bringing. It will have far-reaching consequences to libraries and librarians as we once again reframe our old skills to meet new opportunities, it will bring lots of opportunities, but we need to better understand the skills it will require from us — and for us to keep an open mind about the changes it will bring. It will change education, but once again our skills as librarians will ensure we prosper.

Andrew Barker, Library Director, Lancaster University

Closing Remarks — Upskilling Isn’t Always Easy

Librarians are keen to upskill and know which areas of their practice they want to develop. However, these results show that it isn’t as simple as that. Librarians who reported a clear path to learning new skills at their institution were in the minority, suggesting that for many the process is uncertain. Lack of time and budget for upskilling complicates matters further — librarians that feel that there is enough resource are once again in the minority.

This seems to be an area of significant misalignment between frontline library workers and library leaders. As revealed in the 2022 Ithaka librarian survey, if asked to allocate a 10% increase in budget, few library leaders would put this

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toward “employee travel and personal development.” It seems, then, that librarian concerns are unlikely to be assuaged in the near future.

Library leaders looking to address this issue may find it useful to know what sort of training their colleagues will find beneficial and prioritise this in their training and development provision. Our data suggest that librarians care far less about the form training takes than they do the subject of the training — they do not display any clear preference for online or in-person training but feel strongly that any training should be relevant to their day-to-day role and should help them better meet the expectations of patrons.

Regarding discovering opportunities for learning and development, most librarians reported that they found out

about their recent training via email and expressed a preference to continue to hear about it in this way. Our data also suggests that for some, colleague recommendations may be effective promoters.

Actionable insights like these are the aim of the Librarian Futures series, to empower library workers and leaders to work together to realise a more effective, efficient academic library with the patron at the heart. There are many more such insights in the latest instalment, as well as contributions from library leaders around the world.

Delve into the data yourself by downloading your copy of Librarian Futures Part III: The Librarian Skills Landscape here , and don’t forget to join the conversation using #LibrarianFutures.

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

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: After a month and a half of 2024, we can start to assess how things are going this year. I hope you are doing well in your neck of the woods and that your outlook for the rest of the year is outstanding. For me, it has been good, I suppose. But we are always measuring it against what might have been — and that is a horrible standard for comparison. So, we in Michigan are tentatively saying that we are decidedly OK. In many ways, we are doing better than this squirrel I spotted on the Diag this month who was clearly finishing off a fifth of booze, smoking and getting into fights. Maybe I am projecting here … but that seems to indicate what the rest of our year looks like.

And its funny how someone from the University of Michigan might look at this year. We are, after all, the NCAA National Champs for College Football — winning 15 games in many odd fashions. And what I hope isn’t symbolic of the year, our moment of victory has unraveled quickly with athletes graduating and almost half the coaching staff heading off for greener pastures. So even when you are sitting on top of the College Football World, you are immediately thinking about next year — and all the championship logo merchandise can’t fix that. Maybe it is the most-Michigan response ever — as this entire experience has been that of half empty vs. half full.

The same approach might be said about libraries and our budgets. We have one good year — maybe negotiate some good deals or actually get a budget increase. Then 12 months later (unless you have a two-year cycle — I’m looking at you Ohio), you are right back in the weeds. Our budget kickoff at the Ross School of Business was yesterday, with mostly good news. But the non-salary increases will not keep up with the inflationary increases that we are seeing over the past couple of years. Chances are, if you are a librarian, you are in the same boat that we are.

If you would like to be a reviewer for Against the Grain, please write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you are a publisher and have a book you would like to see reviewed in a future column, please also write me directly. You can also find out more about the Reader’s Roundup here — https://www.squirreldude. com/atg-readers-roundup

Happy reading and be nutty! — Corey

Agarwal, Anubhav, Michael A. Buratovich, Paul Moglia, and John N. Morley (eds.) Magill’s Medical Guide. 9th edition. Ipswitch, MA: Salem Press, 2022. 978-1-63700-107-3 (hardback); 978-1-63700-108-0 (eBook). 5 v. (3,358 p.), $495.

Reviewed by Janet Crum (Director, Health Sciences Library, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona) <janetcrum@arizona.edu>

So, it is with this mixed messaging of joy and sorrow that you realize the need to make good decisions during this year. Well, I suppose that would be the same every year. So, if you are in the market for library books, we have some great reviews for you. But even if you are a publisher, these reviews should help you see what is important to your customers.

You think you had it rough this year — Fox Squirrel at the University of Michigan on February 5th, 2024.

As the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated, medical misinformation is rampant and has deadly consequences. Clear, understandable, accurate medical information aimed at health care consumers is desperately needed—and also difficult to deliver. High quality medical information for nonexperts must balance clarity with completeness and accuracy — and it must be current in a field in which new information emerges every day. According to the Publisher’s Note, Magill’s Medical Guide delivers “a perfect mix of accessibility and depth” and provides “general readers with an authoritative reference source that helps bridge the gap between medical encyclopedias for professionals and popular self-help guides.” Magill’s falls short of perfection but does a serviceable job of meeting this high standard.

Thanks to my reviewers who submitted reviews for this issue. They are: Janet Crum (University of Arizona), Nicole Eva (University of Lethbridge), Elizabeth Hartig (Monroe (Michigan) County Community College), Peter Hesseldenz (University of Kentucky), and Joshua Hutchinson (University of Southern California. As always, I want to thank them for bringing this column together.

This five-volume set contains 1,316 entries, ranging from 500-3,500 words, that “describe major diseases and disorders of the human body, the basics of human anatomy and physiology, specializations in medical practice, and common surgical and nonsurgical procedures” (v). Longer entries include lists of key terms and definitions; articles on diseases and disorders include a shaded box summarizing causes, symptoms, duration, and treatments. All include a list of resources for further information. Each entry is signed by the author(s). Most authors

have MD, DO, or PhD degrees, but not all have professional training in a discipline relevant to the topic they are writing on. Some entries include black and white illustrations, most of which are helpful. A few are not clear, either because of the quality of the illustration itself or insufficient context to understand what is being shown.

Entries vary in approach and quality. Many are excellent, striking the promised balance between depth and accessibility. Some tend toward the technical, heavy on medical jargon that will likely challenge many consumers. Others seem incomplete, out of date, of questionable quality, or, at worst, biased. A sampling of various entries illustrates this variance in approach and quality.

Topics covered especially well include:

• Abortion: covers common techniques as well as a history of the controversy surrounding the procedure and accurate information about risks.

• Menopause: provides current, accurate information and a current (and excellent) list of resources for further information.

• Circumcision: provides detailed information on the pros and cons of this controversial procedure, supported by medical evidence.

Articles with problems include:

• Alopecia: This article contains quite a lot of medical jargon, and two of the four resources listed under For Further Information are self-published books that are more than ten years old and of questionable quality.

• Vaccines: This lengthy article provides clear, understandable, and accurate information on the history of vaccine development and successes and the current recommended childhood vaccination schedule in the United States. It does not, however, mention COVID vaccines or the anti-vaccination movement. The latter topic in particular seems like

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.)

• 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.)

• 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.)

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

a major oversight given the rising prevalence of antivax sentiments. If consumers are to be inoculated (pun intended) against inaccurate information about vaccines, they need to understand the tactics of antivaxxers.

• Hernia: This entry primarily focuses on only one type of hernia with little information on other types. It includes a diagram of hiatal hernia (the most common type) but does not discuss the topic. It includes a section on surgery for inguinal hernia that seems aimed more at surgeons than patients.

• Chiropractic: This article, written by a chiropractor, provides an overview of theory and training but does not address efficacy or risks, making the article appear to be biased.

• Contraception: This entry provides out-of-date information, claiming that only two IUDs are available in the U.S., when there are actually five. The three omitted by the article were introduced between 20132016, well in advance of the 2022 publication date.

• Assisted Suicide: This article is also out of date, omitting that some states legalized the procedure beginning in 2016.

In addition to the main text, the set includes the following resources:

• Glossary: The glossary appears to cover terms used in the main text and includes conditions, techniques, and other medical and health care terminology.

• Symptoms and Warning Signs: This list is easy to scan but incomplete. For example, the entry for fatigue does not mention infectious or autoimmune diseases or medication side effects. Similarly, the entry for nausea and vomiting does not mention infectious or foodborne diseases.

• Glossary of Diseases and Other Medical Conditions: This glossary focuses on diseases and conditions and includes some overlap with the general glossary.

• Pharmaceutical List: A list of common prescriptions arranged alphabetically by generic name. Entries include brand names and conditions treated.

• Types of Health Care Providers: An alphabetical list by provider type (e.g., respiratory therapists); entries include required training and degrees, duties, and specializations.

• General Bibliography: An extensive list of resources arranged alphabetically by general topic area (e.g., Allergy), including resources written for clinicians and laypeople. Some are recent, but quite a few are over ten years old, including texts for which newer editions are available.

• Resources: A list of organizations and support groups arranged alphabetically by topic (e.g., Hearing Loss). Each entry contains the organization’s street address, phone numbers, emails, web links, and brief description.

• Entries by Anatomy or System Affected: A list of entry titles arranged alphabetically by anatomy or body system.

• Entries by Specialties or Related Fields: A list of entry titles arranged alphabetically by specialty/field.

Purchase of the print edition includes online access, which wasn’t available to this reviewer.

While not perfect, Magill’s covers a broad range of medical topics with multiple entry points to help users find the information they need. The price is also reasonable for a work of this size and complexity. Recommended for high school, public, and undergraduate libraries.

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.)

Brunsting, Karen; Harrington, Caitlin; and Scott, Rachel E.

Open Access Literature in Libraries: Principles and Practices. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2023. 9780838936757, 118 pages. $59.99.

Reviewed by Nicole Eva (Associate University Librarian, University of Lethbridge Library, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada) <nicole.eva@uleth.ca>

Open Access (OA) has become a major topic in libraries over the past 20 years. This has major implications for how libraries contend with it, both good and bad. From collection development to workflow considerations to policy implications to budgetary consequences, there is much to learn about how best to wrangle the ever-evolving OA beast.

This book attempts to distill all library-related OA concerns into one volume. The result is a fair overview of the OA landscape, touching on such things as whether it should be invoked in libraries’ policies, principles, philosophy, or otherwise; explaining various models under which it can be expanded (Read & Publish vs crowdfunding, for example); providing examples of principle statements which various libraries and organizations have declared; and providing a nuanced discussion of the ways in which it both helps and hinders the cultivation of diverse, equitable, and inclusive materials in our collections.

The question presented here is not so much “should” we deal with Open Access resources in our collections — as clearly, they are here to stay, like it or not, as messy as they are; but rather “how” we should deal with them. Some helpful tips around managing OA collections via knowledge bases and in using tools to assist with OA fulfilment of interlibrary loans are provided, as well as the larger philosophical questions about how libraries state their support publicly for such resources. I found the opening chapter, which detailed the history of collection development policies, and wondered if there is still a place for them — quite thought-provoking. Others may find inspiration in reading the statements issued by various OA proponents worldwide.

The authors all have a variety of experiences in academic libraries in U.S. institutions, and they have previously done research on this topic. Karen Brunsting is the acquisitions and collection development librarian and Caitlin Harrington is the head of information access services and the electronic resources librarian, both at the University of Memphis. Rachel E. Scott is the associate dean for information assets at Illinois State University’s Milner Library, where she oversees the library’s access and technical services, collection development, scholarly communication initiatives, and cultural heritage activities. The three of them are well placed with their wide variety of experience to speak to the myriad ways OA impacts library operations.

Because this book provides a broad overview of OA without delving into too much detail in any one area, it would seem to be most useful for new librarians or for use as a textbook in a library science course. While I did gain a few useful ideas from it (note to self: check if we are indicating OA in MARC fields, and check if our ILL folks use Unpaywall — a large database of over 20 million freely available articles), for those working in libraries for some time, there is probably not a lot of new information here.

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.)

Evans, Robert C., editor, Critical Insights: On the Road. Ipswich, Massachusetts: Salem Press, a division of EBSCO Information Services, Inc.; Amenia, NY: Grey House Publishing, 2022.

9781619255258, 389 pages. $105.00

Reviewed by Peter Hesseldenz (Academic Liaison for Literature and Humanities, University of Kentucky Libraries, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky) <phessel@uky.edu>

Salem Press has recently issued Critical Insights: On the Road, a new entry in its Critical Insights series focusing on Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel. This volume, edited by Robert C. Evans, is, like others in the series, a collection of essays which aims to help students examine frequently studied literary works and place them in historical context. The book, Kerouac’s most famous novel, was credited with establishing and defining the “Beat Generation.” Though initially widely panned, it gained a devoted following and proved to be highly influential, eventually paving the way for the counterculture of the 1960s and beyond. The work is a fictionalized chronicle of Kerouac’s series of crosscountry road trips in the late 1940s with his traveling partner, Neal Cassady, as they experience a rapidly changing America and search for enlightenment and meaning. Over the years, On the Road has come to be considered an American classic and is now widely studied and often taught in university classrooms.

Beat scholar Matt Theado’s opening essay, “Jack Kerouac, On the Road, and the Myth of the West” introduces the book by placing Kerouac’s fascination with westward travel in the context of the greater urge throughout American history to explore both the real, historical West as well as the mythic version depicted in books and Western movies. Theado considers On the Road to be a romanticized autobiography, featuring thinly veiled portraits of real people like Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs. He suggests that readers seek out actual biographies of Kerouac, which he feels will help deepen and enrich the reading experience.

Theado’s introduction is followed by several entries which look at On the Road in historical context. A pair of essays examine two of the main charges leveled at On the Road by critics when it was first published — that it promoted juvenile delinquency and glorified drug abuse. These essays, both written by Evans, present thorough looks at the subjects, using primary sources from the time period, to show the basis for each of these accusations. Two essays by Franco Manni look at how historical events converge with Kerouac’s literary and philosophical influences to provide the atmosphere out of which Kerouac produced his novel. Jesse Gripko’s contribution examines the clash between Kerouac’s ideals and those of the majority of Americans at the time of the book’s writing which

he sees as ultimately resulting in the characters’ failure to find enlightenment.

