Against the Grain V35#4 September, 2023 Full Issue

ISSN: 1043-2094

Reimagining Primary Sources Through Collaboration

This issue is Sponsored by AM

Edited by Holly Francis (Senior Marketing Manager, AM)

Begins on Page 14

If Rumors Were Horses

Whew, we have a lot going on in library and publishing land! Read on for this installment of “Rumors!”

People

A big thank you to Sven Fund for helping to plan and organize the event at Frankfurt mentioned above. Sven is also our International Column Editor for “Looking Over the Edge!” Check out the article on pg 51 Connecting Preprints and Peer Review: Toward Better Provenance, Quality, and Trustworthiness by Alberto Pepe, Director, Strategy and Innovation, Wiley, CoFounder Authorea.

Great news! Maddie Hinds, Leah’s lovely daughter, just got engaged! Her fiancé’s name is Selwyn Salter. He is obviously very romantic since he proposed to her on a scenic overlook on Grandfather Mountain! Several pictures are included here! Maddie has served as a graphic design intern previously for the conference, and has designed several of the conference theme

“Linking Publishers, Vendors and Librarians”

OPEN MAKING IT EASY TO BE

Understanding publishing agreements, managing credits, assigning approvals…managing open access research for your institution doesn’t have to be difficult.

Our industry-leading platforms have been built in partnership with the Copyright Clearance Center with researchers and institutions in mind to make processing open access easy. We’re constantly streamlining the process so that you can spend less time on administration, letting you focus on telling the world about the latest in chemical research.

Science has the greatest impact when it’s open to everyone—and we’ll work with you to find the options that work best for your organization.

To find out how ACS can help your institution reach its open science goals, visit

ACSOpenScience.org

GOBI: The Ultimate E-Book Source

With the widest range of e-book acquisition models, access options and platforms in the industry, GOBI enables libraries to choose the customized acquisition approach that works for their unique needs.

When libraries order e-books in GOBI, they can:

Choose from more than 25 publisher and aggregator platforms and the broadest range of acquisition models, including DDA, EBA and eCollections

Benefit from deduplication for all orders, across models and formats

Save staff time spent selecting relevant titles while being confident in what is being acquired

Simplify your library workflow with GOBI.

Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094) (USPS: 012-618), Copyright 2023 by the name Against the Grain, LLC is published six times a year in February, April, June, September, November, and December/ January by Against the Grain, LLC. Business and Editorial Offices: PO Box 799, 1712 Thompson Ave., Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. Accounting and Circulation Offices: same. Subscribe online at https://www.charleston-hub.com/membership-options/

Editor:

Katina Strauch (Retired, College of Charleston)

Associate Editors:

Cris Ferguson (Murray State)

Tom Gilson (Retired, College of Charleston)

Matthew Ismail (Charleston Hub)

Research Editors:

Judy Luther (Informed Strategies)

Assistants to the Editor:

Ileana Jacks

Toni Nix (Just Right Group, LLC)

International Editor:

Rossana Morriello (Politecnico di Torino)

Contributing Editors:

Glenda Alvin (Tennessee State University) Deni Auclair (De Gruyter)

Rick Anderson (Brigham Young University)

Sever Bordeianu (U. of New Mexico)

Todd Carpenter (NISO)

Eleanor Cook (East Carolina University)

Will Cross (NC State University)

Anne Doherty (Choice)

Michelle Flinchbaugh (U. of MD Baltimore County)

Joyce Dixon-Fyle (DePauw University)

Michael Gruenberg (Gruenberg Consulting, LLC)

Chuck Hamaker (Retired, UNC, Charlotte)

Bob Holley (Retired, Wayne State University)

Donna Jacobs (MUSC)

Ramune Kubilius (Northwestern University)

Myer Kutz (Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.)

Tom Leonhardt (Retired)

Stacey Marien (American University)

Jack Montgomery (Georgia Southern University Libraries)

Alayne Mundt (American University)

Bob Nardini (ProQuest)

Jim O’Donnell (Arizona State University)

Ann Okerson (Center for Research Libraries)

Anthony Paganelli (Western Kentucky University)

Rita Ricketts (Blackwell’s)

Jared Seay (College of Charleston)

Corey Seeman (University of Michigan)

Lindsay Wertman (IGI Global)

ATG Proofreader:

Caroline Goldsmith (Charleston Hub)

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.

Production & Ad Sales:

Toni Nix, Just Right Group, LLC., P.O. Box 412, Cottageville, SC 29435, phone: 843-835-8604 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Advertising Information:

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

Publisher:

A. Bruce Strauch

Send correspondence, press releases, etc., to: Katina Strauch, Editor, Against the Grain, LLC Post Office Box 799 Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482 cell: 843-509-2848 <kstrauch@comcast.net>

Authors’ opinions are to be regarded as their own. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This issue was produced on an iMac using Microsoft Word, and Adobe CC software under Mac OS Monterey. Against the Grain is copyright ©2023

by Katina Strauch

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

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, or Molecular Case Studies. 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 (Sweltering!) Editor:

We’re battening down the hatches for Hurricane Idalia here in South Carolina at dateline. Lots and lots of rain expected, but before the storm we’ve had weeks and weeks with sweltering temps and drought! When it rains it pours for sure!

This issue is sponsored by AM and is guest edited by Holly Francis, Senior Marketing Manager, AM. Holly has put together a fantastic list of featured articles and authors on the topic of “Reimagining Primary Sources through Collaboration.” There’s an amazing amount of collaboration happening out there between libraries, archives, publishers! It was very encouraging to read about all of the different initiatives out there. James Gatheral, Freelance Writer, addresses Shakespeare’s First Folio, archival collaborations, and an open access resource called “First Folios Compared.” Neel Agrawal, Digital Projects Librarian at Loyola Marymount University’s William H. Hannon Library, discusses LMU’s early adoption of Quartex and their partnerships with DPLA, the California Digital Library, and more. Dot Kelly, Engagement Manager for AM, reports on a collaborative initiative conceived and led by the University of Minnesota to expand access to primary sources for National History Day. Louise Hemmings, Editorial Director at AM, tells us about a collaboration between

Letters to the Editor

AM and the British Film Institute and the unique opportunities of audio-visual primary sources in opening up new pathways to discover, learn and create. And last but not least, we have Maureen Russell (Archivist, Ethnomusicology Archive, UCLA) and Supeena Insee Adler (Adjunct Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, UCLA) who write about Digital Access in a Pandemic: Integrating and Utilizing AM’s Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings at UCLA.

We have two fascinating interviews, both conducted by Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, ATG) and Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub) as well! Karen Phillips, Executive VP Learning and UK Executive Lead, Sage, talks about her unique role at Sage, the many recent changes for the company, including a rebranding, new logo, several acquisitions, new products and resources, and more. We also interviewed Tim Smith, Head of Portfolio Development, IOP Publishing, about the launch of a new open access environmental research journal: Environmental Research: Energy.

Lots to dig into here, and lots to read up on while we’re waiting out the rain! I’m sure it will be sweltering again soon before summer lets South Carolina go for the year.

Love, Yr.Ed.

Send letters to <kstrauch@comcast.net>, phone 843-509-2848, or snail mail: Against the Grain, Post Office Box 799, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. You can also send a letter to the editor from the Charleston Hub at http://www.charleston-hub.com/contact-us/.

Dear Katina:

I really like your post “Tea Time with Katina and Leah.” It will be a great addition to the website! And I love the title that you all came up with.

The first item about SUCHO reminded me that we interviewed them awhile back.