Evans contributes a long entry covering the early reviews of On the Road, drawing from a large number of national and regional publications. Though a bit tedious to read since many of the critics made similar points over and over, the collecting and summarizing of this vast number of articles represents a considerable undertaking and includes valuable information. One point that emerges from that essay is that many of the reviewers found fault with Kerouac’s novel, not because they found him to be a poor writer, but, because of their concern about the impact his works had on society. In keeping with that idea, Lindsay Sears, working with a committee of several other writers, attempts to appraise On the Road by looking at Kerouac’s considerable skills as a writer. In their entry, they closely examine a single paragraph from the book, commenting on the artistic decisions that Kerouac made, sentence by sentence and sometimes word by word.

Several essays look at On the Road in the context of other books and writers. Michael J. Martin argues that On the Road is a naturalist novel and draws connections particularly to the work of Jack London, a writer who Kerouac admired. David Stephen Calonne looks at On the Road’s debt to William Saroyan, while Evans compares On the Road to another novel about crosscountry travel, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, published in 1939.

On the Road’s continuing presence in society is the subject of a few entries — first in S.G. Ellerhoff’s entertaining piece about Cassady’s influence on the 1960s hippie generation via his association with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and then in two essays by Jordan Bailey concentrating on the 2012 film version of On the Road, directed by Walter Salles.

Two other entries, by Jessica Ahn and Eric J. Sterling, summarize earlier collections of essays about On the Road — What’s Your Road, Man? edited by Hilary Holladay and Robert Holton and On the Road edited by Harold Bloom. Though these articles are of debatable value, since readers could simply go to the actual collections, they will certainly be appreciated by students and might even inspire them to track down the original works.

One of the strengths of this volume is that it shows how the reaction to Kerouac’s work has changed significantly over the years, becoming deeper and more nuanced as we move further into the 21st century. While readers must now grapple with issues like Kerouac’s treatment of women and minorities, the greater themes, like the search for enlightenment and the rejection of societal norms, continue to connect with readers. This volume makes clear that, even as we enter the era of the electric car, Kerouac’s book will continue to inspire road trips far into the future.

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.)

Vnuk, Rebecca. The weeding handbook: a shelf-by-shelf guide. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2022. 9780838937174, 240 pages. $49.99 ($61.50 eBook). Second edition.

Reviewed by Joshua Hutchinson (Head, Acquisitions and Cataloging, University of Southern California) <joshuah8@usc.edu>

This practical handbook for weeding library collections offers clear advice for all libraries. While it is focused on public libraries, the advice contained is of use to all librarians. Author Rebecca Vnuk offers a constant refrain throughout this book: “We’re a public library, not an archive.” From her biography, the author “... is the executive director for LibraryReads, a nonprofit dedicated to adult books and readers’ advisory education. Rebecca has held a variety of positions in public libraries, including experience in collection development, department management, and readers’ advisory.”

Vnuk structures this book by Dewey classification ranges. The “shelf-by-shelf” in the subtitle means that the book is literally structured according to the order of a library’s shelves, and approaches each subject area in turn. For instance, Vnuk outlines different approaches to keeping some subjects rather than others — an apposite piece of advice for this readership is given on page 24: “020 — Library Science. Unless you are near a university with a library science program, there’s really no sense in keeping most of your library-related books on the public shelves.” While the Dewey classification that Vnuk uses to structure this book may not be in use in all libraries, the advice given is generally applicable.

Scattered throughout the chapters are Q&As and interviews with library practitioners which give a great view of the variety of practices with respect to weeding. These interviews convey the idea that weeding is an art, not a science (page 25) and that, while there’s no strict formula for how to do it, it always needs to be done. In their variety and practicality, these interviews are a real highlight of this book, giving a sense of the differing practices and philosophies about weeding, while also illustrating real-world issues. Another benefit of them is that they seem very “real” — they bring theory to life. For instance, the Seattle Public Library weeding guidelines for CDs notes local ways to recognize CDs that have been in the collection for a long time (for instance, barcodes beginning with a certain letter; stickers or marks near the barcodes). While these obviously are institution-specific, in this reviewer’s experience, all institutions will have similar local practices or historical curiosities, and it is compelling to see these combined with a theoretical framework for weeding. Some of these interviews contain gems, such as that of Karen D. Toonen of Naperville Public Library (pp 95-99) who defines a robust goal for weeding: to have 5% or less of the collection that hasn’t circulated in 18 months, to have 0% that hasn’t circulated in 2 years, and to have the same people doing weeding and selection. Toonen echoes Vnuk’s refrain, saying “public libraries are not archives; no, we don’t need a copy of everything.”

Rebecca Vnuk also includes practical advice that doesn’t overly concern itself with the perfect. She provides example criteria (page 7) for consideration for withdrawal lists in one library that includes books added to the library’s collection before 2003 — choosing that date because it was the date of the library’s ILS migration, and accession information is not readily available for all titles before that date. This advice is

very practical, comprehensible, eminently relatable, and just makes sense.

One weak point of this work is that many of the chapters have a Diversity and Inclusion note, and while the theory is good, the notes themselves are often just boilerplate text, used for all sections. Many times, readers would be far better served to have text that is more subject specific as some areas are sorely underserved by the text as it is. For instance, the Diversity and Inclusion note for the Humor and Satire section (page 60) reads in full: “Diversity and inclusion note: Carefully consider how people and concepts are presented. Does the collection represent people of color and historically marginalized groups?” Additionally, the chapter dedicated to “Diversity and Inclusion” is far too short, with only three pages of content. There is no guidance on doing a diversity audit, for instance — just four links. This is not enough for this critical topic.

While, in general, this book — though focused on public libraries — is applicable to all types of libraries; some sections are primarily relevant to public libraries and might be less useful for academic librarians or librarians in other fields. For instance, the eBooks discussion is a worthwhile discussion. While the conclusions are a little bit controversial, the discussion is still a valuable one. For instance, Vnuk states (page 85) that “[i]n general it’s still too soon to start looking at e-books as a replacement for print collections.” While this might narrowly be true in some circumstances, it’s not globally valid. However, Vnuk’s arguments are well-presented and fair. While Vnuk’s discussions of eBooks and electronic databases may be too specifically focused on public librarianship for all readers, that is not necessarily a mark against this book. Other tools and publications are available for different audiences; in general the strength of Vnuk’s work is its general applicability to all librarians and to all forms of libraries.

Other strengths of this book include the “Special Considerations for Youth Collections” which outlines some important things to keep in mind. Vnuk makes the point that “students deserve better” than the mindset that an outdated book is better than no book at all. Finally, the appendix includes annotated sample collection development plans. These are so useful, and hopefully will be put into practice by readers of this work.

ATG Reviewer Rating: 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.)

Voting Rights. Reference Shelf. New York: H.W. Wilson, 2022. ISBN: 978-1-63700-295-7, 142 pages. $75 Print.

Reviewed by Elizabeth Hartig (Faculty Reference Librarian/ Public Services, Monroe County Community College Library, Monroe, Michigan) <EHartig@monroeccc.edu>

Voting Rights, part of H. W. Wilson’s Reference Shelf series, provides an overview of current voting related topics; including voter identification laws, felon disenfranchisement, claims of voter fraud, voter suppression, and more. The book contains both secondary reference information and primary sources from newspapers, magazines, and advocacy organizations.

Starting with a history of voting rights in America, the Preface highlights the 1965 Voting Rights Act and the 2013 case of Shelby County v. Holder as defining moments in the United States’ recent history regarding voting rights.

Voter registration and voter identification laws are discussed in the Verifying the Vote section. The U.S. Constitution allows states to decide if and how voters register and identify themselves for voting, which has led to many differences among registration and identification policies between the states. This section dives into the details of legislation in multiple states.

The second section, Accessing the Franchise, discusses the history of barring or disenfranchising groups of people from voting. In particular, the authors explore in detail the debate on felon disenfranchisement. In the 2020 elections, 48 states had laws prohibiting incarcerated people from voting in both local and federal elections. Some states have moved to automatically restore voting rights post-incarceration.

Voter and election fraud are defined in the Electoral Crimes in America section along with some notable cases in American history. There is no evidence in the 21st century that shows that election fraud is a significant factor in the outcome of American elections because of preventative measures on the state and federal level. However, claims of fraud affect public opinion and legislation. Sources about the false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 presidential election highlight the effects of former President Trump’s unproven challenge to the results of the election.

The Voter Suppression section discusses barriers to voting for certain groups of people to lower voter turnout for political gain. Examples of barriers to suppress or discourage voting are consolidating polling locations, putting barriers up for early or absentee voting, frequent changes of polling location, toughening of rules for absentee signatures leading to votes being disqualified, and purging voter rolls.

The concluding section is titled New Developments in the Voting Rights Debate such as challenges to election worker safety and noncitizen voting rights in local elections. Election worker safety has become a prominent issue after the unfounded claims of fraud following the 2020 election. [Editor’s note: As an election worker in Michigan — I am very concerned about this element]. Extreme polarization and misinformation have played a role in election worker safety. Noncitizen voting has been practiced in 40 states between the 18th and 20th centuries in America. Currently, very few municipalities in Maryland, New York, Vermont, and California allow noncitizen voting in local or specifically school board elections. Voters in Maine and New York City considered whether to allow noncitizen voting in local elections.

This text provides a timely and accessible overview of the major topics related to voting rights. As an important snapshot in time, Voting Rights provides both context and specific nuance on the topic. Heading into the 2024 presidential election, this text will be relevant for researchers, students, and faculty. The articles compiled in each section provide different viewpoints on the political spectrum and at contrasting times during the legislative process. Readers will find the index, bibliography, and list of relevant websites helpful. This book would make a useful addition to a college or university library’s reference collection. I can imagine undergraduate students utilizing this text for a research paper. Students will find this text helpful in political science, journalism, composition courses, and first year experience courses.

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.)

Booklover — Anticipation

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

Anticipation comes in many forms: waiting for a reply to a proposal; waiting for Santa Claus’s arrival; looking forward to a bucket list adventure; or wondering who will be chosen for the annual Nobel laureate in Literature. Next comes the anticipation that surrounds finding the author’s work; choosing one work from their repertoire; then reading and savoring. (Yes, savoring was a deliberate choice of words.)

Jon Fosse is a Norwegian author who was awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.” Not much else is offered about Fosse on the Nobel Prize website. Even his picture is a pencil graphic.

Perusing the Charleston County Library’s collection for Fosse’s works gave a few offerings. The Other Name: Septology I-II, translated by Damion Searls, is the first in the three-volume series entitled Septology. A completely random reading choice for this booklover and one that completely illustrates Fosse’s “innovative” writing while giving “voice to the unsayable.”

Sidebar: In this “bucket list journey” of reading one piece of work by every Nobel Literature Laureate, I rarely read more than one work. (Major exception — Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. He is one of my all-time favorite authors.) But I’m very tempted to jump into I is Another: Septology III-V after reading The Other Name: Septology I-II. Curiosity is getting the better of me.

But first, The Other Name: Septology I-II. The story begins. Several pages in, the lack of periods becomes very apparent. There are commas and questions marks, but no periods to interrupt this exquisitely delivered stream of consciousness. Two hundred twenty-six pages in and Chapter II begins. If you don’t pause here and go back to Chapter I (which I did) then you got swept up in the stream of consciousness that defines how this story is told. Asle, the narrator, is a painter and lives in a small village. Asle, his doppelgänger, is a painter and lives in the nearby big city where Asle, the narrator, exhibits his work in a gallery. Asle, the narrator, was married to Ales, who has passed. (Keeping up? At least, I’m using periods.)

“... I just keep the mistakes and let them be wrong, because it’s often the mistakes that eventually lead to something right …”

— Jon Fosse, I Is Another: Septology III-V

In one sequence during Asle’s, the narrator’s, day he reflects on how tired he is from having to drive to town to assist Asle, his doppelgänger, he takes a room at the Country Inn room #407 that he always stays in when in the City, he collapses on the bed in exhaustion, says his evening prayers, thinks about a particular painting he has on his easel, reflects on all of his paintings, delves into his clumsiness and ineptitude, explores his schooling, realizes his lack of a good sense of direction, back to finishing his prayers and ending with being exhausted, next comes eating breakfast the following morning. (Yes — only commas, no periods.)

There is a lot of trauma buried in the consciousness of the Asles in this story and it leaks out of the stream in interesting ways. Let’s hear Fosse give voice to Asle, the doppelgänger, as Fosse hints at this trauma in the early pages of the book:

… make sure everything is neat and organized, then leave, lock the door, go down to the sea and then go out to sea and just keep going out into the sea, Asle thinks, and he thinks that thought again and again, it’s the only thought he can think, the thought that he’s going out to sea, he thinks, that he’s going to disappear into the sea, into the nothingness of the waves, Asle thinks and the thought goes around and around in his head, it won’t stop, it just keeps on circling around, this one thought is all that’s real, everything else is empty distance, empty closeness, no, nothing is empty, but it’s something like empty, there is this darkness, and every other thought he tries to think he can’t think, the other thoughts are too hard, even the idea that he should raise his arm seems too hard, and he realizes he’s shaking, even though he’s not moving his whole body’s shaking and why can’t he manage the thought of getting up? of lifting his hand? why is the only thought he can think that he wants to go out to sea? that he wants to drink enough to make the shaking stop and then turn off the lights in the apartment, maybe straighten up the apartment if it needs it, because everything needs to be neat and tidy before he goes away, Asle thinks ….” Find a raft to float in Fosse’s stream of words and drift in his consciousness to the end (or is it just the beginning). Then you will understand why curiosity will get the better of you.

Legally Speaking — A State Legislative Preview of 2024

Column Editor: Abby L. Deese (Assistant Library Director for Reference and Outreach, University of Miami School of Law) <aldeese@law.miami.edu>

It is the beginning of a new year and of new legislative sessions, and so for the first Legally Speaking of the new year, I wanted to take a look at what legislative challenges are facing libraries and vendors in 2024. In previous columns, we have updated you about book bans and labor movements and the rise of Artificial Intelligence, and all of those concerns are still alive and well, along with increasing threats to funding and autonomy.

It is not only book bans that threaten the work of librarians. I am writing this column from a state where librarians who work with the public directly, whether in public libraries, secondary schools, or universities, are under siege. In Florida, the state legislature has inserted itself into the collection development decisions and programming activities of libraries by creating special training and criteria promulgated by the state Department of Education under authority of H.B. 1069.1 These rules will be designed largely to affect school media centers and classrooms, but in mid-January, the Florida Department of Education also extended its efforts to control programming in the state college system by implementing rules to prohibit use of public funds for any Diversity, Equity and Inclusion activities or programs. And the Department has defined this category so broadly as to include anything involving “student participation.” 2 This definition arguably includes not only core curricular activities but also library programming and outreach events, and the definition of DEI is similarly broad in encompassing any activity that makes a particular effort to include marginalized identities.

But Florida librarians are hardly alone in facing political interference. There is a growing trend in state legislatures and municipal bodies to use the threat of decreased funding or closure to enforce book bans and other restrictions on library materials and programming.3 Tightening the purse strings is always an effective tactic, but it creates a particular pressure as the demand on library resources steadily increases and the role of libraries grows to fill gaps created by other underfunded social services.

And while vendors have not yet become direct targets of legislative interference in their business with libraries, they are not immune to political pressure. Late last year, Scholastic Trade Publishing gave in to pressure created by censorious legislatures and parent groups by creating an optional collection of diverse titles for their elementary school book fairs, then quickly retracted

this policy in response to criticism. 4 Historically, the publishers who have fought legal censorship of their materials have had little in common with Scholastic, but when popular Young Adult titles begin showing up on banned books lists, it becomes clear that we are just a few bad bits of legislation or jurisprudence away from The People vs. Ellie Berger.

With all of these areas of concern manifesting across the board, it is difficult and perhaps overwhelming to contemplate action — but action is what is needed. I have pulled together a brief review of some state legislative targets to create a starting point, as national and regional library legislative agendas tend to focus exclusively on federal advocacy. Federal advocacy is all well and good, but state legislatures and municipal governments are where the most fertile ground has been found for regressive lawmaking.

According to EveryLibrary, a library advocacy group that is tracking state legislation affecting libraries, there are eight categories of legislation of particular concern for 2024, ranging from bills that interfere with library collection development decisions to bills that threaten to criminalize the work of librarians by removing protections against obscenity laws.5 The American Library Association provides general guidance on effective legislative advocacy6 but the easiest way to get active as an individual is to contact your elected officials about your concerns.7

The most prevalent area of concern currently is the rapid expansion of obscenity laws that purport to target “material harmful to minors” with a breadth and overreach that is truly astonishing. When Justice Stewart famously said he would know it when he saw it, I do not think that he would recognize run of the mill young adult fiction or educational books designed to provide adolescents with context and information about their own physical and intellectual development to be what he was looking for. EveryLibrary has tracked numerous bills all the way from Idaho to Maryland containing this “material harmful to minors” language or some similar formulation.

Another state legislative trend is designed to erode academic freedoms and quality of education. Librarians and educators in higher education institutions are subject to increasing scrutiny for their pedagogy and scholarship, and tenure is an increasingly

fragile protection. Some states, including Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and Tennessee, seek to criminalize librarianship by removing safe harbors for vaguely defined “obscene materials” and programming, or to prohibit instruction on topics parents might find objectionable (such as standard sexual education or divisive topics such as American history).

While libraries have seen modest increases in funding, these increases are rarely adequate to keep pace with inflation or the constant increases in materials costs. Demand for digital lending has grown by leaps and bounds, but these licenses eat up an increasing share of materials budgets.8 State legislation continues to wield the threat of defunding libraries to enforce restrictive policies, forcing library organizations to increase advocacy for federal funding sources.

These are only some of the challenges that face libraries (and vendors) in 2024, and while not all of the threats can be fought at the ballot box, many can, and should be.

On social media, discussions surrounding the efforts of groups like Moms for Liberty to exert control over school and library policy have coalesced into grassroots activism in school board races across the country, resulting in the ouster of candidates.9 It is this kind of action that is needed — tangible participatory democracy at its finest in the municipal ballot box.

And so in this Legally Speaking, I am issuing a call to action, not only to librarians and library professionals, but to the vendors and services who support — and profit from — our work. We all need to support each other in 2024.

I will be revisiting some of these issues, and others, in more detail in the coming year. Something that does not appear on legislative agendas but which I think should be of interest to all members of professional library associations is the revocation of Federal Trade Commission guidance that created safe harbors for membership surveys regarding vendor pricing and other common information-sharing activities. Look forward to a deep-dive on this topic in the April edition!

Happy New Year!

Endnotes

1. Ch. 2023-105, Laws of Fla., https://laws.flrules. org/2023/105.

2. Fla. Admin. Code R 6A-14.0718, https://www.fldoe.org/ core/fileparse.php/20703/urlt/7-2.pdf

3. Fabiola Cineas, “The Rising Republican Movement to Defund Public Libraries,” Vox, May 8, 2023, https://www. vox.com/politics/2023/5/5/23711417/republicans-wantto-defund-public-libraries-book-bans

4. See Praveena Somasundaram and Hannah Natanson, “Scholastic Isolates ‘Diverse Titles’ at Books Fairs as Challenges Spike,” Washington Post, October 19, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/10/19/ scholastic-book-fair-diverse-titles-separate/ and Laura Strickler and Janelle Griffith, “Scholastic Backtracks on Policy that Separated Books About Race and Gender,” NBC News, October 25, 2023, https://www.nbcnews.com/ news/us-news/scholastic-backtracks-policy-separatedbooks-race-gender-rcna122177

5. “Legislation of Concern in 2024,” EveryLibrary, https:// www.everylibrary.org/billtracking.

6. “Addressing Adverse Legislation,” American Library Association, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/addressingadverse-legislation

7. If you’ve never had cause to track down your local elected officials before, the tool at USA.gov is extremely helpful: https://www.usa.gov/elected-officials/

8. Nikki Davidson, “Behind E-Books, Libraries Find Restrictions and High Costs,” Government Technology, June 15, 2023, https://www.govtech.com/biz/data/ behind-e-books-libraries-find-restrictions-and-highcosts

9. Brooke Schultz and Geoff Mulvihill, “Liberal and Moderate Candidates Take Control of School Boards in Contentious Races Across US,” AP News, November 8, 2023, https://apnews.com/article/school-boardelections-moms-liberty-progressives-1e439de49b0e84 98537484fb031f66a6.

Questions & Answers — Copyright Column

Column Editor: Kyle K. Courtney (Director of Copyright & Information Policy, Harvard Library) <kyle_courtney@harvard.edu>

QUESTION FROM A SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATIONS

LIBRARIAN: Our main academic library has been working with the administration on developing recommendations for an open access policy. More than a few times, the notion of “nonexclusive” licensing has been raised in regard to copyright and transferring rights. Does copyright law include the concept of “nonexclusive” licensing, and how does that integrate with an open access policy?

ANSWER: The life and breath of open access certainly relies on nonexclusive licensing, which is most certainly part of U.S. copyright law. The open access movement was formalized in a manner of sorts in the early 2000s with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (in February 2002), Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing (in June 2003), and Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Science and Humanities (in October 2003). These three statements collectively defined OA work as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”

What does “free of most copyright and licensing restrictions” mean? Well, certainly by removing access barriers and leveraging the power of the Internet, both authors and users benefit from open access. Authors gain a wider audience and retain greater rights over their work, and users benefit from content that is freely available. Because of these established benefits, individual scholars, libraries, other cultural heritage institutions, and companies alike have been pursuing innovative open access efforts.

Non-exclusive rights are sometimes viewed as “shared rights” since they drive and empower OA. Authors can share articles in repositories, they can publish openly licensed versions of their works on their own web pages, and they can still contract with others. Underlying most OA policies across the U.S. is the part of the copyright statute addressing non-exclusive rights. In § 205(e) of the U.S. Copyright Act,

A non-exclusive license, whether recorded or not, prevails over a conflicting transfer of copyright ownership if the license is evidenced by a written instrument signed by the owner of the rights licensed or such owner’s duly authorized agent, and if —

(1) the license was taken before execution of the transfer; or (2) the license was taken in good faith before recordation of the transfer and without notice of it.

We know that an author can transfer legal ownership of their copyright (or the “bundle of rights”) to another party by granting an exclusive license. In an exclusive license, the author would no longer be considered the legal owner of that copyright bundle of rights under the law. By contrast, when granting a nonexclusive license, the author of the work does not transfer ownership of the copyright to the licensee. The copyright owner simply permits the use of their copyrighted work in a particular manner. I tend to think of a nonexclusive license as a “copy” of that bundle of rights, given to another party so that other party can accomplish something using that “copied” bundle.

The key is that granting nonexclusive rights to other parties still enables an author to grant, assign, or retain rights they had before. For example, an author might draft a piece of scholarship and send it to a pre-print repository, giving the repository a non-exclusive license to post the work. However, since the author still owns the copyright, they could again transfer copyright to a journal or publisher for a future publication — the statute states that there is no conflict under copyright law in that second transfer. This is the advantage of the non-exclusive license: it keeps the author in the driver’s seat, maintaining ownership and control of the bundle of exclusive rights. Yet it also provides the ability for open access repositories to accept nonexclusive licenses from authors, make them freely accessible to the public, and still preserve the author’s right to do other things with their works in the future.

QUESTION FROM AN ACADEMIC LIBRARIAN: We have had questions about who retains ownership of copyright while working at the library. For example, is the copyright in a PowerPoint presentation created by our library liaison owned by the librarian or the higher educational institution for which they work?

ANSWER : Work made for hire is often the subject of confusion for all creators — librarians, fellows, scholars, faculty, staff — anyone, really, that is employed with any organization. The work for hire doctrine is often viewed as an exception to the general rule of copyright ownership; namely that authors are automatically the owners of their created works. Under the 17 U.S.C. § 201(a) and (b) of the Copyright Act, ownership of a work that is created by an employee or independent contractor under circumstances that meet the statutory definition of a “work made for hire” initially vests in the employer or hiring company, not the individual author or authors.

A copyrightable work created by any employee is a work made for hire under the Copyright Act only if it is either created by an employee within the scope of employment or specially ordered or commissioned by a company and meets the copyright statute’s requirement when the work was created. Therefore, these works are owned by the employers from the moment of creation. The Copyright Act § 201(b) clearly delineates that the employer is considered the author of a work made for hire. No transfer or assignment is needed, the employer already owns the work unless, again, according to 17 U.S.C. § 201(b), “the parties have expressly agreed otherwise in a written instrument signed by them.”

This written instrument is key for many librarians working in any libraires — higher education, private libraires, public libraires, and more. This written instrument can be reflected in a section of an employment contract. It can be as simple as including a clause or section that clarifies that all copyrighted works created by the employee in the “scope of employment” is considered a work for hire.

Another “written instrument” that could define what rights employers may have to employees works could be an intellectual property (IP) policy. These are generally blanket policies that clearly define employee and employer rights work created within the scope of employment. For example, some IP policies delineate categories of staff that do or do not own copyright in their own materials. For example, here at my university, teaching faculty authors are entitled to own the copyright and retain any revenue derived therefrom in books, films, works of art, musical works and other copyrightable materials of whatever nature or kind and in whatever format. However, a copyrightable work created within the scope of employment by non-teaching employees of the University shall be a “work made for hire” under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976 and the Institution shall be deemed the author and shall own the copyright. This is a fairly standard IP policy for many higher education institutions and their library staff.

Now, a work created by an employee must still be created within that “scope of employment” to qualify as work made for hire. The Copyright Act does not define “scope of employment” for determining whether a work is a work made for hire. In some cases, the courts have had to decide. The courts have consistently applied cases about the legal doctrine of “agency” to solve these issues. As a result, a work is created by an employee within the scope of employment only if it is of the kind the employee was hired to create, created substantially within the authorized time and space limits, and motivated, at least in part, by a purpose to serve the employer.

Some librarians might be hired on a contract basis, that is, they are considered an independent contractor under the law. For the work of an independent contractor to be considered a work made for hire, it must first fall into one of nine categories enumerated in the law, and it must be the subject of a written agreement that explicitly states that the work will be a work for hire. Cases like these arose because of the lack of clarity

in the copyright law. Here, the problem emerged from the fact that the Copyright Act does not define “employee” for the work made for hire analysis. Much of the clarity we have around the independent contractor stems from an interesting case titled Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730 (1989). In that case there was a dispute between an artist and an organization that commissioned the artist’s sculpture. The U.S. Supreme Court found that the organization owned the physical sculpture but not the copyright to the sculpture. The court found that Mr. Reid, the artist, was an independent contractor and that the agreement between the parties did not include a provision stating that the sculpture would be a “work for hire.” The Court ruled that if a commissioned work is not a work made for hire, the creator owns copyright in the work. In most cases, the parties often agree to transfer that copyright later, via contract, but that did not happen in the Reid case.

When there is a lack of this contract, courts, like the Reid court, often look to traditional agency law, which considers the employer’s right to control the manner and means by which a copyrighted work is created. These factors, occasionally referred to as the Reid factors, include: the skill required to create the work, the source of the instrumentalities and tools the author used in creating the work, the duration of the relationship between the work’s author and the company, whether the company has the right to assign additional projects to the author, the extent of the author’s discretion over working hours, whether the work is part of the company’s regular business, and more. Again, these factors are decided when there is no written contract to express work for hire or ownership.

As can be surmised by all these cases, factors, and other complexities, it is much easier to have any work for hire provisions clearly reflected as either an IP policy or in the employment contract. It is up to each and every library employee to find, read, and understand any work for hire clauses in their contract or institutional IP policy.

Libraries, Leadership, and Synergies — Career Directions in our Profession: Quo Vadis?

Column Editor: Antje Mays (Collection Analysis Librarian, University of Kentucky Libraries) <antjemays@uky.edu>

Column Editor’s Note: As a result of recent exposures to concerned comments about library careers, this article launches a research series on career trends and ways forward. — AM

Introduction

Last summer, I came across a librarian’s LinkedIn post requesting guidance from other librarians who have successfully transitioned out of librarianship into other career fields. The responses at the time focused on trying to dissuade the original poster from leaving the profession, citing the importance of librarians to an informed society. Others inquired about specific push factors driving the original poster’s desire to leave the profession — the original poster did not answer, leaving the community of would-be helpers without the insights to fully inform any goal-related guidance they might offer. Several librarians in the thread responded with advice on inventorying their existing technology skills as a first step toward strategizing a move into tech, even offering numerous examples of technology-infused library work to help the original poster build a career and interest inventory. Unfortunately, the original poster stated having none of the cited tech skills and expressed frustration with not knowing what next steps might lead to positive career outcomes. At the time, my ongoing studies in two after-work courses prevented me from engaging with this career discussion, but the careerchange seeker’s plea does warrant an exploration of our industry’s trends and career opportunities. After completing my courses later that fall, I looked for the thread again, but unsuccessfully. Although unable to locate that summer LinkedIn thread again in the fall, the despair expressed in the career plea pointed to numerous push and pull factors in need of attention and solutions.