We might want to share this link to the interview in an upcoming post — ATGthePodcast 163 –SUCHO: Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online.

Best, Tom Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain; Head of Reference Emeritus, Addlestone Library, College of Charleston) <GilsonT@cofc.edu>

Great! I am trying to do one of those a week. I will share the link in next week’s post, okay. If you have anything you want us to add, please send it on! Glad you like it!

I can’t take credit for the title! It was Caroline Goldsmith’s suggestion! What a great group you all are! And I do love doing Tea Time every week! It keeps me busy and engaged!

Thanks, Katina

Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain) <kstrauch@comcast.net>

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

Learning Resources

A complete suite.

Independence with impact

At Sage, we take ‘independence with impact’ seriously. Today, we are controlled by a group of trustees charged with maintaining our independence and mission indefinitely. This means that our success is measured not by our share price, but by how well we fulfill our mission of building bridges to knowledge.

With our mission at the forefront of everything we do, we strive to make a positive impact in the world by creating teaching and research solutions that will support a more equitable academic future for all. We believe that true independence allows us to focus on what really matters – delivering the best content and resources to our customers.

For supercharging research. Supporting student success. And creating impact.

Rumors continued from page 1

logos. She also has worked at the Registration Check-in Desk and the Information Desk on site at the conference, so be sure to say congratulations if you see her this November in Charleston!

Big news of an organizational change at OhioNet: Nancy Kirkpatrick, CEO, has been appointed Dean of University Libraries at Florida International University in Miami and will be leaving OhioNet at the end of September. Congrats, Nancy!

More changes at Publisher’s Weekly: Jim Milliot, editorial director of Publishers Weekly since 2014, will retire at the end of 2023. Milliot joined PW in 1993 as business and news editor and, after serving in several different capacities, was named co-editorial director with Michael Coffey in 2010, following the sale of the company to George Slowik Jr. After Coffey’s retirement, Milliot was appointed sole editorial director. With Milliot’s pending retirement, Jonathan Segura has been appointed co-editorial director, and will become editorial director in January.

We were deeply saddened to hear of the recent passing of John Warnock, Adobe co-founder and inventor of the PDF. From the Guardian: “Widely known for creating the pioneering technology — in full, the portable document format — that changed the way documents are shared and printed, Warnock died on 19 August, Adobe said. “John’s brilliance and technology innovations changed the world,” Adobe said. “It is a sad day for the Adobe community and the industry for which he has been an inspiration for decades.” Warnock is survived by his wife, Marva Mullins, three children and four grandchildren. Christopher Warnock, CEO of Helper Systems, is his son.

Upcoming Events

We’re planning a bam-zowie Charleston In Between on Peer Review Challenges and Opportunities, a virtual conference to be held September 6-7. Shout out to the amazing Cris Ferguson, Dean of Libraries at Murray State University, for her hard work and organization to bring this event to life. Thanks also to Heather Staines, Director of Community Engagement and Senior Consultant at Delta Think, for her work as a Conference Director helping with the series. “Peer review is one of the most important signals of trust and integrity in the research life cycle, but this effort is under considerable stress as the number of scholarly papers increase and activities by bad actors abound. This Charleston In Between will look at the current state of peer review, as well as its future, bringing multiple stakeholders to the table and considering new models and new technologies. Sessions address issues such as article retractions, open peer review, equity in peer review and more. Speakers include representative stakeholders in the peer review process, including publishers, researchers, and librarians.” Full program and registration available here!

The Charleston Conference is also planning our first inperson academic conference event at the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair on Friday, October 20, from 9:30 am - 12:00 pm. This event is part of the Publishing Perspectives Forum and is free for anyone attending the book fair! It will feature a networking breakfast followed by two panels, one on research integrity chaired by Sven Fund (Senior Director, Knowledge Unlatched), and one on sustainability chaired by our Executive Director Leah Hinds. We even have discounted book fair tickets available for ATG subscribers or Charleston Conference attendees. Full program and more details here!

That same week, Leah Hinds will also be attending the STM Conference: OPEN/SHIFT. Will you be there? Contact Leah to set up a meeting in Frankfurt.

October is a busy month for meetings! Be sure to check out the NISO Plus Forum to be held at the AGU headquarters in Washington, DC on October 3, 2023. The theme of the day of conversation and problem solving is AI & Machine Learning in Scholarly Publishing: Services, Data, and Ethics.

And why not make one trip count for two meetings! The SSP New Directions seminar will also be held in the AGU Conference Center and online October 4 & 5, 2023.

DC is the place to be, because Silverchair’s Platform Strategies meeting will also be held there on September 27. The in-person Platform Strategies event returns after a three-year hiatus with renewed energy and excitement to tackle the technology challenges facing the scholarly publishing industry.

Anniversary Celebrations

In May, Knowledge Unlatched celebrated a significant milestone as it marked ten years of OA publishing in 2023. To commemorate this achievement, KU is thrilled to announce the launch of its tenth round of funding, which has to date supported the publication of over 4,000 scholarly books and 50 journals in a range of humanities, sciences, and social sciences. Knowledge Unlatched is part of Wiley Partner Solutions.

And the DOAJ is celebrating a 20 year anniversary: open, global, and trusted since 2003. DOAJ Founder, Lars Bjørnshauge, was the driving force behind turning DOAJ into a global and trusted service, but collective efforts from different players also made DOAJ into the service it is today.

On 12th May 2003, Lund University in Sweden launched a new service that would give prominence to open access journals. In 2002, Lars Bjørnshauge was Lund University Library Director and was hosting the Nordic Conference on Scholarly Communication just a few months after the game-changing Budapest Open Access Initiative declaration. A member of the audience suggested that someone should start a list of open access journals. As the conference host, Lars volunteered that Lund should do this. Congratulations on 20 years!

Company/Product News

Hum recently announced the open source release of their new large language model (LLM), Lodestone. Lodestone is the new LLM model powering Alchemist. “We are building general AI capabilities for the publisher community, and we’re glad to share along the way,” said Dustin Smith, Hum’s Co-Founder & President. “Lodestone represents an upgraded foundation for Alchemist, and can be adapted for a wide array of AI applications.”

Tea Time

Have you been paying attention to Tea Time by Katina and Leah? A new post is added each Friday at https://www. charleston-hub.com/category/rumors/. Here are a few recent excerpts:

1) Just heard from the charmingly peripatetic Anthony Watkinson. He and his wife Sarah and his daughter Ruth and her husband and their two children and their dogs have just spent the day at the Northumberland County show. Thousands of others (many of them farmers) were around looking at horses, cattle, sheep, goats, sheepdog demonstrations, a bagpipe band and farmers of both sexes doing tugs of war with tractors! Sounds like a P.G Wodehouse story! How refreshing in these computerdominated days!

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

Unlock the power of audiobooks for your academic library

Enhance accessibility, accommodate diverse learning styles and provide flexible, on-the-go studying options with audiobooks. Leverage OverDrive Academic’s unrivaled catalog to empower your students with engaging and immersive educational experiences. And it’s all available anytime, anywhere through the award-winning Libby reading app.