What Drives the Desire to Leave?

What drives professionals away from a given career field? Informal conversations at library conferences have at times wandered toward mentions of career dissatisfaction. Reasons cited included a looming sense that direction is lacking for the field, capped income potential due to capped library budgets, and disillusionment with libraries’ licensing obligations restricting access to only authorized users thereby locking out general access. Pay has persisted for decades among motivators for librarianship leavers (Detlefsen & Olson, 1991). More recent research studies cite demoralizing effects of under-funding, understaffing and hiring freezes spawning insatiable workloads, vocational awe and burnout from mission-driven overwork and overextension, lack of focus paired with competing priorities leading to weakened library identity and purpose, low pay compared to expertise and cost of living, lack of flexibility in work arrangements, lack of respect, dearth of career-advancement opportunities, as well as external pressures such as book challenges,

curricular censorship, and an increasingly loud chorus of negativity toward higher education (Dixon, 2022; Ettarh, 2018; Ewen, 2022; Gerber, 2023; Rathbun-Grubb, 2009).

Where Do Librarianship Leavers Go?

Research shows librarianship leavers transitioning into a variety of fields. Information professionals possess many transferrable skills which translate into other fields drawing upon information, critical evaluation, instruction and training, leadership and relationship management, analytical competencies, technology, and data science. Such transferrable skills include research, teaching, liaison services, acquisitions and procurement, budgeting and financial analysis, collection development, analysis, and strategy, metadata, data and analytics, library and information technologies, electronic resources management, and contract and license negotiation. These skills equip librarians for a variety of career transitions: Some librarians transition into library-adjacent work including management consulting, publishing, vendors and aggregators, program coordinators for professional organizations and library consortia, indexing and abstracting (Ewen, 2022; Mays, Vance, McAllister, 2022). Other librarians transition into nonadjacent professions including teaching and training, research, information technology, computer programming, data science, human resources, management, marketing, public relations, records management, law, writing, and storytelling. (Ewen, 2022; Rathbun-Grubb, 2009; Williams, 1994).

Career Reflections

Career fulfillment requires a sense of being valued, a chance to contribute expertise. Librarians desire constructive workplace cultures, life-sustaining pay, and career-growth opportunities (Dixon, 2022; Ewen, 2022; Gerber, 2023). The vast range of library roles broadens opportunities for career fulfillment, both through moves within the profession and strategic choices of geography and life factors (Holley, 2023). Yet fruitful individual career approaches can only go so far. Commitment from parent organizations and policy decisions to fully support all operational facets of libraries is key to the working conditions required for talent retention in libraries (Disxon, 2022; Ewen, 2023; Gerber, 2023).

References

Detlefsen, Ellen Gay, and Josephine E. Olson. 1991. “The Librarian and the Leaver: Who Leaves the Profession?” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 31, no. 4: 275–93.

Dixon, Jennifer A. 2022. “Feeling the Burnout: Library Workers Are Facing Burnout in Greater Numbers and Severityand Grappling with It as a Systemic Problem.” Library Journal 147 (3): 44-47.

Ettarh, Fobazi. 2018. “Vocational Awe and Librarianship: The Lies we Tell Ourselves.” In the Library with the Lead Pipe, January 10, 2018. Accessed January 20, 2024. https://www. inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/vocational-awe/

Ewen, Lara. 2022. “Quitting Time: The pandemic is exacerbating attrition among library workers.” American Libraries 53 (6): 38–41.

Gerber, Andrew. 2023. “Satisfaction (Not Always) Guaranteed.” Library Journal 148 (3): 62–65.

Holley, Robert P. 2023. “Should I Stay or Should I Go? Choosing a Path for Career Development.” Journal of Library Administration 63 (3): 394–401.

Mays, Antje, Megan Vance, and Courtney McAllister. 2022. “Career Toolkit: Librarians’ in-demand skills valued in publisher and business settings expand career paths across the information industry.” Charleston Library Conference Proceedings.

Rathbun-Grubb, Susan R. 2009. Leaving Librarianship: A Study of the Determinants and Consequences of Occupational Turnover . Dissertation. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, School of Information and Library Science.

Williams, Wilda W. 1994. “You Can Take Your MLS out of the Library.” Library Journal 119 (19): 43.

Book, 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.

Wandering the Web — Immigrating to the United States

By Claudia Cornejo, MLIS (Tulane University Libraries, Cataloging and Metadata)

Column Editor: Lesley Rice Montgomery, MLIS (Catalog Librarian, Tulane University Libraries’ Technical Services Department)

About the Author: Claudia Cornejo completed her MLIS at LSU in Louisiana in May 2023. Currently she is working as a Library Technician at Tulane University Libraries, where she catalogs resources, including Spanish language print books, and she also works on other special metadata projects in the Library Technical Services Department. Her article for this month’s Wandering the Web column addresses the very timely issues of challenges to new immigrants to the United States and discusses online reference resources to help newcomers to this country.

Immigrating to the United States is a life-changing decision. This decision implies starting over and most of the time immigrants lack the knowledge of the native language, which in the case of the United States is English. It may seem to some people that this decision is a voluntary choice. Unfortunately, many immigrants are forced by the circumstances surrounding them. In my case, the decision was mostly taken by my parents since I was 16 years old. They gave me the option to stay and finish my studies. However, I was living in my country of origin, El Salvador, which was ravaged by civil war, and remaining in my home country was not an option in the 1980s. So, after finishing the 8th grade in my country, I immigrated with my parents to start the 9th grade at a private Louisiana high school in 1986. The culture shock relating to food, cultural customs, and the weather, to mention some challenges, was immense. In those days before the Internet, one relied on word of mouth to get information about how to move around and acclimate to one’s new surroundings. Since I relocated at a young age, my experience mostly consisted of getting acclimated to school. However, I witnessed my parents’ experience and other immigrants trying to establish themselves in this country. Most immigrants must find housing, a source of income, and schools or daycare for their children.

USA.gov website Helping Newcomers to Start their Life in the United States

The Internet provides many resources to help new immigrants establish themselves. One of the websites providing useful information is USA.gov’s Immigration and U.S. citizenship ( https://www.usa.gov/immigration-andcitizenship ). This website provides important and useful information. One of this website’s most attractive and helpful features is that it can be displayed in Spanish for those immigrants who are native Spanish speakers. I found the Spanish version to be an accurate translation of the English side, contrary to other websites claiming to have a Spanish version. Nonetheless, I have found that the translations need to be more accurate and represent the intended message of the English version of these websites.

USA.gov has seven main links (including the “All topics and services” tab) that provide helpful information for newcomers. The “Government benefits” (https://www.usa.gov/benefits) and

the “Housing help” (https:// www.usa.gov/housinghelp) links have a treasure of resources that hit the main concerns and information needs that new immigrants may have.

Government Benefits

The “Government benefits” (https://www.usa.gov/benefits) link includes the “food assistance” section on obtaining emergency food assistance, applying for food stamps, and the WIC program, among others. Providing information about food assistance through all these programs is vital to any newcomer since it can take a while to secure a source of income, and having access to these resources can help lessen the burden of providing for one’s family. The “Government benefits” link also includes information on how to obtain housing help, assistance paying for utility bills, and how to apply for health insurance either under Medicaid, Medicare, or the Insurance Marketplace. Health insurance information is vital since the United States does not provide free healthcare. New immigrants need to establish the appropriate enrollments for health insurance depending on their needs and resources. Another important link in the “Most popular” box provides information on how to get help paying for phone and Internet services. At one point, these services were considered to be a luxury; now, they are a necessity. Internet service is essential for children to complete schoolwork, for instance.

Housing Help

In the “Housing Help” link (https://www.usa.gov/housinghelp), one can find emergency housing assistance, resources on how to avoid eviction or foreclosure, and helpful information about rental assistance and home-buying tips. All this information is crucial to any person, but especially to new immigrants who are not familiar with the culture or any action that might be needed on their part, in case issues arise concerning their housing.

Scams and Fraud

The link “Scams and Fraud” (https://www.usa.gov/scamsand-fraud ) can help new immigrants avoid scams such as imposters or unemployment scams and valuable information on how to prevent identity theft and how to identify and report it. These resources are as essential as knowing how to get help for matters such as food and housing since they can affect the stability of the family if one becomes the victim of a scammer.

Travel and Taxes

The rest of the links, such as “Travel” (https://www.usa.gov/ travel) and “Taxes” (https://www.usa.gov/taxes), have significant resources that will be helpful when the time for those activities arises.

Establishing oneself and one’s family with housing, food, healthcare, Internet, and phone services is essential to help newcomers feel secure through the challenging transition that any immigrant must go through while making a new life for themselves here in the United States. USA.gov is an excellent informational resource to assist new immigrants in reaching this goal.

Immigration Issues

Even when all these resources exist, they are mainly directed at immigrants with legal status in the United States. The American Immigration Council website (https:// www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/ ) includes an article explaining one of the most common misconceptions about immigration. I have been asked this question regarding undocumented immigrants on multiple occasions. Why don’t these individuals simply apply to become legal citizens or obtain “papers” once they are here in the United States? The article Why don’t Immigrants Apply for Citizenship? (

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/whydon%E2%80%99t-they-just-get-line) addresses this question and explains how the immigration system is not designed for undocumented immigrants to apply for legal residence and ultimately for citizenship once they make it to the United States.

The article explains that no line is available to become a legal resident once you have entered through unauthorized channels. Eighty percent of undocumented immigrants will never become legal residents even after living more than ten years in the United States. The United States has created three ways for temporary or permanent residency in the country based on employment, humanitarian protection, or family reunification only. Furthermore, these options have complicated eligibility requirements that include various limitations, including numerical ones. For example, suppose an undocumented immigrant could apply for legal status under one of the ways established by the U.S. Government. In that case, there is a penalty for having entered through unauthorized channels. If the person has stayed out of status for more than 180 days or less than a year, they may need to leave the country for at least three years; if more than a year the individual may be barred for ten years before being able to establish any legal status here in the United States. Even when waivers exist to bar these consequences, there is no way to know before applying, and the risks must be carefully considered (https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/whydon%E2%80%99t-they-just-get-line).

Immigration web-based resources providing information and assistance abound and cover multiple issues, opinions, and resources about immigration. The University of Illinois Chicago, on the university library website, offers a guide with various resources, including Federal and State Government links and journals covering multiple immigration subjects and valuable resources for immigrants: https://researchguides.uic. edu/Immigration

Under the Federal and State Governments link, one can find the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website: https:// www.uscis.gov/. Among its top links is one covering topics about green cards, such as how to apply for one, how to replace it, and most importantly, the eligibility requirements. Also included under the green card link is a section explaining how to update your mailing address, information about processing times, and how to check one’s case status. More importantly, there is

information about traveling outside the United States while a green card application is pending. This information is essential since traveling without the government’s pre-approval can be considered abandoning the in-progress application (https:// www.uscis.gov/green-card/while-your-green-card-applicationis-pending-with-uscis).

One aspect that caught my attention was the rolling announcements on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services main page ( https://www.uscis.gov/ ). Subjects such as “Immigration Relief in Emergencies or Unforeseen Circumstances” include Natural disasters and emergencies, severe illnesses, or conflict abroad. Due to the circumstances in the Middle East, this section can be beneficial for those in the conflict zone.

Another excellent resource for new immigrants, as well as for those who have been here but are facing issues such as immigration raids and detentions, is the National Immigration Law Center website (https://www.nilc.org/). Their link, Know your rights ( https://www.nilc.org/get-involved/communityeducation-resources/know-your-rights/) includes information on fundamental rights and steps to follow when encountering law enforcement, either the police or immigration officers. There is a card that can be printed and cut out to present to the appropriate authorities listing the rights of any detainee, such as the right to remain silent, have a lawyer present before any questioning, or the right not to sign any document without a lawyer’s counsel. Moreover, under their Economic Support link (https://www.nilc.org/issues/economic-support/), one can find resources to solicit economic support such as the Afghan New Arrivals and Access to Public Benefits chart (https://www. nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/afghan-publicbenefitsfacts-2023-03.pdf ) which includes a quick guide on the eligibility for some of the main welfare programs such as Supplemental Security income (SSI) and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).

Regarding opinions and statistics, the Pew Research Center website (https://www.pewresearch.org/) publishes immigration numbers, facts, and trends. In a recent article titled 8 facts about recent Latino immigrants to the U.S. (https://www.pewresearch. org/short-reads/2023/09/28/8-facts-about-recent-latinoimmigrants-to-the-us/), some interesting numbers are shown that contradict some popular misconceptions about immigration and how Latino immigrants are overflowing the United States. For example, contrary to popular belief, even when 20 million Latino immigrants lived in the United States in 2021, in the year 2000, 3.8 million had lived in the U.S. for five years or less. This number fell to 3.0 million in 2010 and 2.6 million in 2021, demonstrating a decrease in Latino immigrants coming to the United States. Moreover, the education level of immigrants has changed from 11% with a bachelor’s degree in 2000 to 27% for recent Hispanic immigrants. Additionally, a quarter of recent Latino immigrants to the United States are proficient in English, especially those from South American countries such as Venezuela, Peru, and Colombia.

As mentioned before, health care is an important aspect that needs to be established early while creating one’s life here in the United States as a new immigrant due to the complexity of the process. However, various factors prevent immigrants from receiving adequate health care. The article 5 facts about Hispanic Americans and health care (https://www.pewresearch. org/short-reads/2023/10/30/5-facts-about-hispanic-americansand-health-care/) lists factors such as language and cultural

barriers preventing the Hispanic community from obtaining quality health care. Compared to White, Black, and Asian Americans, Hispanics under the age of 65 years were uninsured at a rate of 19%, while the rest have uninsured rates of 7, 11, and 6 percent, respectively. The language barrier is a factor; however, even when Hispanic immigrants speak English fluently, 58% prefer a Spanish-speaking provider. However, finding a Spanish-speaking practitioner becomes difficult when only 9% speak Spanish compared to the overall HispanicAmerican population, which consists of 19% of the United States population. Compounding all these issues, economic factors, including high levels of poverty among the Hispanic population, contribute to the disparity in health care outcomes among Hispanic Americans.