And! Here is more information about Sarah Watkinson! Sarah Watkinson’s debut poetry pamphlet Dung Beetles Navigate by Starlight won the 2016 Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Prize. From 2019-20 she was inaugural writer in residence at Wytham Woods, producing The Woods of Hazel with Romola Parish. Her debut full collection Photovoltaic (2021) was long listed for the Laurel Prize 2022 and is published by Graft Poetry. The collection is available to buy directly from the publisher, Waterstones or from Amazon. A novel Native Soil will be published 6th October 2023 and is available for pre-order on Amazon. As emeritus research fellow in fungal biology, Sarah has worked extensively on the activities of fungal networks in woodland, and co-authored three editions of the international graduate textbook The Fungi, Elsevier. She is interested in exploring the creative common ground between science and poetry, co-organising interdisciplinary meetings of poets and scientists in Oxford through the TORCH SciPo network, founded in 2016 with poet Jenny Lewis. And her forthcoming novel! Native Soil sounds intriguing! I just ordered an advanced copy from Blackwells!

2) The Gala reception at the Charleston

Conference every year is generally held at the South Carolina Aquarium. We have learned that the Aquarium has just received $1.5 million through the SC state budget. Have you visited the Sea Turtle Care Center yet? We are looking forward to the Gala reception in November 2023! See you there! Sponsored by University of Toronto Press!

3) Technology is everywhere! Even for horse-drawn carriages in downtown Charleston! I was surprised to learn that there are an average of 40,000 carriage rides a year between Charleston’s four carriage companies, and it makes sense that horses when they have to go, they go, causing clean up problems. Enter Daniel Riccio, director of Livability and Tourism with GPS monitors that carriage drivers can wear with clickers to mark the spot needing cleanup.

Submit your stories and tidbits for Rumors or Tea Time to editors@against-the-grain.com. We want to hear from you!!!

Charleston Conference

We’re gearing up for another unforgettable year of the Charleston Conference. The vendor showcase has already sold out all but 6 booths, and registrations are coming in strong. Our plenary sessions this year include:

• Executive Panel: Large Publishing Organizations, moderated by Roger Schonfeld, Vice President, Organizational Strategy / ITHAKA; Libraries, Scholarly Communication, and Museums / Ithaka S+R; featuring

continued on page 17

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

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>

Let’s Read Hollywood

(1) Theodore Roszak, Flicker (1991) (700-page novel about obsessively searching for prints and footage of obscure films);

(2) Julia Phillips, You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again (1991) (Julia was the producer of “The Sting,” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” She breaks the two taboos by dissing A-list talent and revealing her serious drug habit. Spielberg looks at a property, she says: “With a little work, it could house your ego.”); (3) Gemma Solana and Antonio Boneu, Uncredited (2007) (movie history from the unusual angle of frame-by-frame credit sequences); (4) Peter Biskind, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998) (13 years between “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Heaven’s Gate” marked last time it was exciting to make movies in Hollywood); (5) Michael Ovitz, Who Is Michael Ovitz? (2018) (“Hollywood is like High School with money.”)

See: Charles Elton, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, March 11-12, 2023, p.C8. Elton is the author of “Cimino: The Deer Hunter, Heaven’s Gate, and the Price of a Vision.”

170 Million and Counting

Liz Jolly is the Chief Librarian for the British Library with its collection of 170 million books, newspapers, maps, sound recordings, patents, and drawings. She has overall responsibility for seeing that people can access those items.

She moves by train between the London St. Pancras site and Boston Spa in Yorkshire, using the travel time to catch up on emails. On location, she likes to get away between meetings and see the buzz of people using the Reading Rooms and the galleries.

Her favorite item is the archive of Andrea Levy including working drafts of her five published novels.

See: “A day with … LIZ JOLLY,” Britain, Volume 91 Issue 3, p.81.

Those Salacious French

French Finance Minister, Bruno LeMaire, has published a racy novel, and all of France is a-buzz. Fugue Américaine hit the market the day before France’s credit rating was downgraded by rating agency Fitch. And that brought out the usual political rants of why wasn’t he at work helping the citizens.

LeMaire had published a previous novel, The Minister, about his opposition to the Iraq War. It contained a bath time caress from his wife.

But Fugue ramps up the raunch. “The prose veers into ribald and almost clinical terminology, landing somewhere between erotica and shoptalk at a proctologists’ convention.”

Alexandre Gefen, literary critic, weighed in with: “The French people can forgive a politician for writing erotic novels, but they can’t forgive a politician for writing them badly.”

See: Noemie Bisserre and Sam Schechner, “Even the French are Blushing,” The Wall Street Journal, May 31, 2023, p.A1.

Obits of Note

Martin Amis (1949-2023) “grew up in the long shadow” of his father Kingsley Amis, one of Britain’s comic geniuses. He had little interest in the writing life until his stepmother, novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, got him to read Pride and Prejudice. He was hooked.

Two years out of Oxford, in 1973, he published The Rachel Papers and won the Somerset Maugham Prize. He kept wielding his pen “with wit and ambition.” Money: A Suicide Note, London Fields, The Information all skewered Britain’s slide into consumerism and vugarity.

He was famous for literary feuds and “shoot from the hip” interviews. Late in life, he mellowed and said: “This is literature’s dewy little secret. Its energy is the energy of love.”

See: “The acclaimed novelist who ruffled feathers,” The Week, June 2, 2023, p.35.

Cynthia Weil (1940-2023) with her husband Barry Mann were stalwarts of the Brill Building. They turned out hundreds of songs that you associate with the singers rather than the writers.

“Walking in the Rain.” “On Broadway.” “We Gotta Get Outta This Place,” for the Animals. “Make Your Own Kind of Music” for Mama Cass. “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” sung by the Righteous Brothers became the most replayed song of the 20th Century.

“When they are successful,” said Weil, “songs are like little novels. They paint a picture of the human condition.”

See: “The pop lyricist who gave us that lovin’ feeling,” The Week, June 16, 2023, p.35.

Clip and Mail

There is a subculture of people who still enjoy clipping articles from newspapers and mailing them to family and friends. The growth of the Internet has not slowed them as much as the death of newspapers; there isn’t much to snip out.

Stephen Butkus is 71 and carries on his father’s tradition. Dad used to take six newspapers, but if you didn’t get up early, you were liable to find your paper looking like Swiss cheese.

Butkus is not alone. Shirley Finney, 80, clips hers with pinking shears for nice zig-zag edges. She sends cartoons to utility companies to get in digs at the expense of their services.

The advice columns are popular with parents who want to give not-so-subtle criticism to children or I-told-you-so settling of arguments.

See: Sarah Needleman, “You’ll Want to Cut This One Out,” The Wall Street Journal, June 1, 2023, p.A1.

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

Stop searching. Start finding.

The R2 Digital Library SaaS database is affordable, streamlines collection management, and is easy for your patrons to use.

Pricing and Collection Management

• Competitive pricing.

• Thousands of eBooks, videos, free resources, and more.

• eBooks from hard-to-find associations and scholarly publishers.

• Real-time usage data.

• Self-serve purchase.

• Immediate content access.

Patron Support

• The R2 platform enables patrons to find information quickly.

• Collections for PTSD, Behavioral Health, Oncology, Palliative Care, and much more!

• Dynamic content discoverability—NOT a static database/product PDF.

• Topic-driven search results can be filtered into specific practice areas.

• Discoverability tools and marketing materials available.

• Access is available anywhere 24/7.

Enhance your existing R2 Digital Library subscription or start an immediate, FREE trial!

Get started!

Want to learn more about the R2 Digital Library? Visit R2library.com or contact customerservice@r2library.com.

The Rich Eat Nantucket

Nantucket has always meant wealth, but hoo boy! The billionaires began fleeing covid locked-down NYC. Then the island lengthened its runway to take private jets, and it became a flood.