Nonetheless, the Hispanic population experienced a sharp increase in wealth during the coronavirus pandemic. Even when it did not exceed the wealth increase among the general population, Hispanic households saw an increase of 42% in wealth from December 2019 to December 2021. Home equity is where Hispanic households accumulate most of their wealth. Moreover, English proficiency, a longer amount of time living in the United States, and whether a household member was born in the United States also influenced the increased wealth accumulated by Hispanic households during the pandemic ( https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/12/04/keyfacts-about-the-wealth-of-immigrant-households-during-thecovid-19-pandemic/).

Conclusion

Immigrating to the United States can be a challenging experience. Cultural and political issues can seem like obstacles to advancement in this country. However, there are plenty of resources if one knows where to look to make this experience more manageable and rewarding. The potential to create a better way of life can be started by searching the World Wide Web and taking advantage of its many resources.

References

American Immigration Council (n.d.). Why don’t immigrants apply for citizenship? Retrieved December 19, 2023, from https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/whydon%E2%80%99t-they-just-get-line.

Haner, J., & Lopez, M. H. (2023, September 28). 8 facts about recent Latino immigrants to the U.S. Pew Research Center. https:// www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/09/28/8-facts-aboutrecent-latino-immigrants-to-the-us/

Moslimani, M. (2023, December 4). Key facts about the wealth of immigrant households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/shortreads/2023/12/04/key-facts-about-the-wealth-of-immigranthouseholds-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/

National Immigration Law Center (n.d.). Afghan New Arrivals Public Benefits Chart . Retrieved December 20, 2023, from https://www.nilc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/afghanpublicbenefits-facts-2023-03.pdf

National Immigration Law Center (n.d.). Know your rights. Retrieved December 20, 2023, from https://www.nilc.org/getinvolved/community-education-resources/know-your-rights/.

Tyson, A., & Lopez, M. H. (2023, October 30). 5 facts about Hispanic Americans and health care. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/30/5-factsabout-hispanic-americans-and-health-care/

UIC University Library (n.d.). Immigration: websites [LibGuide]. Retrieved December 20, 2023, from https://researchguides.uic. edu/Immigration.

USA.gov (n.d.). Immigration and U.S. citizenship. Retrieved December 6, 2023, from https://www.usa.gov/immigrationand-citizenship.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (n.d.). While your green card application is pending with USCIS. Retrieved December 20, 2023, from https://www.uscis.gov/green-card/while-yourgreen-card-application-is-pending-with-uscis.

Biz of Digital — Developing a Descriptive Metadata Program

By Beth Morgan (Archivist / Head of Special Collections and Archives, Centre College Library, 600 West Walnut St., Danville, KY 40422; Phone: 859-238-5274) <beth.morgan@centre.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>

Due to differences in the types and subjects of materials handled by catalogers, digital scholarship librarians, and archivists, their approaches to metadata can differ significantly. This divergence can result in inconsistencies and incompatibilities in metadata that prevent seamless integration into discovery layers and other public user interfaces. Such issues may confuse patrons and result in undiscovered resources. A descriptive metadata program (DMP) provides a framework for policies and procedures that standardize descriptive metadata strategies, reducing inconsistencies and incompatibilities, and guides the implementation of digital projects through the collaboration of multiple stakeholders.

DMP partners work to ensure that the descriptive metadata utilized across distinct library collections enables a seamless end-user experience through standardization of processes, consistency of metadata, and uniformity of search results. This article identifies and discusses three foundations of a strong collaborative DMP partnership (buy-in, effective communication, and efficient documentation), three phases of a successful DMP project (planning, implementation, and assessment), and four main concepts to include in DMP projects (standards, schemas, vocabularies, and tools).

Collaboration

Because of the cross-departmental nature of a DMP, collaboration is a key factor to its success. Three main components of collaboration are: buy-in, communication, and documentation.

Collaboration works best when everyone involved not only understands and carries out their individual role in the project but also feels connected to their colleagues and invested in the final product. A good starting point when developing buy-in for a DMP is for all stakeholders to meet and determine the program’s purpose. Ask yourself: Why are we doing this work? What do we hope to accomplish? Everyone involved should understand the role the DMP will play in the success of the library’s overall vision. Working together to create a mission statement and establish goals for the DMP will help foster personal investment and create a team environment, both of which are important pillars for successful cross-departmental collaboration.

Communication is an essential component of a DMP in order to convey information and instructions for planning and carrying out projects, especially given the detail-oriented individual tasks and cross-departmental collaboration that make up the work of a DMP. One strategy for effective and efficient communication is to establish a specific day and time of the week for the DMP team to have in-person meetings and create a standing appointment on a common calendar for it. This provides a regular opportunity to check in with each other face-to-face in order to provide updates as well as do the more detail-oriented work that is difficult to accomplish through written communication. In

between meetings, collaborators can utilize group emails and post documents in a shared cloud space to which everyone has access. This mixture of communication methods allows all DMP collaborators a seat at the table at any given time, and makes relevant documentation and other information easily and readily accessible.

Documentation is also important in cultivating effective collaboration. Developing and implementing a DMP generates significant documentation in the form of meeting notes, written policies and procedures, data dictionaries, and workflows. When you have multiple people working on a common project — and maybe those people work in different areas of the library and don’t regularly interact otherwise — it is crucial that everyone is aware of what decisions have been made and what they are expected to do. Good documentation supports effective communication by keeping everyone informed of policies, procedure, justifications, and timelines. This alone has the added benefit of keeping a historical record of the evolution of the DMP through documentation of thought-processes and decision-making.

The Phases of a DMP

Now that we have established what a DMP is, explained its purpose, and identified the foundations of building a successful DMP, let’s examine the three phases of a DMP: planning, implementation, and assessment.

As with any collaborative, cross-departmental project, the planning stage of a DMP is time-consuming and intense due to the coordination of many people and multiple tasks and the alignment of multiple goals. Digital projects especially require careful time and up-front consideration to determine where and how all the various pieces fit together. (All the more reason why laying the foundation with initial buy-in, purposeful communication, and organized documentation is so important.)

The first stage of planning consists of identifying your DMP projects and making decisions in regards to the handson, metadata-specific components required to implement the projects. Digital tools, metadata standards, schemas, vocabularies, policies and procedures for best practices, workflows, and timelines all need to be identified, decided upon, and documented during the planning phase.

During planning, you will look specifically at four main focus areas to include in a comprehensive DMP: standards, schemas, vocabularies, and tools.

Standards = guidelines for how to describe an item

Schemas = coding systems used to record the descriptive metadata

Vocabularies = established, consistent terminologies to describe the topics or subject matter of items

Tools = digital platforms that house the metadata and provide a public user interface (usually chosen based on combination of front-end appearance and back-end function)

As you make decisions in these focus areas, consider the following: What types of materials will I be describing? What is the collection size? Do I have any existing metadata to work with, and do I want to use it or start from scratch? An in-depth understanding of the project materials and associated metadata needs, as well as how you want them presented to your users, will help you make best-practice decisions regarding description of those materials and which digital tools are best suited for the job.

Once you have created your DMP’s best practices and identified the digital tool you are going to use, you can map out a workflow. Write out the steps required to create and upload the metadata, assign people to tasks, and consider the efficiency of the process. You will probably tweak the workflow multiple times throughout the process of completing projects as you actually get into the work and see how it plays out practically, but having a workflow to start with is better than jumping in without a plan.

To keep any project on course, you need a timeline. From the outset, set a date to go live with your project, then create deadlines for specific tasks and project milestones within your overall time frame.

Successful planning is very closely tied to effective communication and organized documentation, so again I will reiterate the importance of collaborating to establish these essential foundations from your DMP’s inception.

Once the planning phase is completed, it’s time to implement. Implementation consists of the creation of the metadata according to your established best practices, uploading your metadata into your selected digital tool, going live, and quality control. Quality control is a process by which the descriptive metadata is reviewed (preferably by someone other than the

person who created it) for accuracy, consistency, and satisfactory forward-facing appearance. Before you go live with your project, a trial run-through with a small test batch is recommended. Pull together a small sampling of the different types of materials included in your project and upload that metadata into your selected digital tool to see how the data behaves. This gives you a chance to work out any kinks with your digital tool or make any necessary adjustments to your metadata before the entire project is made public.

The last stage of building a DMP is assessment, but it is certainly not the least. Building a DMP may look like a finite project on paper, but it’s never really finished. As you continue the program, you will constantly create and edit metadata; update policies, procedures, and documentation; and adjust workflows. It is a dynamic program that grows and evolves as more collections are identified for inclusion in your project lists, more items are cataloged for those projects, standards change, new tools come on the market, staff are added into the workflow, documentation is edited, etc. Thoughtful and intentional assessment of your DMP is an important piece of the process that should not be overlooked in order to maintain efficient workflows, effective metadata, and interfaces that are both up-to-date and user-friendly. Assessment of a DMP consists of developing methods to evaluate staffing, workflows, best practices, digital tools, and even the metadata itself. Overall, you will consistently review whether your DMP allows for the efficient creation of the most complete and accurate descriptive metadata, and whether the metadata is optimally utilized.

Building and maintaining a DMP is a dynamic process that requires meticulous planning and continuous oversight, and the success of the DMP is very much tied to the success of your cross-departmental collaboration. If you can lay the solid foundation of collaboration through team-building, effective communication, and organized documentation, planning and implementation will fall into place and you will have a successful descriptive metadata program to grow.

The Digital Toolbox — The Future of Digital Services, from Open Access to AI

Column Editor: Steve Rosato (Senior Manager of Academic Division, OverDrive, Cleveland, OH 44125) <srosato@overdrive.com>

As academic institutions continue to embrace digital resources at a faster and faster rate, there’s been an increased focus on the crucial topic of accessibility.

Cost, ownership and evolving technology all factor into this wide-ranging issue. The University of California’s Project LEND (Library Expansion of Networked Delivery) and Lyrasis’ Palace Project have both undertaken efforts to explore the current and future state of digital content access.

To find out what academic libraries are doing to address and adapt digital resource access, OverDrive spoke with John Blosser, Head of Acquisitions & Collection Development Officer for the Northwestern University Libraries, and Nathan Rupp, Acquisitions and E-Resources Librarian for the Purdue University School of Libraries and Information Studies.

OverDrive: With digital resources more prevalent in classrooms, how can institutions and vendors collaborate to address the digital divide among students?

John Blosser: To help address the digital divide among students, institutions and vendors can both advocate for affordable Internet access that is distributed across the neighborhoods overlooked for such reliable service in the past. Institutions can build and maintain a reliable source of computers on-site as well as an adequate source of equipment to loan to students as the need arises. Institutions and vendors currently manage central points of access to digital resources so that the students can authenticate from institutional and remote locations. This access protocol should remain as straightforward as possible within the confines of the access security requirements.

OD: In the context of digital access, what role do you see resource sharing playing among academic institutions?

JB: Resource sharing among academic institutions has long been a valued approach to broaden the support of research interests around the globe. The need for being able to share digital resources is just as important and becoming more urgent since a substantial portion of academic collections are now digital. One barrier to this sharing of the digital has been the lack of widely accepted software to securely handle the sharing, but there has been development of such software over the past decade or so. There have been other methods developed for controlled digital lending, not to mention the cautious adoption by vendors of loaning PDF copies of articles and book chapters through current interlibrary loan protocols. The desire and need to loan an entire electronic book just as one would a print book as the rule and not the exception is still a goal for libraries and scholars.

Nathan Rupp: I see resource sharing playing an increasingly significant role among academic institutions, but only if they can work with vendors to develop licensing language and, to a lesser extent, a technological infrastructure that supports increased resource sharing that is acceptable to both sides. For example, libraries may need to work with vendors to negotiate (or renegotiate) licenses so that they permit “whole eBook lending” from one library to another. And as resource sharing continues to develop, libraries may need to work with vendors to develop systems and tools that can support the sharing of non-textual materials like video and audio files. Some consortia may also need to engage in projects like harmonization of library catalog metadata so that consortia members have a better understanding of what each member has in its collections to facilitate resource sharing among the members of each consortium.

OD: As demand for digital resources grows, how do you anticipate budgetary considerations evolving to meet the increasing need for these resources?

“The need to loan an eBook just as one would a print book — as the rule and not the exception — is still a goal for libraries and scholars.”

NR: I think that libraries’ budgets have already been evolving to some extent over the past quarter century (or more) as materials have moved online with the introduction of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Although libraries have always spent funds on “continuing resources” through their subscriptions to journals, magazines and other serials, the share of libraries’ collections budgets devoted to “continuing resources” has increased over the past 25 years as vendors have introduced abstracting and indexing, full text and (in particular) primary source databases. Libraries may further need to restructure their collection development budgets to move from journal subscriptions to the support of open access and “read and publish” agreements. Budgets should also include accompanying costs, like article processing charges (APCs), to support non-traditional means of accessing materials (like API access to vendor content instead of access through the vendor’s traditional databases) and to support new types of material released by vendors moving beyond content like eBooks, eJournals and databases to pedagogical materials supporting, for example, how students can best use archives and special collections materials. Finally, I personally worry about the long-term preservation of the digital materials libraries have been purchasing for the past quarter century; many of these materials are hosted at vendor web sites, not on library shelves, and given that we have only been in an online environment for 25 or 30 years, I wonder what long term access to these materials will look like and will cost. Will libraries be paying in the future for several additional preservation services beyond services that are currently available like LOCKSS and CLOCKSS?

OD: What are the key barriers hindering widespread adoption and expanding the accessibility of digital resources?

JB: There are three top key barriers slowing the widespread adoption of sharing digital resources. One barrier is the pricing of the resources to honor the commercial needs of publishers and their copyright holders who have sales agreements. Librarians may assume that sharing digital resources will increase the

pricing of them, but what is the price point to make the resources affordable and profitable? Another barrier is assuring secure control of the resources so that they do not fall into access by those not covered by the institutions’ licenses to use the resources. This is related to the third key barrier: software development to handle the sharing of the resources. Vendors should certainly take an interest in the development of the software so as to be proactive supporters of it rather than wary detractors of an important forward-looking action.