Some recent house sales have begun kissing $38 million, and the unwritten old money code of conduct has been kicked aside by nouveau riche feuds. But there’s a deeper problem. The average home price has hit $4 million which means plumbers and electricians etc. can’t afford the island.

The Nantucket Atheneum is the town library since 1834. It can’t keep librarians, so the Board had to vote to drop $3.5 million for two modest homes for them to live.

There is grim talk of the island actually toppling over with nothing underneath to support the obscenely wealthy.

See: William D. Cohan, “The Battle for Nantucket,” Town & Country, Summer 2023, p.96.

Sly Travel Tips

Sick of nasty fees for both checked and carry-on luggage? What airlines charmingly call “ancillary revenue sources.” Invest in a multi-pocket fishing vest and stuff it with clothes. The back pocket is large enough for a laptop. Put it in the overhead once you’re on board.

Chelsea Dickinson of cheapholidayexpert.com pulls the foam from a travel pillow and stuffs it with clothes.

See: Harriet Torry, “Hate Baggage Fees? Wear a Fishing Vest on the Plane,” The Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2023, p.A1.

Still Going Strong at 90

Lady Antonia Fraser, made famous by her bio of Mary Queen of Scots, has hit 90 and has a new book out — with Widenfeld & Nicholson of course. It’s a biography of 18th century aristocrat Lady Caroline Lamb subtitled “A Free Spirit.” She sported pageboy curls and developed a passion for Lord Byron who treated her terribly.

“What makes me happy,” she says, “is having a project on the go.”

Her charity work is for Give a Book, providing “first night” books for new prisoners and story books for fathers in prison who don’t know what to talk about with their children.

See: Jane Wheatley, “What makes me happy is a project,” Country Life, May 10, 2023, p.104.

Let’s Read Rock ‘n’ Roll Memoirs

(1) Tony Sanchez, Up and Down with the Rolling Stones (1979) (This is the one the Stones tried to quash written by Keith Richard’s dogsbody and drug dealer. Drugs, black magic, demented sex. Hoo-ha!); (2) Kim Gordon, Girl in a Band (2015) (Kim, bassist and singer, tells of cheap thrills as part of Sonic Youth); (3) David Lee Roth, Crazy From the Heat (1997) (scantily edited; chapters vary in length from six sentences to six pages);

(4) Pamela Des Barres, I’m With the Band (1987) (“Miss Pamela” Queen of the Groupies bedded a staggering list of rockers and pop culture luminaries); (5) Ozzy Osbourne, I Am Ozzy (2009) (bat-chomping Prince of Darkness reveals himself as just a working class bloke who made good).

See: John Wray, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, June 24-25, 2023, p.C8. John is the author of death-metal novel “Gone to the Wolves.”

Lit and Artistic Haunt

Chiswick in West London is a lush and leafy place much adorned with British Heritage blue plaques. W.B. Yeats, E.M. Forster, Iris Murdoch, Alexander Pope, and Harold Pinter all lived there. John Betjeman loved the place.

Vincent Van Gogh taught at a boys’ school. Camille Pissarro painted Bath Road and local cricket fields. William Hogarth lived and drew there, and Hogarth House is a museum.

William Thackeray placed an opening scene of Vanity Fair on Chiswick Mall, a street of Georgian homes with riverside gardens. And the article gets in a plug for Foster Books — hard to find, out-of-print, used and rare — 183 Chiswick High Road.

See: Mary Lou Longworth, “Where Luminaries Dallied,” The Wall Street Journal, July 1-2, 2023, p.D9.

Cook Book Plugs

Fresh baked biscuits are an icon of the South, so of course they turn up in lit. Thomas Wolfe described biscuits as “brownhued,” and Jem and Scout agree they “taste like cotton” in To Kill a Mockingbird. Biscuits appear in Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor and Toni Morrison.

To unravel the secrets of perfect biscuits, open Erika Council’s Still We Rise: A Love Letter to the Southern Biscuit with Over 70 Sweet and Savory Recipes. Council is the owner and mastermind of Atlanta’s Bomb Biscuit Co. It began as a pop-up and grew into a line-out-the-door restaurant.

She has the lineage to prove her worth. Her late grandmother was Mildred Cotton Council, proprietor of Mama Dip’s Kitchen in North Carolina.

Kenny Gilbert is a master of fried chicken and biscuits and caters for Oprah Winfrey. He co-owns Silkie’s Chicken & Champagne Bar in Jacksonville, Fl. His book is Southern Cooking, Global Flavors.

Dale Gray has a popular instagram feed and now South of Somewhere: Recipes and Stories from My Life in South Africa, South Korea & the American South.

Lauren McDuffie is a food blogger who has written Southern Lights: Easier, Lighter, and Better-for-You Recipes from the South.

See: Jonathan Miles, “Reads to Savor,” Garden & Gun, Aug./Sept., 2023, p.38.

Let’s Read Advertising

(1) David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising (1983) (a classic on advertising by a classic ad man); (2) Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End (2007) (a novel that captures the frenzied biz travel and binge drinking of the industry); (3) Alexandra Kleeman, You Too Can Have a Body Like Mine (2015) (another novel that lays bare the way commercials “treat customers like collateral damage”); (4) Mary Wells Lawrence, A Big Life (in Advertising) (2002) (the meteoric rise of Mary Wells in the 1960s. “If you’re not obsessive, you will always work for someone else.”); (5) Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis (2020) (Is the “attention economy” of online advertising a good investment or a bubble about to collapse?).

See: Ben Purkert, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, July 29-30, 2023, p.C8.

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

A Transformative Model for Open Access

• Unlimited Open Access publishing for all corresponding authors in ACM’s magazines, conference proceedings and journals

• Unlimited access for all authorized users to the full-text contents of the ACM Digital Library

• Fixed pricing for the length of the multi-year license term

• Automatic deposit at publication of accepted research articles into an institutional repository

• Default CC-BY author rights on all accepted research articles

ACM is committed to an Open Access future.

ACM Open is how we will get there.

AM: Empowering Humanities and Social Sciences Through Collaborative Partnerships

By Holly Francis (Senior Marketing Manager, AM) <Hollyf@amdigital.co.uk>

Collaborative partnerships and projects are something that will be familiar to every person reading this article. Whether it’s your library collaborating with faculty on information literacy, your institution collaborating with local groups or schools to encourage an interest in the humanities, or your special collections team collaborating with publishers on the development of new primary source databases, it’s a key part of successful library strategy.

As a digital publisher with collaboration at the heart of our mission, AM works with a diverse range of institutions to bring undiscovered and underrepresented historical sources to the scholarly community. These projects not only benefit researchers but also enable our partner institutions, such as yours, to reinvest in their collections and ensure their preservation for future generations.

Access to historical and cultural knowledge is more critical than ever for the global academic community. AM stands at the forefront of this endeavour, collaborating with libraries, archives, and universities to support students and faculty in the humanities and social sciences around the world. With our commitment to widening access to historically significant content, these collaborations, curated over our 30 year history, support the development of our groundbreaking digital resources in a variety of subject areas that continue to enhance research and teaching across all levels.

Collaboration in Action

AM’s recent archival collaboration project, First Folios Compared , brought together some of the world’s leading

libraries, archives, research institutions and academics to create a digital resource for comparing copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio, making it more accessible and engaging for users worldwide.

Claudine Nightingale, Publisher at AM, who led the First Folios Compared project, speaks passionately in an article featured later in this issue about the power of collaborative partnerships in developing and producing such a resource. As an Open Access database, built on our own platform — AM Quartex — it showcases the huge potential of global collective efforts and sets the stage for new scholarship opportunities in the future.