OD: In your opinion, what is the next big emerging trend for digital access?

JB: With the attention on AI these days, I would think that there will be built-in AI capabilities in digital resources to assist scholars in searching the resources with help in organizing results into meaningful themes. Also, it seems as if more publishers are realizing the change in approaches to research of materials in digital format and accommodating methods of accessing bulk access and analysis of the digital content.

OD: How do you perceive the potential impact of emerging technologies like AI and large language models on the future of digital access?

NR: I see that stakeholders supported by libraries and their collections will want to increasingly use our collections to support emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and to “train” large language models, but I see this is just another different way in which our stakeholders will want to interact with the content we license. Libraries will need to develop licensing language that will both be acceptable to vendors and permit some form of support for AI. They will also need to record metadata in their library service platforms (LSPs) about what resources are permitted to support AI, and to what extent. I suspect that collection development decisions may need to be made about some content (both current subscriptions and new products introduced by vendors) that does not support AI. But this is really nothing new. In looking at licenses, I look for materials that are available to all university stakeholders on or off campus; that are available to university alumni; that are accessible via the library’s proxy server or single sign on (SSO) authentication system, not vendor username and password; that can be accessed via the university’s learning management system (LMS); that can be loaned to other institutions via interlibrary loan; and that meet our accessibility standards. I’ll need to add AI support to my license review and balance the availability or unavailability of that feature with all of these other terms as well as the cost of the resource in question, the need for the resource on campus and any available workarounds that might help the library overcome poor licensing language.

OD: Based on your experience, which directions or developments in digital access trends do you believe would have the most positive impact on the educational landscape?

JB: The ability to search, browse and gather large amounts of digital content for establishing themes and patterns for research topics has a great impact on the success of the educational endeavor for both research and teaching. We will not know when someone with a unique topic to investigate will need the unknown content set of themes, so being able to provide that unique “data set” approach is most impactful.

NR: I would welcome vendor development of affordable textbook collections that can be licensed at an institutional level. Some colleges and universities have focused on keeping increases in the costs of higher education to a minimum and part of this effort is to identify cost savings for students in the

area of textbooks, whether through open course material efforts or using library collection budget dollars to purchase online access to textbooks for them. I often find that online access to textbooks is not only expensive, it is not even available for purchase on an institutional level.

It has been a long time since I was an undergraduate, but this past fall I took a course at my institution which gave me the opportunity to experience what it means to take part in a class that was managed through a learning management system (LMS). I spent a great deal of time utilizing the LMS as I participated in this class — I interacted with my class through that system, received feedback on how I was doing in the class, etc. It would be great if more digital materials licensed or purchased by libraries could be made more meaningfully interactive with an LMS, and that more vendors would support training for faculty members on campus on how to make the content more interactive through the LMS.

I have bought a number of eBooks for my Amazon Kindle over the years and love the interface. It would be great if more library vendors created eBook interfaces that were as easy to use as the interface of the Kindle. Similarly, it would be helpful if publishers and other content providers (and/or perhaps a third party) could work together to further develop user interfaces (UI) for content with a similar look and feel so that users had a similar experience when accessing content from different vendors.

I would like to see more vendors support current standards in accessibility. These standards are published and open for vendors to review, so it is sometimes surprising to me how many vendors do not include acceptable accessibility language in their contracts, are unprepared to accept our suggested accessibility language, or are even unwilling or unable to work with me to negotiate or develop an alternative solution supporting accessibility that works for both of us.

The cost of scholarly publishing in terms of journal articles or scholarly monographs is a topic about which many blog articles, essays and journal articles have been written over the years, so I won’t go into much more detail about this here, but it would be wonderful if libraries and the larger academy could find a way to mitigate the cost of scholarly publishing. It seems to me that current models that include both “read” and “publish” fees instead of just “read” fees as in the past are still unsustainable.

I would also like to see more “registries” that help me better determine which vendors’ products work well with my local institution’s electronic resource environment, like whether or not they are Single Sign-On compliant, meet the highest tier of accessibility standards, support interlibrary loan clauses like “whole eBook lending ” or work with my institution’s discovery layer. Some of these registries exist. For example, the Open Discovery Initiative (https://www.niso.org/standardscommittees/odi ), among other things, provides “a way for libraries to assess content providers’ participation in discovery layers.” The Open Athens web site (https://www.openathens. net/compatible-providers/) maintains a list of providers that work with Open Athens. But these registries only cover some of what I am looking for from a vendor.

Finally, I would like to see less consolidation in the publisher and vendor sector. For example, one of the major citation analysis tools, an LSP, a large number of full text abstracting and indexing databases, an eBook platform and a large number of primary source collections are now all part of the same company. This consolidation is particularly acute in the LSP market, with only a handful of systems now being available.

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OD: Considering the dynamic nature of technology, how do you see the role of academic librarians evolving to actively guide institutions in adopting and adapting to the latest advancements in digital resources and access?

JB: Academic librarians will continue to guide institutions in adopting and adapting to the latest advancements in digital resources and access as they have over the course of time. Librarians have been growing skills since the early days of bibliographic instruction. Now there are instruction courses on specific research software tools and individual databases of specific subject scope. Depending on the institution, these instruction classes may be separate library offerings, or given within the course instruction of students, or a mixture of both. Academic librarians will continue to help integrate evolving technology into the academic ecosystem.

OD: As the educational landscape becomes more globalized, what strategies do academic librarians employ to enhance cross-institutional collaboration and resource-sharing, particularly in the digital realm?

JB: For cross-institutional collaboration and resourcesharing, academic librarians can perform the important role of mediator between the scholars and vendors to resolve shared access to the necessary digital resources. With well explained research goals and acting as intermediary to connect the scholars with the vendors, there has been successful collaborative use of

sharing digital resources. These instances have been sporadic in the past, and the shared use has had a time limit. The need for cross-institutional resources use is likely to increase as local library collections may be slow to grow or become more specialized for local research needs due to stagnant collection budgets. This collaboration may have a more impactful role on institutions which excel in interdisciplinary research, but since academic research collections have grown to be more digital, just ask your librarian if they can assist in the access needed for the collaborative work.

As evident by Blosser and Rupp’s invaluable insights here, emerging technology — namely AI — resource sharing and licensing are all top of mind as academic libraries navigate the next frontier of digital content access. With the unlimited potential of digital content to support the missions of academic institutions, librarians will continue, as Blosser astutely noted, to guide the evolution of access.

ATG Interviews Rebecca Lenzini and George Machovec

Former Publisher and Managing Editor, The Charleston Advisor

By Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub) <leah@charlestonlibraryconference.com>

We’re happy to be featuring the interview with Becky Lenzini, former Publisher of The Charleston Advisor, and George Machovec, Managing Editor. The Charleston Advisor launched in July 1999 and quickly became the leading publication providing expert reviews on Web-based resources for libraries. The journal was acquired by non-profit publisher Annual Reviews in 2022, and exciting plans are now underway to enhance the scope, mission, content, and user interface.

ATG: Could you tell us a little about your backgrounds to get started?

BL: I have an MLS from the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, where I was co-head of Technical Services at the Library while also chairing User Services for the statewide LCS library computer system. From there, I moved to Boston to serve as the Academic Division Director for the Faxon Company, at the time a leading subscription agency. I joined CARL Systems, Inc., the for-profit spin-off of the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, to help create and introduce the Uncover database, one of the first journal article delivery services. CARL Systems was later acquired by Knight Ridder/Dialog and Uncover became a part of Ingenta.

GM: I’m the executive director for the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries, a position that I’ve held since 2011. Before that, I was the Associate Director at the Alliance since 1993. I began my career at Arizona State University (ASU) where I held several positions including Science Reference Librarian and later the Head of Library Technology and Systems. At the Colorado Alliance, I launched the Prospector union catalog which now has 200+ libraries in Colorado and Wyoming. I also was responsible for the Gold Rush system which is now used as a library collection analytics tool.

ATG: Becky, how did the Charleston Advisor get started? And George, how did you get involved?

BL: Katina Strauch actually had the original idea for The Charleston Advisor, as she saw the need for a library e-resource review service after the Web came into existence. I was looking for another startup following the sale of CARL Systems and Uncover and approached George who became involved with the The Charleston Advisor at its launch in 1999.

GM: I had worked with Becky while head of systems at ASU where we installed the CARL integrated library system. When I took a position at the Colorado Alliance in Denver, Becky pitched the idea at a local Mexican restaurant of an e-resource

review journal and I agreed to become the managing editor. I met Katina for the first time at the November 1999 Charleston Conference. I have continued in that role since volume 1, number 1. After Annual Reviews acquired TCA , I agreed to be a bridge until the new management team for the journal was appointed. AR has been wonderful to work with.

ATG: How did the publication grow and change over the years?

GM: The Charleston Advisor has always been a quarterly review journal and has averaged about a dozen product reviews per issue. In 1999, the online version of TCA was offered with custom built software being hosted at the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. It later moved to Ingenta in order to allow for improved features on a more robust platform. All reviews were done in a structured format which has been tweaked over the years. I like to describe it as the “Consumer Reports” for library web-based databases and publications.

ATG: How did the acquisition by Annual Reviews change the publication, or did it stay mostly the same until recently?

GM: For the first two years after the acquisition by AR, the journal has stayed the same except that AR has taken over copy editing and the business side of the operation. However, big changes are planned for the fall of 2024 when the publication will be re-branded and a new set of co-editors will take over. The scope of the publication will be expanded and it will go online with an exciting new web presence being managed by a team of co-editors and an expanded editorial board. The details of this will be announced closer to the new publication.

ATG: George, we understand that the April 2024 issue will be your last issue as Managing Editor, with a retrospective edition coming up in July. Can you give us a sneak peak of the content we can expect in the collection of “greatest hits” from TCA?

GM: The April 2024 issue will be my last issue with the same name and formatting as the journal has had for the last 25 years. As you noted, the July issue will be a look back over the last quarter century with a selection of reviews, interviews, and other special features. We also hope to include a 25-year index listing all reviews published.

ATG: Becky, you ended your year-long transition from the acquisition by AR in June 2023, but will also be involved in the July retrospective. What is one of your most memorable moments in the 25 years of TCA’s publication? Any humorous or inside stories you can share?

NOW PUBLISHED BY

ANNUAL REVIEWS

Founded in July 1999, The Charleston Advisor publishes detailed product reviews of proprietary and freely available web-based resources for the library market. Reviewed product types include databases, pricing tools, scholarly journals, and collections. More than 1,130 searchable expert reviews, peer-reviewed by the library community, are currently available to help optimize library services.

BENEFITS OF SUBSCRIBING to TCA:

• Access to more than 1,130 reviews published

• Online edition includes full backfile database

• Unlimited access via IP Filter or name/password

• Comparative reviews of aggregators featured

• Leading opinions in every issue

Contact Annual Reviews for more information: sales@annualreviews.org | 650.493.4400 | www.annualreviews.org

BL: I think perhaps our biggest moment of fame for the journal came when we published the original review by Jeffrey Beall, who exposed “predatory journals” which had appeared and were not yet recognized in the field. On a lighter note, we did also review “Google” at the suggestion of Chuck Hamaker. At the time, none of us had heard of it and we thought the name was confusing!

ATG: Finally, for a more personal question, what do you do for fun or what are your hobbies? What are you looking forward to doing with your spare time after moving on from TCA?

BL: I am presently splitting time between houses in Denver, Colorado, and one in Taos, New Mexico, where I am working closely with local authors to help them publish their memoirs, art books, hiking guides and more. Also enjoying keeping up with my three grandsons and a new grand-daughter.

Contact Details:

Rebecca Lenzini <rlenzini@earthlink.net>

George Machovec <george@coalliance.org>

GM: I will continue as the executive director for the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. I enjoy music, philately, travel, hiking, and the many other opportunities that Colorado brings.

Editor’s Note : ATG will bring you coverage of the new publication as The Charleston Advisor is re-launched later this year. It will be published by Annual Reviews under the Charleston Hub division. More details to come!

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

People to Know — TheirStory and Zack Ellis

Column Editor: Matthew Ismail (Editor in Chief, Charleston Briefings; Founder, Dost Publishing) <matthew.ismail@icloud.com>

I was in Amsterdam, in the Anne Frank house, in the attic — where there was a video playing of Anne’s father, Otto Frank.

He said that he had never really realized the depth and complexity of Anne’s thoughts until after she had died and he read her diary.

He concluded in the video that because he had such a close relationship with Anne, but never really knew who she was, that most parents don’t know, really, their kid(s).

—

Zack

Ellis, CEO

and Founder of TheirStory (https://TheirStory.io/about-us)

When I think about companies and their founders, I’m always curious about some basic questions: Where does this company come from? What were the experiences and questions that led someone to want to found this company? Obviously, one part of the answer is the need to earn a living; but the need to earn a living sends some people in search of an employer, and others to build something new from the ground up.

Zack Ellis was one of those who wanted to start something new. His company, TheirStory, an oral history and story management platform, “started as a way of sharing and preserving memories among family — but it has since transformed into a platform that streamlines the process for any community to collect, preserve, and engage with the audiovisual stories of the individuals that make up their community.”

When I recently asked Zack why he founded TheirStory, rather than, say, decide to sell real estate or go into banking, his answer is the sort of unexpected gem that I tend to find in founder stories:

“I think it was, in a weird way, something that was both core to what I have been curious about my whole life, and also something that evolved from that curiosity through my experiences. And I think the thing that I’ve always been curious about is why am I me? Why am I stuck in my own perspective? And so I’ve always been curious about seeing things from other people’s points of view.”

Zack went from being a collegiate wrestler whose undergraduate work was in bioengineering to a first job in Silicon Valley at the invitation of one of his former college teammates. In Silicon Valley, Zack wound up in an unexpected role as Community Manager for an “API management company” called Apigee — APIs being, for my fellow technophobes, a piece of software that allows two apps to talk to each other. Zack’s role was to talk to customers and to understand how and why these customers bought Apigee’s product and how it helped them. Zack jokes that Apigee, in true Silicon Valley fashion, liked to think of itself just as much as a philosophy company as it did as a technology company. “Its head philosopher, if you will, had recommended I read two books.” These books were Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces and Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. The former introduced Zack to the Hero’s Journey — the phases that the hero of every story goes through on their epic quest of trials, triumphs, and transformation.