In this issue of Against the Grain

For this issue, we’ve drawn on some of our recent collaborative projects to bring you a selection of articles looking across library technology, teaching, and research. From engaging K-12 students in history to supporting long-term library strategies, the passionate team at AM plays a pivotal role in fulfilling and supporting the needs of the global academic community. Collaboration is at the heart of this approach and we will continue to work closely with communities and institutions to achieve our shared goals.

As we continue to forge ahead with our partners, we remain dedicated to our core values, pioneering new paths in historical research and education for generations to come.

If any of these articles inspire you to collaborate in new and exciting ways, we hope you reach out to us or any of the partners we’ve mentioned.

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

Archival Collaboration, Shakespeare’s First Folio and an Open Access Resource

By James Gatheral, PhD. (Freelance Writer)

Originally published in 1623, the First Folio is the first ever collected edition of William Shakespeare’s plays. Of the 36 plays in the book, half of them had not been previously printed; as such, without the First Folio, classic plays such as Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, and The Tempest might never have survived.

It is estimated that around 750 First Folios were printed, of which 233 are currently known to survive worldwide. AM’s First Folios Compared resource features 50 of them, from 26 locations worldwide.

As a major new Open Access project born of collaboration across an international network of libraries and archives, the resource has brought together over 20% of all extant copies of Shakespeare’s First Folio on a digital platform. Now, for the first time ever, researchers, students, and Shakespeare enthusiasts can compare copies of the First Folio online, side-by-side, from the comfort of their own home.

Transforming Access to Shakespeare’s First Folio

Most contributing copies have not been publicly available before, and several have been digitised specifically for this project.

Professor Emma Smith of Hertford College, University of Oxford, praised the collaborative nature of the project and its transformative contribution to enhancing access to the First Folio:

“This has been a really inspiring project, because of all the First Folio celebrations, it’s the one that feels most decoupled from ownership, and because it does two other things:

1. It makes literal something that’s always said but never truly experienced: that First Folio copies are unique.

2. It transforms access - enabling you to take a look at the First Folio without the hassle and nervousness of getting it out and handling it properly.”

Opening up New Avenues for Research and Teaching

Hosted on AM’s Quartex Platform, the First Folios Compared site presents a range of powerful new research opportunities for users.

A wide range of filters enables searching via deeper levels of metadata and static content across the whole site, with section metadata allowing users to search right down to specific scenes of plays for comparison. Meanwhile, Handwritten Text Recognition technology searches in-depth within the Folio itself, scanning every page for search results. Find every mention of the word “midnight”, for example, and the hit highlighting feature will display all results in a clear and accessible way, saving countless hours scanning each page for the search term.

The site features “how to” guides to get started using the purpose-built comparison tool on Quartex, while a range of contextual essays provide everything you need to know about the texts.

For the first time ever, researchers can directly compare two Folios side-by-side, and can even draw in Folios from anywhere on the web, enabling comparison of every digitised Folio online. Comparing the varied pagination, annotations, and signatures underlines the uniqueness of each copy of the publication.

At a project launch event hosted at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford, speakers emphasised the exciting research opportunities opened up by First Folios Compared, with whole sections of the publications unexplored and, in some cases, seemingly unopened.

Others discussed the wide range of potential uses of the resource in the classroom, with the digital portal enhancing access and increasing engagement for students. Peter Jolly, Head of Drama at Dulwich College, described some of the impactful interactions his students had made with the First Folio, and reflected on the contribution of the new open access project: “Putting the First Folio in a new context really changes this mercurial document and makes you think about it in very, very different ways.”

Highlighting the Value of Archival Partnerships

First Folios Compared is an inspiring example of archival collaboration, as some of the world’s leading libraries, archives and research institutions have combined to bring their First Folios together on a digital platform for the first time. In doing so, they have made the publication more accessible and more engaging for users around the world.

For AM, leading such an ambitious and collaborative open access project resonated with the company’s core values and mission. Having spent over 30 years working with libraries, archives, and heritage institutions to digitise the world’s historical and cultural knowledge, the team relished the opportunity to enrich the study of such a landmark and vital text as Shakespeare’s First Folio, on the 400th anniversary of its publication.

Claudine Nightingale, who led the project for AM, spoke of the value of collaborative partnerships in developing and producing a resource such as First Folios Compared:

“This project has really demonstrated the power of collaborative archive partnerships. We have brought some of the world’s leading libraries, archives and research institutions to create a hugely significant open access resource. I’m really excited to see how researchers and educators use the resource, and where the new scholarship opportunities opened up by First Folios Compared might lead.”

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

“It makes literal something that’s always been said but never truly experienced: that First Folio copies are unique.”

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

What’s Next?

Looking ahead, the project is already entering its second phase, with more institutions expressing interest in digitizing their own copies of the First Folio and expanding the collection. As the resource continues to be integrated into classrooms worldwide and researchers discover new possibilities offered by the platform, First Folios Compared is set to deepen our understanding of one of the most significant publications in history.

Rumors continued from page 9

panelists Judy Verses, President, Academic and Government, Elsevier; Bar Veinstein, President, Academia & Government, Clarivate; Frank Vrancken Peeters, CEO, Springer Nature.

• James Daunt, CEO, Barnes & Noble : Achilles James Daunt is a British businessman. He is the founder of the Daunt Books chain, and since May 2011 has been managing director of the bookshop chain Waterstones. Since August 2019, Daunt has also been CEO of Barnes & Noble, the American bookstore chain. He is known as “the man who saved Waterstones.” He was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to the publishing industry.

• The Long Arm of the Law panel , moderated by Ann Okerson, Director, Offline Internet Consortium; featuring panelists Kyle K. Courtney, Copyright Advisor, Harvard University and Michelle Wu, Georgetown University Law Center.

The full tentative agenda will be made available on September 8, and the early bird registration deadline is September 22, so be sure to register! We’ll see you there to “Let the Good Times Roll!”

That’s it until next time. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more in our always jam-packed November issue!

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

Leveraging Innovative Collaboration to Empower Digital Special Collections

By Neel Agrawal (Digital Projects Librarian, Loyola Marymount University, William H. Hannon Library)

The Loyola Marymount University William H. Hannon Library has cultivated an array of digital collections over the past 15 years. LMU was an early adopter of Quartex (by Adam Matthew) in 2019. LMU hosts a wide spectrum of Digital Collections on Quartex, including photographs, postcards, correspondence, manuscripts, art, maps, and local newspapers. Principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism (DEIA) are central to LMU’s digital collections, administered by the Department of Archives and Special Collections. The digital collections feature unique sources highlighting the histories of under-engaged communities locally and worldwide. Here, the focus is on the essential role of innovative collaboration in building and stewarding LMU’s digital collections that promote a more inclusive and equitable historical narrative. Hopefully this insight into LMU’s collaborations will inspire new and exciting collaborations for overcoming challenges relating to discoverability, description, and curation of digital collections.

LMU engages in several collaborative initiatives to foster the use of its distinctive digital collections. This article briefly examines the impact of innovative collaboration in relation to three digital collections that broaden the historical perspective: the Changing Face of Southern California, capturing the region’s evolving cultural landscape; the Werner von Boltenstern Shanghai Photograph and Negative Collection, highlighting a Jewish refugee community in China; and the Venegas Family Papers, shedding light on the lives of a Mexican refugee family in Los Angeles.

For digital projects, thoughtful collaboration can empower a range of activity relating to content curation, digitization, description and metadata creation, long-term file preservation, as well as access and discoverability to primary source material.1 The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), a metadata aggregator, presents a collaborative model for enhancing access to digital collections through federated discovery: “The success of the metadata aggregator Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) depends on close collaboration between libraries, hubs, and the DPLA to harvest and submit metadata in ways that are as inoperable as possible given the disparate milieus in which it was created.”2 Smaller institutions, like LMU, were unable to directly share their collections with the DPLA. As a solution, LMU partnered with Calisphere in order to on-ramp to the DPLA. As a DPLA Service Hub, the California Digital Library shares metadata records contributed to Calisphere with DPLA.

The results of LMU’s partnership with Calisphere 3 and DPLA 4 were impressive. In one year (from June 2015 to May 2016), the number of hits across 15 collections rose from less than 8,000 per month to over 170,000 per month, representing a greater than 2000% increase. 5 Notably, there was a major usage increase in the Changing Face of Southern California collection. This postcard collection captures the evolving cultural landscape of the region in the first half of the twentieth century. Included are depictions of some of LA’s most prominent cultural landmarks, including Chinatown and Olvera Street. Through interinstitutional collaboration, LMU significantly expanded the usage of this distinctive digital collection. See Image 1.

Through another innovative collaboration, LMU enhanced the description of one of its most popular collections among researchers around the globe. The Werner von Boltenstern Shanghai Photograph and Negative Collection contains nearly 600 items and was carefully digitized from cellulose negatives, gelatin dry plate negatives, and black and white photographs. The collection captures every-day life in Shanghai, China in the war-torn years from 1937 through 1949, through its photographs of bustling streets, shops, school children, family portraits, and opera and theatrical performances. 6 One of the most significant aspects of this collection is the photographic documentation of the Jewish

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

Image 1: DPLA record of “New Chinatown, Los Angeles, California, Along Gin Ling Way” (circa 1940), linking to the postcard in LMU’s Changing Face of Southern California Digital Collection.

community of Shanghai, consisting mostly of Jewish refugees fleeing the Holocaust. These images tell a powerful story of this Jewish refugee community through the portrayal of local businesses, cultural life, living quarters, and government documents. 7

According to former LMU librarian Melanie Hubbard, who oversaw the digitization of the materials, the physical objects were associated with minimal metadata. The collection’s negative and print sleeves contained simple descriptions like “woman cooking” and “school children,” and rarely identified specific individuals, communities, or locations. LMU librarian Rachel Wen-Paloutzian created metadata by conducting research, consulting with faculty, and closely examining the images. Upon launching the collection website, the library sought additional metadata through a crowdsourcing project. 8 The library reached out to the wider research community, for example, through H-Net, to seek their expertise in describing material in this collection 9 and posted the collection on Flickr for readers to leave messages and provide information. 10 Based on LMU’s collaborative approach, this crowdsourcing initiative helped to enrich the description of the content, significantly enhancing this unique research collection.

Venegas Family Papers, containing more than 150 items, mostly comprises letters between a family of refugees who settled in Los Angeles and their family that remained in Mexico. This collection extensively documents the history of Dolores (1900-1991) and Miguel Venegas (1897-1994) and their family. Originally from Zapotlanejo, Jalisco, Mexico, Dolores and Miguel immigrated to Los Angeles in 1927 as refugees from the Cristero Rebellion. The correspondence between family members sheds light on their immigration experience: “Miguel and Dolores describe life for a Mexican immigrant family in Los Angeles, including conditions of work for the Mexican immigrant community, political freedoms in Los Angeles versus those in Mexico, the effects of the Depression, means of success for a Mexican immigrant in Los Angeles, and secular versus Roman Catholic education for their children in Los Angeles.” 11

The Venegas Family Papers digital collection empowered a collaborative digital exhibit involving the library, a faculty member, and students. The student-curated digital exhibit, Entre Dos Mundos: Strength and Resilience in the Venegas Family, told the transnational stories of the Venegas Family. The three-part digital exhibit series was created entirely in the virtual space by LMU students in “Rhetorical Arts: Writing and Speaking for Social Justice” courses taught by professor Laura Poladian in fall of 2020, in collaboration with library staff.

Despite the dispersed locations of the students, the opportunity to interact with the digital material was a formative educational experience:

Students approached the new digital exhibit task with flexibility and imagination. In doing so, one class inhabited two worlds themselves — the digital and the physical, their particular places in the world and the transnational journey of the Venegas family. Through first-hand encounters and research with personal artifacts in the Venegas Family Papers, students spent the semester exploring the Venegas family’s immigration experiences and finding strength and resilience in the family’s interconnection across borders and time.12

In this case, remote collaboration helped bring these research materials to life through a student-curated exhibit. See Image 3 on page 20.

These examples illuminate the critical role of collaboration in empowering distinctive digital collections that aim to tell a more inclusive and equitable history. LMU’s innovative collaborations helped to enhance the discoverability of its diverse collections, enrich the metadata of its unique content, and tell underrepresented stories through the curation of its collections. By offering insight into LMU’s collaborative ethos, we hope to inspire a wide spectrum of innovative collaborations to help overcome a plethora of challenges faced by digital collections.

Image 2: Through posting images on Flickr, a contributor helped describe this item containing an aerial view of houses in the Hongkew (Hongkou) District of Shanghai, China.

Bio: Neel Agrawal (JD, MLIS) is the Digital Projects Librarian at the Loyola Marymount University William H. Hannon Library, where he manages a diverse array of digital collections. Previously, he managed LA Law Library’s extensive collection of foreign and international law, launched the South Asia Open Archives, and was an inaugural fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. Neel also worked at the National ACLU and held internships at the Soros Foundations, South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre, and the United Nations Dag Hammarskjöld Library.

During the pandemic, LMU’s Archives and Special Collections collaborated virtually with students to curate an exhibit utilizing LMU’s Digital Collections documenting the lives of a Mexican refugee family in South California. The continued on page 20

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

Image 3: The Entre Dos Mundos digital exhibit highlights this letter from a child in Los Angeles to his Uncle in Mexico, discussing school life, working for his family business, and finances.

Endnotes

1. For a discussion of collaborative approaches to digital preservation, see, Huwe, Terence K., “Preserving Special Collections: An Exercise in Collaboration” (2018). See also, Silva, Ana van Meegan, “One Repository Solution Doesn’t Fit All, Towards a distributed and collaborative approach to digital preservation services at the Amsterdam City Archives”, 16th International Conference on Digital Preservation. https://ipres2019.org/static/pdf/iPres2019_paper_25.pdf

2. Connelly, Erin, Donlon, Anne, Latsis, Dimitrios and Schmitz, Dawn (2017), New Opportunities for Collaboration in the Age of Digital Special Collections. In: Maclachlan, John C. and Eyre, Jodi Reeves and Williford, Christa, (eds.), A Splendid Torch: Learning and Teaching in Today’s Academic Libraries. Council on Library and Information Resources. 108.

3. LMU’s digital collections are discoverable through Calisphere, at https://dp.la/search?provider=%22Loyola+ Marymount+University%2C+Department+of+Archives+and+Special+Collections%2C+William+H.+Hannon+Library%22.