The Crossing the Chasm introduced Zack to the technology adoption curve — the phases that every new technology or idea goes through along its path to mass adoption, starting with innovators, early adopters, and eventually the mainstream market.

At the time, APIs were a new technology paradigm; whereas today, they are ubiquitous in software development. As Zack interviewed API and Developer Program leaders at the Fortune 2000 companies that used Apigee’s platform — organizations like Walgreens, AT&T, and Pearson — he learned that their most common challenges were not technical, but rather were about: 1) attracting and retaining technical and entrepreneurial talent; 2) educating the business on the value of APIs and developer programs. These API program leaders were change agents having to overcome the internal inertia of these corporate giants. They were the heroes within their own companies who were leading change! But often, they didn’t know about the challenges and successes of their peers at other companies.

Zack began to wonder, “Well, if I know all the stages of the hero’s journey, and if everyone is the hero of their own story, what if I came up with questions that naturally aligned to the stages of the hero’s journey? Could that help our customers tell their stories in a way that they most identified with and in a way that their peers would see themselves as well? And then they’ll learn from the nuggets of wisdom that each of these people have. And that totally works. I was fascinated with interviewing and storytelling and I would interview Uber drivers and Lyft drivers in the framework and just practiced it and loved it.”

This is when Zack began to wish that he had a platform like TheirStory that would allow him to record, archive, and discover those conversations with customers so that the information could be located and shared effectively. He had to go back to his data and manually extract key moments to share with the product team, marketing team, and sales team, and also to share with customers to allow them to build a community, and this was very time-consuming and inefficient.

“And so that was the first inkling of the idea that, okay, what does my future business look like? The idea that it’s a platform business, platform technology. It’s API first, which is all about the ability to share information, share data, share functionality, in service of building communities of practice. I envisioned the idea that there’s so much information exchanged through the spoken word, but also a lot that is lost. And in a time when data is incredibly valuable, how valuable would it be if we could capture stories, analyze them, share insights from them, and that would support any community of practice where it’s really about the exchange of ideas. And so TheirStory at its core was about the propagation and exchange of ideas and how to do that in an age where video is the dominant form of communication and communities are increasingly remotely distributed.”

The work in Silicon Valley was important to Zack in beginning to envision a platform for the recording, storage and discovery of video interviews. But TheirStory is also a personal story. “As the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, it was one of my dad’s biggest regrets that he never recorded his father’s stories before he died. And … at the Anne Frank House [in Amsterdam] … there was a clip playing on loop of an oral history where Anne’s father, Otto, concluded that because he had had such a close relationship with Anne but never really knew who she was until after she died and he had read her diary, that he believed most parents don’t really know their children. And so it hit me, well, if most parents don’t know their kids, then how can I know who my parents are? And so I started a project over the next two years, recording my parents telling their life stories from across the country. I was in San Francisco, they were in Rochester, New York, where I grew up.”

Taking an online programming course on Udemy during nights and weekends over a six month span, Zack learned enough web development skills to build the first prototype of TheirStory. As Zack also said, “What was just as valuable as having those recordings for posterity was the value of the process itself of engaging in self reflection, these open dialogues with my parents, and how it deepened our relationships and improved our capacity for better communication. And that, ultimately, was the genesis of TheirStory.”

Zack reminds us of the value of an oral history platform compared to using a platform like Zoom. “What we found is that organizations who are looking to embrace the power of video-based storytelling are looking to take long form audiovisual media, whether it’s through conversations or lectures, webinars, archival footage … or oral histories — organizations are looking to transform that long form audio-visual content into more short form narratives that are easy to consume, or easy to research based on how that’s cataloged. It is a really

cumbersome process — most organizations are using three to five different applications to go from asking “How do you plan for what it is you’re going to ask?” Or “What’s the goal of the project?” To capturing those stories and conducting all those interviews and doing all the scheduling. Then all the post production and meaning-making and having to transcribe it to make it searchable? Indexing it so that you’re identifying themes that might not have actually been spoken? So how do you pull that [information] out to make it more accessible to researchers, educators, students, and then figuring out what new knowledge or narrative needs to be synthesized and told and disseminated across a number of different platforms that people can get access to? And then how do you preserve that long term?”

Interesting questions! It seems obvious to me that TheirStory is a tool that would be of tremendous value to organizations such as museums, local history societies, community organizations who want to document their experience, universities and archives, and family history and genealogy organizations. It would make the process of recording and preserving videos and transcripts so much easier and more effective. Zack’s own family and work story is really so much the story of those who use TheirStory. Human memories, self-reflection, and community sharing. It’s a beautiful story!

Sources

“ATGthePodcast 224 – A Conversation with Zack Ellis, Founder & CEO, TheirStory,” 1/7/2024. Available on the Charleston Hub at https://www.charleston-hub.com/podcast/ atgthepodcast-224-a-conversation-with-zack-ellis-founderceo-theirstory/.

Zack Ellis, Matthew Ismail, Interview conducted and preserved on www.TheirStory.io, 1/17/2024.

COMING SOON! A new title in the Charleston Briefings series:

Navigating the Complexities of Privacy: Issues for Libraries and Content Providers, by Doreen Bradley, University of Michigan Libraries, and Heather Staines, Delta Think

Preview by Matthew Ismail, Editor in Chief, Charleston Briefings

When Heather and Doreen proposed a new entry for the Charleston Briefings on library privacy, I was intrigued but not particularly knowledgeable. I recalled the discussions we’d had in the early 90s about not telling the FBI which books someone had checked out and respecting their right to read what they want to read from our collections.

Well, things have become a bit more complicated in the meantime! When library services and collections moved online, the question of privacy became connected to the myriad questions of data security and permission that we encounter every day. When we create a digital record for a user in our ILS, who in the university has the permission to see it? If they can see some parts of that record, but not others, who decides that and in what context? Was the architecture of the system built with the protection of user privacy in mind? What about this question of privacy in the context of a consortium? How do we assure that users’ data is only used with their permission? If a librarian wants to employ user data for a research project, how does that librarian assure that they, too, are compliant with the user privacy they are championing?

These are just a few questions we might ask about library privacy in the digital age. Heather and Doreen have brought together a diverse and forward-looking group of authors to produce a briefing that will be of great interest to those who are involved with privacy issues in their library. Even if you think you’re protecting the privacy of users, you may find that you need to update your practices to meet the new challenges of which you may not even be aware. After reading this briefing, in fact, you may find yourself forming a committee to be sure that your university is sedulously protecting users’ privacy, not only in the library, but across the institution.

ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Kate McCready

Visiting Program Officer for Academy Owned Scholarly Publishing

Big Ten Academic Alliance

1819 South Neil Street, Suite D Champaign, IL 61820-7271

Phone: (217) 333-8475

Fax: (217) 244-7127

<kate.mccready@btaa.org> • btaa.org

BORN AND LIVED: Born and lived in St. Paul Minnesota, except for a 5 year stint in Milwaukee WI.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: In my current role, I’m leading the development and implementation of a vision for a multifaceted, sustainable course of action to strengthen academy-owned publishing for the BTAA. I provide leadership in strategy development for the acquisition, publishing, and archiving of open access scholarly content, with a specific emphasis on investigating direction and strategy for developing shared publishing infrastructure and services at scale. I’ve worked as a librarian, both at Marquette University and the University of Minnesota for the past 30 years, working in public, collections, and publishing service areas, as well as leading the development of several research services. I ran the University of Minnesota’s Collections and Content Strategy service area for three years, in an interim role, where I provided leadership for the development, discovery, and long-term stewardship of the University of Minnesota Libraries’ wide-ranging collections which include over 7.7 million print volumes, and millions of electronic resources that address all current and emerging areas of study at the University. My career interests combine a desire to make research effective and efficient for researchers with the goal of making scholarship discoverable and openly accessible.

FAMILY: I have a partner, Rob, and three amazing sons.

IN MY SPARE TIME: I love anything related to outdoor mountain life: skiing, hiking, biking. But, living in Minnesota, I also love to watch movies, exercise at the gym, read, knit, walk, do yoga, and play tennis. I’m also still busy parenting my third child, now a high schooler, who isn’t sure about getting all the undivided parenting attention now that his brothers are out of the house.

FAVORITE BOOKS: I’ve always loved Pride and Prejudice, but also like any sweeping epic with travel involved. Right now I’m reading the beautifully written Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and just finished the delightful Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus.

PET PEEVES: Sloppiness. Unkind people. Greed.

PHILOSOPHY: Be kind, and enjoy your life!

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Winning the Library Publishing Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing for the article I co-authored with Emma Molls on developing business plans.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: I’d like to see a sustainable Big Ten Open Books program.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: I hope to see more collective action among academic organizations, as well as non-profit organizations that are working to support open access initiatives. Individual libraries value open access but are getting fatigued by requests for support for individual publishers and service providers. Open access publishers and infrastructure providers are trying to be innovative, but the lack of a sustainable funding source for their work is

draining. How can we federate these efforts to make vetting and support more seemless? I would like to see the result of this be a strengthened infrastructure for academy-owned open access scholarship.

Emily Poznanski Director

CEU Press

CEU campuses: Quellenstraße 51, 1100, Vienna and Nador u. 9, 1051 Budapest, Hungary <PoznanskiE@press.ceu.edu>

https://ceupress.com/

BORN AND LIVED: Born in Durham, North Carolina, and lived in Warsaw, Berlin, Vienna and the UK.

EARLY LIFE: In Warsaw, Poland and Stamford, UK.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: I studied Mathematics and afterwards moved to Warsaw to care for my grandmother. Since my Polish was limited then, I applied for jobs in English and that’s how I found my way into academic publishing. It has kept me busy with problem solving since!

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: In a time of so much change, the industry could look very different in 5 years’ time. An optimistic view, and one that I could see seeds of at the last Charleston Conference, is publishers and librarians aligning in their missions and having agency in choosing what they support. This could result in parts of the industry taking hold of emerging technological changes to support what is essential to publishing — to ensure its longevity. A more pessimistic view, is that tech takes hold of us!

Ros Pyne

Global Director, Research and Open Access Bloomsbury

50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP

<ros.pyne@bloomsbury.com>

https://www.bloomsbury.com/openaccess

BORN AND LIVED: London and Cambridge, UK.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: Mostly scholarly publishing. I started at Palgrave Macmillan as a journals publishing editor, worked on open access policy and books at Springer Nature, and moved to Bloomsbury three years ago to lead the OA program.

FAMILY: My husband Adam is a poet and special collections librarian. We have two cats, Harriet and Marlowe.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Middlemarch, Howards End, Jacob’s Room, The Unconsoled, The Nine Tailors, and Comet in Moominland

PHILOSOPHY: Accumulations of small changes add up over time. I guess I’m an incrementalist. To misquote Hemingway, change happens slowly, then all at once.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: With Mithu Lucraft and Valerie McCutcheon, coming up with the concept for the Open Access Books Toolkit and working with OAPEN and a wonderful team of contributors to make it a reality.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: A more open scholarly ecosystem which takes into account the needs and practices of the arts, humanities and social sciences.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: For scholarly books, we’ll see further transition from print to e, from closed to open, to a more inclusive and equitable publishing. More broadly, there will be an increasing divide between (mostly STM) organisations that are essentially technology companies and (mostly AHSS) presses that are still primarily publishers. Somewhere in all of this we’ll figure out what AI has to offer us.

Niels Stern

Managing Director

OAPEN Foundation

Willem-Alexanderhof 5, 2595BE The Hague, Netherlands

Phone: +45 31384208

<stern@oapen.org>

https://oapen.org and https://doabooks.org

BORN AND LIVED: Denmark (Ribe, Aarhus, Copenhagen, Gl. Tølløse) and UK (London) and Bolivia (La Paz).

EARLY LIFE: Ribe — old Viking town in Denmark (founded around AD 705).

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: It took me some years of travelling in Latin America and Africa before I found my career path. First, I wanted to do Radio productions and did cultural radio documentaries for Danish National Broadcasting for a couple of years until I eventually slipped into publishing. And never really left again. I began in scholarly book publishing in 2003 at Museum Tusculanum Press (University of Copenhagen). In that position I became co-founder of the open access for books project, OAPEN, in 2008. Later I moved on to become Head of Publishing at the Nordic Council in 2011. Since 2014 and in parallel with my full-time job I acted as an independent expert for the European Commission on open science and e-infrastructures which gave me a lot of insights into this fast-developing landscape. In 2017, I changed from publishing to the library sector for three years as Head of Department for License Management at the Royal Danish Library (serving five Danish universities) and chief negotiator for the national license consortium in Denmark. I joined the OAPEN Foundation and the DOAB Foundation as director in 2021.

I hold a Master of Arts degree from University of Copenhagen (Nordic Literature and Languages) and a Master of Arts degree from Goldsmiths College, University of London (Communication and Radio production).

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6466-9748

FAMILY: Wife and two lovely teenagers

IN MY SPARE TIME: Reading unsystematically, doing fairly useless stuff in our old country-side garden (except from — IMHO — growing Dahlias and taking care of our apple trees), wandering in the woods with my wife, and performing all sorts of sports.

FAVORITE BOOKS: I tend to forget which books are my favorite ones, but often think that the one I am reading is my favorite one. However, some of my favorite authors are Karl-Ove Knausgaard, Haruki Murakami, Ian McEwan and Dostojevskij.

PET PEEVES: Slamming the front door.

PHILOSOPHY: Look up.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Building the OAPEN Library together with excited colleagues from university presses in Amsterdam, Manchester, Firenze, Göttingen, and Lyon 15 years ago was remarkable. Today, it holds more than 30,000 quality controlled academic books from several hundred publishers. Connecting thousands of authors with millions of readers in a fully open environment has been my mission for over 20 years and therefore I feel very privileged continuing what we kicked-off in 2008 when only few were talking about open access to books.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: Through the continued support of libraries and institutions I hope that the publisher base of OAPEN and DOAB will become better balanced globally. We need to engage more with publishing initiatives in regions like Africa and Asia. We have recently taken proactive steps in that direction. In five years, I hope we can look back and see that this mission has resulted in a more equitable open access book publishing landscape.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS:

It’s my experience that in scholarly communication, change doesn’t happen overnight. I joined academic publishing when the Berlin Declaration on open access was issued — am I really that old! Lots of things have happened since then but never as a revolution. When I focus on the academic books landscape, I see a vitalizing acceleration of open access. Publishers and platforms experiment with new business models, open infrastructures come together and deliver joint services, and old myths about open publishing as inferior to paywalled publishing are replaced by increased acknowledgement of the huge advantages and qualities of publishing open. In fact, it was this pragmatic logic that led me into open access in the first place. I hope that the current pragmatic, actionfocused, and evidence-based approach to open access will increasingly become the mindset over the next five years and that institutions, libraries, and funders will find ways to ensure long-term and enduring investments in open publishing and their supporting open infrastructures. I definitely see it as a growing trend, however there are multiple threats that could hamper it. Therefore, if we share the vision of an open scholarly communication eco-system, now is the time to act.

Anthony Watkinson

Principal Consultant

Ciber Research

Woodstock OX2O 1RW UK

Phone: + 44 1993 811561

<Anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com> https://ciber-research.uk/

BORN AND LIVED: United Kingdom.

EARLY LIFE: Lived early life in Nottingham, went to a local High School and in 1961 matriculated at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, where my life changed positively.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: After a degree (MA) majoring in History and Theology, I researched in ecclesiastical history in Cambridge but did not submit my dissertation and became assistant librarian at New College Oxford. In 1971, began my main career as an academic publisher leading to 1971-1981 Academic Press London editorial director (member of a divisional board): 1982-1988 Oxford University Press leading to Head of Journals: 1988-1998 The Thomson Corporation (member of a divisional board) from Publishing Director Chapman & Hall to Publishing Director International Thomson Publishing — Journals and Intellectual Property Director Thomson Professional. From 2005 to 2012, I entered the Academy, I was a senior lecturer at UCL. I was responsible for setting up the Centre for Publishing at UCL (with Professor David Nicholas) and the Publishing MA course (with Professor Iain Stevenson). Director of the Charleston Library Conference since 1998, ongoing Advisory Board member for Research to Reader conference since 2016, Member of the Editorial Board of The Charleston Advisor 2003 ongoing. Co-founder of and Principal Consultant to the CIBER research group 2002 ongoing. I am certificated as an interviewer in social and behavioural science research under requirements set by the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. Various consultancies since 1998 ongoing.

FAMILY: Married Sarah mycologist (now poet and novelist) in 1971. Two children and four grandchildren.

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

IN MY SPARE TIME: Mostly family.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Varies according to mood.

PET PEEVES: People who do not like dogs.

PHILOSOPHY: Personal.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: I have 2 Professional Awards: 2006 Inaugural recipient of the Vicky Speck ABC/Clio Leadership Award (Charleston Library Conference). This was a total surprise and since then Charleston is my professional home. 2013 recipient of the ALPSP Award for Contribution to Scholarly Publishing.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: At my age (81) I hope to continue in work with no interest in retirement and hoping I do not have to for health reasons.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Academic publishers and academic librarians serve the research community. I cannot see their roles going away.

Charles Watkinson

Associate University Librarian, Publishing University of Michigan Library

Shapiro Library, 919 S. University Avenue

Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA

Phone: 734-936-0452

Fax: 734-615-1540

<watkinc@umich.edu>

https://www.lib.umich.edu/users/watkinc

BORN AND LIVED: Born Oxford, UK. Lived in Connecticut, New Jersey, Indiana, and Michigan, with shorter stints in Greece and Japan.

EARLY LIFE: Growing up near Oxford, UK, and going to college in Cambridge, UK. Think Inspector Morse without the murders. I dig archaeology, but doing a degree in the subject is not a guarantee of relevant employment. Proud son of publishing guru Anthony (see above), and scientist and science communicator Sarah. Admiring brother of international sustainability expert Ruth Knight.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: Started as a bookseller, morphed into a publisher, became classified as a librarian. I have continued to work with archaeologists throughout my career, which makes me conscious of multiverse of research data, the metadata mess we’re in, and the sacred duty of digital preservation. I am Director of University of Michigan Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing at University of Michigan Library. I have been honored to serve as president

of the Association of University Presses and as a board member of the OAPEN Foundation and Directory of Open Access Books.

FAMILY: Wonderful wife and data scientist Dr. Heather Rypkema, son Alexander (12), daughter Victoria (10). Maine-Coonish-cats (maybe some Ragdoll in there?) Mike and Jack – each about 8 years old and 20 pounds each.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Driving children to things (theater rehearsals, horse, cello, Magic the Gathering, DnD).

FAVORITE BOOKS: I am an embarrassingly unserious reader. Anything by Robert Harris (Fatherland, Dictator, Pompeii, Archangel) or Robert Galbraith (Cormoran Strike) makes me happy.

PET PEEVES: Meetings without agendas, opening a clean dishwasher but not emptying it.

PHILOSOPHY: Nothing important happens in the office (thank you, Lanell White and the Pragmatic Institute).

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Co-founding the Fulcrum platform for multimodal eBook scholarship (fulcrum.org) with my colleague Jeremy Morse and investment from the Mellon Foundation. By leveraging data curation infrastructure originally built for the sciences, Fulcrum makes publishing digital scholarship safe for humanists. Fulcrum now hosts over 10,000 books and book-like things from more than 125 publishers.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: Widespread acknowledgment that ensuring the durability, accessibility, discoverability, and interoperability of the multiple outputs of community-based scholarship is our primary duty as information professionals.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Profound digital transformation happening despite us. I worry that information professionals working in higher education institutions (e.g., librarians, publishers, archivists, curators) are focused inward, obsessed with our guilds and status, at exactly the time when we should be out and about, curiously investigating the changes happening in our environment. We should be listening to the pain points and opportunities that authors are experiencing as they publish their work in new, digitally-native ways. Instead we are ossifying existing structures that only serve to alienate and exclude the knowledge creators we exist to serve. Our colleagues in the commercial sector are often more curious and better at listening for relevance than those of us fortunate to work on college and university campuses. Why is that, when groundbreaking research and scholarship is literally happening outside our doors?

COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Big Ten Academic Alliance

1819 South Neil Street, Suite D

Champaign, IL 61820-7271

Phone: (217) 333-8475

Fax: (217) 244-7127

<info@btaa.org> • btaa.org

BACKGROUND/HISTORY: The Big Ten Academic Alliance was established by the presidents of the Big Ten Conference members in 1958 as the athletic league’s academic counterpart. Initially known as the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the consortium’s name was changed to the Big Ten Academic Alliance in 2016 to better reflect the composition of the member institutions.

In 1958, a membership invitation was extended to the University of Chicago, one of the founding members of the Big Ten who withdrew from the conference in 1946, and was accepted. The Big Ten Academic Alliance invited the Pennsylvania State University to join the consortium following its admittance to the Big Ten in 1990. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln joined the Big Ten in 2011, and the Big Ten Academic Alliance extended an invitation that culminated in UN-L’s admittance to the consortium on July 1, 2011. The University of Maryland and Rutgers University-New Brunswick was welcomed to membership July 1, 2013, in the advent of the schools’ admittance to the Big Ten in 2014.

The history of Big Ten Academic Alliance (known then as the CIC) was written by founder Herman B Wells, Indiana University president from

1938 to 1962, and published in the Fall 1967 issue of Educational Record, a publication of the American Council on Education, Washington, D.C.

For more on the consortium, the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s 5-minute video has an overview of programs, initiatives, and impact of this historic collaborative.

The Library Initiatives team focus on three objectives--optimizing student and faculty access to the combined resources of our libraries; maximizing cost, time, and space savings; and supporting a collaborative environment where library staff can work together to solve their mutual problems.

NUMBER OF STAFF AND RESPONSIBILITIES: 22 staff.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR ORGANIZATION WILL BE LIKE IN FIVE YEARS? The BTAA Library Initiatives is working to build the BIG Collection, a commitment to an interdependent future. Our goal for the next several years is to reach the first milemarker for our organizations of “Any content, to anyone, from anywhere … now and in the future.”

WHAT EXCITES OR FRIGHTENS YOU ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? The BTAA is working on incredible initives like the Big Ten Open Books project and our Shared Print Program. The BIG Collection framework creates so many possibilities for action.

LIBRARY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

University of Michigan Library, Publishing Division

Shapiro Library, 919 S. University Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109 USA

Phone: (734) 764-4388

Fax: (734) 615-1540 publishing.umich.edu

BACKGROUND/HISTORY: The Publishing division, also known as Michigan Publishing, was formed in 2012 through a merger of the University of Michigan Press with the Library’s Scholarly Publishing Office. Michigan Publishing now consists of three parts — University of Michigan Press, Michigan Publishing Services, and Deep Blue Repository and Research Data Services.

NUMBER OF STAFF AND RESPONSIBILITIES: 42 specialists. This includes 4 data curation, 5 publishing technology, 13 publishing production, 9 acquisitions editorial, 7 sales and marketing, 4 business and administration.

OVERALL LIBRARY BUDGET: The Publishing division budget is $5 million. The complete U-M Library budget is $30 million for salaries and wages, $25 million for materials, https://lib.umich.edu/about-us/aboutlibrary/assessment/statistical-highlights

TYPES OF MATERIALS YOU BUY (EBOOKS, TEXTBOOKS, DVDS, VIDEO STREAMING SERVICES, DATABASES, OTHER): All of the above are bought by U-M Library. The Publishing division produces books, journals, datasets, and digital projects.

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES DOES YOUR LIBRARY USE TO SERVE MOBILE USERS? The Publishing division has its own enhanced eBooks platform, Fulcrum, and collaborates to host journals on Janeway. Fulcrum shares a Samvera Fedora stack with our data curation platform, Deep Blue data. The Deep Blue docs repository is run on DSpace.

DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE AN ILS OR ARE YOU PART OF A COLLABORATIVE ILS? U-M Library uses Alma.

DO YOU HAVE A DISCOVERY SYSTEM? U-M Library uses Primo. DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE A COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT OR SIMILAR DEPARTMENT? U-M Library has a collection development team.

IF SO, WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET AND WHAT TYPES OF MATERIALS ARE YOU PURCHASING? PRINT OR ELECTRONIC OR BOTH? The budget is $25 million, used for print and electronic resources.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR LIBRARY WILL BE LIKE IN FIVE YEARS? The U-M Library articulates a set of Strategic Directions and Objectives that charts its course for the next five years: https://lib. umich.edu/about-us/about-library/strategic-directions-and-objectives The Publishing division is focused on developing, cultivating, and supporting new publishing models that maximize access to highquality scholarship, with a focus on sustainable monograph and journal publishing, reusable research data, and interoperable open infrastructure.

WHAT EXCITES OR FRIGHTENS YOU ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? We are incurring increasing technical debt in establishing digital preservation solutions that can accommodate the proliferation of digital outputs that scholars are creating.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU THINK OUR READERS SHOULD KNOW? Michigan Publishing doesn’t just serve the U-M community. We provide affordable, academy-owned support infrastructures for an increasing range of philosophically-aligned partners. Publishers wishing to control their own digital destiny can email us at <mpublishing@umich.edu>.

Back Talk — The Future of Reading

Column Editor: Jim O’Donnell (University Librarian, Arizona State University) <jod@asu.edu>

Every day when I come to my office, I find myself surrounded by my oldest friends. The photo here shows what they look like: books that have been with me since early adolescence, some of them. If you squint hard, you can see the copy of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi that I read through about three times when I was twelve years old, utterly fascinated by his description of “learning the river.” Decades later, when I spent a lot of time driving the New Jersey Turnpike, it was fun to think that I was “learning the turnpike” the same way. When did I switch over to the truck lanes, which spur did I choose at the northern end, and how long could I stand listening to the worst talk radio station in America because they also had the best traffic reports?

Books are powerful, of course. But books also require significant investments. It isn’t just the 75 cents I paid for Mark Twain long ago, not just the cost in time and attention and shelf space in preserving the volume till now — it’s the time books take that really adds up. When I was twelve, I had all the time in the world, but I haven’t had that kind of idyllic summer very often since. The office I keep those books in is chock full of volumes that have joined my journeys since then and no, I haven’t read them all, but every one has taken time and attention and most of them have taken a great deal of that time and attention.

What I’m saying is that reading books is hard — very hard and very time-intensive. There are books in this office that I have spent a hundred hours working through — 1/20th of a 52-week, 40-hour week working year. And there are a good many of these books that I’ve not read that I would truly love to read, but life is short, and time is precious.

Nothing I’ve said yet should be a surprise to anybody — other than the kid obsessed with Mark Twain.

We’ve all grown up with and lived in a world in which the power of books is so great that we’ve learned to accept the high cost in time and attention they exact. So, what if there’s an alternative?

Now let me turn from nostalgia to fantasy. What if there were an Astonishing Invention (AI for short) that could ingest the content of a book I wanted to read in an instant, digest it for three instants, and give me back a serious analytical digest (with footnotes) highlighting exactly the issues I was asking it to look for. And that 400-page book turned into a five-page precis? I suspect this future is easy enough to imagine, but consider the consequences.

That year in graduate school where I claim to have read 400 books? What if that had taken me a couple of weeks instead of a year? How much else could I devour in a whole year? Wouldn’t that process, moreover, help me identify the half dozen books that really do deserve the hundred-hour treatment? If I were the first academic on my block to have that Astonishing Invention, wouldn’t I have a competitive advantage in getting my dissertation done (and done well), in getting that tenure book written and another one on the way, in making the professional splash that got me invitations to better jobs somewhere else — if that were the case, wouldn’t I jump at the chance?

Sure, there’s another version of my personality that would rather not do that, would rather devote the time and attention and care to really mastering a smaller body of material. But if I were to forego the Astonishing Invention, wouldn’t somebody else be getting the jobs I might want? Could I really imagine that a lot of people would join me in foregoing and pass up the opportunity to get on with things?

I’m putting all this in terms of a very familiar, traditional academic profession and a very familiar, traditional academic professor’s ways of thinking and acting. A young man in his late 40s — astonishing how many young people are in their 40s nowadays, don’t you think? — who wears a black t-shirt and invests in video games saw me at a meeting last year and was kind enough to tell me that my khakis and tweed and collared shirts were now to be thought of as geezer wear, so this is how I think.

Imagine, however, a world in which the incentive to push books aside, rely on the Astonishing Invention, and learn to process information in a wholly different way from what we’ve done for the last 2,500 years. That would be a very different world in ways we can’t now imagine. Will we be living there the day after tomorrow?