4. LMU’s digital collections are discoverable through DPLA, at https://dp.la/search?provider=%22Loyola+ Marymount+University%2C+Department+of+Archives+and+Special+Collections%2C+William+H.+Hannon+Library%22

5. Rele, Shilpa (2016), Finding an Onramp to the DPLA: Loyola Marymount University’s Collaboration with Calisphere. LMU Librarian Publications & Presentations. 31. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/librarian_pubs/31

6. Hubbard, Melanie (2020). The Importance of being Discovered: The Werner Von Boltenstern Shanghai Photograph and Negative Collection. Judaica Librarianship 21 (2020): 30-7. ProQuest. Web. 29 May 2023. https://www.proquest.com/docview/2804346992?pqorigsite=gscholar from openview=true

7. Id.

8. Id.

9. Imhoff, Sarah (August 18, 2015), Call for Crowdsourcing: Shanghai Jewish community photographs at William H. Hannon Library at Loyola Marymount University. https://networks.h-net.org/node/28655/discussions/79166/call-crowdsourcing-shanghai-jewishcommunity-photographs-william-h

10. Henriot, Christian (March 24, 2015, upd. December 5, 2015), Werner von Boltenstern Shanghai Photograph and Negative Collection, Blog Virtual Shanghai.

11. Online Archive of California, https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8vq31nk/admin/

12. Jackson, John (April 7, 2021), Entre Dos Mundos: A Digital Exhibit in Collaboration with Rhetorical Arts Students (Venegas Family Papers), LMU Library News. https://librarynews.lmu.edu/2021/04/entre-dos-mundos-a-digital-exhibit-in-collaboration-withrhetorical-arts-students-venegas-family-papers/

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

Expanding Access to Digital Primary Sources for National History Day

By Dot Kelly (Engagement Manager, AM) <dotk@amdigital.co.uk>

Introduction

A collaborative initiative conceived and led by the University of Minnesota, and supported by a group of leading publishers, is opening up a range of digital archives and cutting-edge research platforms for school students preparing for National History Day, a popular date in the calendar for student scholars in the U.S.

Here’s how the University’s project helped expand access to digital primary sources and inspire school students across the state.

What is National History Day?

National History Day is an annual competition in the U.S. that encourages students to engage in historical research and present their findings through various media formats.

Participants, typically middle and high school students, select a topic related to the annual theme and conduct research using primary and secondary sources. They analyze historical events, individuals, or ideas and develop a thesis statement to support their arguments, which they then present at local competitions. Winning student scholars are invited to state contests where the top projects go through to a national competition held in Washington D.C.

Organized by an educational non-profit with a mission to improve the teaching and learning of history for young people, National History Day provides a platform for students to develop new skills, showcase their learning, and explore the past in an active, exciting, and creative way.

How it Started

For several years, the University of Minnesota organized field trips and visits for students preparing projects for National History Day. Welcoming middle and high school students from across the state, the institution invited its young visitors to explore the varied resources held in the library.

But the student scholars needed some guidance to go beyond the standard textbooks, as librarian Richmond Kinney explains:

“When we saw 12 and 13 year olds spending the day stuck with a giant academic textbook, we thought — ‘yes, that’ll look good in your bibliography. But you’re missing out on those magical moments of discovery that only primary sources can bring. That physical connection of holding a piece of history in your hands. Or the buzz of discovering something on microfilm.’ To see how excited the students get in those moments — it’s awesome!”

Richmond Kinney, Student Engagement, Learning, and Accessibility Library Assistant, University of Minnesota Then there was the problem of “what next?”

After using the University of Minnesota’s library resources for a day, the students would be back to using local or Open Access resources when they went home.

A project team led by Richmond Kinney discussed ways to encourage students preparing for National History Day to explore primary sources, and to further expand access to ensure that the experience had a wider and more lasting impact.

Working with Publishers

In 2019, the University approached a group of publishers, including award-winning primary sources publisher AM, for help promoting their digital resource collections.

Engaging print and video guides were created by project teams at the various publishers directing students to the most relevant primary source content for the theme of that year. These basic “how to” guides showed them where to find the sources, how to use them, and what to look for, vital for school students encountering research platforms originally designed for academic audiences.

In 2020, with students unable to travel due to the pandemic, the publishers involved in the network agreed to allow digital access to their collections for students to use specific resources from home.

“This was a major boost for the student scholars missing out on the field trip experience at the library,” recalled Kinney.

In addition, AM began conducting training sessions for the participating teachers, empowering them to better understand the resources and guide their students more effectively.

Outcomes

Feedback from participating schools suggests that the initiative made a significant impact, increasing access and engagement and providing a lifeline for teachers during lockdown.

In terms of equity of access, the digital primary source collections were particularly important for students in rural areas, as one teacher explained:

“We have to travel 3 hours to access materials like these.

We usually copy anything with a title that looks relevant and then return to actually read the sources. Having the digital sources available to study from home transformed the learning experience for these rural students.”

For school students, the addition of contextual tools, including interactive maps, editorial guides, image galleries, and chronologies, helps break down barriers to entry and bring the history alive for younger audiences. The digital sources are hosted on a platform with cutting-edge technologies such as metadata discoverability and Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR), enhancing their discoverability and usability.

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

“To see how excited the students get in those moments — it’s awesome!”

8 Library Services That Will... Ma ke You Smi le. Make You Smile.

1) Publishing Sources - Almost 200,000 at our disposal

2) New Title Selection Plan - Immediate notification

3) Electronic Ordering - Simple online ordering system

4) Early Release Program - Immediate availability guarantee

5) Cataloging - We do the busy-work for you

6) Comprehensive Reporting - Up-to-the-minute order status

7) Duplicate Order Alert - We’re on guard, you avoid hassles

8) Paperback Reinforcement & Binding Avoid expensive wear & obsolescence

For more details, visit: emery-pratt.com

“[It’s] like a tremendous light bulb above their heads and a surge of motivation and interest in something they early on might have felt only a moderate connection to. These primary source databases ignite student learning and engagement and they become the ‘research nerds’ they never thought they’d become.”

Conclusion

This year’s National History Day was themed Frontiers in History: People, Places, Ideas. Thanks to the University’s project team and a group of publishers around the world, the entries of school students in Minnesota were distinguished by the inclusion of a wide range of stunning primary sources, including images, newspaper headlines, correspondence, and footage. This year’s National Contest just wrapped up and ten MN projects placed! https://www.mnhs.org/historyday/contests-andjudging/national-event

The initiative continues, with the latest virtual training session delivered in November 2022.

As more and more school students from across the state of Minnesota are given the opportunity to engage with high quality digital primary sources, the collaborating publishers are helping inspire the next generation of historical researchers and critical thinkers.

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

“ Things always go smoothly with Emery-Pratt. Their people are knowledgeable, and always provide friendly, rapid service.”

Cameron University Lawton, OK

The Unique Opportunities of Audio-Visual Primary Sources in Opening Up New Pathways to Discover, Learn and Create

By Louise Hemmings (Editorial Director, AM) <louise@amdigital.co.uk>

Some nine years ago now, AM first began collaborating with the British Film Institute on Stanley Forman’s ETV/Plato Film collection. These incredible films were produced in the communist world and so began an amazing voyage of discovery for AM as a publisher, and for the BFI, not only to resee the world as seen by documentary film makers in the Soviet Union, China, East Germany and beyond, but also in the process of taking this material from physical to digital form. This project became Socialism on Film: The Cold War and International Propaganda. As AM’s first dedicated video resource, it was an ambitious project to begin with, comprising of thousands of unaccessioned 16mm and 35mm reels. Preservation was a driving impetus behind digitization, as is often the case with audiovisual material in analogue formats. The project required us to create customized workflows with the BFI covering aspects such as condition checking, restoration and repair of the physical film by film specialists; evaluating versions of films to digitize; working with Pinewood studios on the digitization of the film; metadata discovery and indexing to describe what was on the reels and create a catalogue of the collection; transcription for accessibility to support those with impaired hearing; and, of course, building an online platform on which we could publish and display large amounts of AV content and their transcripts. We learned that working with audio-visual primary source material could stretch our teams in new ways, from learning Cyrillic in order to transliterate titles through to a thorough immersion for the team of AM editors and our digitization partners at Pinewood in The Communist Manifesto to ensure a firm grounding in the ideological spirit in which these films were made!

We are now considering what audio-visual primary sources mean for AM and our partner archives and libraries in the years to come. Core to our mission is to prompt new research through our primary source collections as well as embedding learning within our primary source literacy products such as AM Research Methods. Our platform enables libraries to build and curate their own audio-visual resources using the latest technologies. Audio-visual sources are at the heart of the AM ecosystem. They are unique in being remarkably well-equipped to straddle both new research pathways and are placed at the forefront of fresh opportunities to tackle both teaching challenges in the blended, hybridized classrooms which are now commonplace after the pandemic. Audio-visual primary sources also enlighten new pathways for digital resources. For community histories omitted from the traditional historical record, music, oral storytelling and dance are the

chosen modes of expression and transmission. As a recent Ithaka study found, 1 diversity itself is a key facet in introducing video into learning pathways “…the core pedagogical reasons for teaching with video are to illustrate and reinforce course content, diversify teaching modalities, promote cultural and linguistic understanding, introduce a range of perspectives and expertise, and — in certain fields — teach disciplinary literacy.”

The workshops held regularly with our Library Advisory Boards highlight audio-visual content as critical in addressing the demand for historical collections across all departments — sound and video content is a great pathway to prompting interdisciplinary engagement and initial exposure to primary sources. Alongside the demand for more oral histories and music collections, our library advisors also point to a continued requirement for streamed content representing all aspects of local histories not widely represented in the media, right through to social justice and global political speeches. The opportunities offered by this material type runs from both depictions of lived experience and individual histories to commentaries and coverage of major global geopolitical events.

Socialism on Film is one of our most heavily-utilized resources and our Engagement team regularly works with teaching staff to support their use in streaming the content in their lessons. At the University of Iowa, Socialism on Film is used to support History Matters, a course which is designed to appeal to non-history students. The instructor relayed to our team that the Russian Revolution is one of the most popular modules on this course partly because Socialism on Film shows students that it is real people, not characters, in history and that short clips of footage help to bring the topic alive.

At George Mason University, Socialism on Film was used to reinvigorate wider engagement with history as a discipline. Use of the collection remains high at George Mason, with the resource consistently registering a significant portion of overall usage of digital resources. Professor George Oberle notes that:

“Using Video Recordings as a Primary Source was impactful for many students because it is a medium in which they are greatly familiar with and use every day. The Socialism on Film dataset was particularly helpful to have students engage with the idea of video being created for a particular purpose and thus encouraged deep critical thinking about the sources themselves. Finally, the students were able to edit and utilize the key clips from the films as evidence to demonstrate their mastery of historical analysis and core concepts taught in the course. In the end, the use of video as a primary source was exactly what we wanted to have students work with because it showed that evidence comes in many different modalities.”

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

“We are now considering what audio-visual primary sources mean for AM and our partner archives and libraries in the years to come.”

Since launching Socialism on Film , our audio-visual experience has broadened with the creation of publications such as Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings, which draws on audio recordings, video, objects and ephemera to provide anthropological explorations of the lives of global communities through musical traditions. Relationships - from communities to collection holders (whether a university library, a film archive, or indigenous communities) — are never more critical than when working with audio-visual primary source material in helping to build rich and carefully-framed audio-visual primary source resources. Equitable access was integral to the development of the Ethnomusicology resource — cultural institutions linked to the recordings have been provided with open access, and we have also undertaken to provide digital files to members of source communities represented in the resource.

This great appetite for audio-visual resources is enormously exciting to us at AM but equally critical here is the requirement not simply to render, but to illuminate this unique material in specific ways. In an interview with Martha Fogg in this publication last year, she noted that:

“Digital technology has given us an unbelievable wealth of data, but being ‘digitally native’ does not mean that today’s students have necessarily acquired the skills to critically interrogate, effectively search or understand the sources of their data.”

As audio-visual content is so ubiquitous in culture, inbuilt assumptions and cognitive pathways have evolved to allow us to assimilate such content with ease, making it especially vital that we provoke critical, active engagement with such sources. Our resources are designed carefully as multi-layered experiences to support users with different needs. It is especially vital that this user experience is at the fore for digital resources comprised of video and audio sources. Recent research has illustrated various challenges in the wider dissemination of video content in particular. Our own experience points to some challenges with embedding audio-visual content effectively in teaching. Library search and discovery may not be optimized to support AV content and users can feel overwhelmed by questions around copyright. These factors should directly impact upon the curation and presentation of audio-visual primary source collections to ensure that learning and discovery routes are explicit, and within resources there are opportunities for user-led discovery. Publishers must also continue to collaborate closely with teaching staff to echo their needs and requirements in the structure of our resources.

Ithaka’s recent study 2 suggests that active teaching strategies are especially critical when using audio-visual material in the classroom in order to maximize learning outcomes:

“How instructors use streaming video determines its pedagogical success, and instructors need to invest significant intellectual time and energy into developing effective teaching strategies... To best leverage the potential for streaming video to enhance student learning, faculty must make deliberate choices about which content to use, how much content to use, and how to present it.”

Meanwhile at Virginia Tech, our Engagement team learned how students enjoy the “undiscovered” nature of the BFI material and the direct connection with non-western perspectives conveyed in the films. Films offer a pause point

from textual primary sources or secondary content. The class is split into groups to actively engage with the films from different vantage points, sparking the students to identify the prevailing narratives behind the films. Students write summaries of the films they see and plot these on an interactive timeline to help build an understanding of the wider historical actors and events. As was highlighted in Sage’s White Paper of 2018,3 the impact of video in higher education is acute given the advent of the “flipped classroom” where the classroom space becomes an active space for discussion and new approaches to pedagogy which “places students at the heart of their learning experience … instead of didacticism, students control aspects of their learning …. Video clips can trigger problem solving for instance, to provide tangential information, or present solutions at the end of a learning process.”

What does successful engagement in use of audio-visual content look like? What metrics should be used to measure this engagement? Recent commentaries have considered how to measure the role of audio-visual content in knowledge development and critical thinking. There may be risks as well as benefits of video and engagement 4 — it requires greater self-discipline on behalf of the student and potential isolation, with attitudes to technology being especially pivotal. Short videos are generally seen to be more efficient to support teaching but when working with primary source content, this may not best represent the content itself so we must consider barriers to discoverability and engagement which are unique to this source content. In essence, there is a “great deal more work to do to understand measures of success in this impact — understanding what design, content will drive success in emotional response to watching video and their learning performance.” 5 AM’s platform Quartex allows hosting and streaming of audio-visual materials so that endusers are able to access all primary source content through the same interface, breaking down barriers to access, encouraging greater adoption in the classroom environment and search across a whole corpus regardless of material format.

Audio-visual primary sources will continue to be pivotal for AM. The requirement for curated teaching-led resources and the need to build confidence for teaching staff around framing assignments with AV sources will be vital for the learning pathways established in new products, but we will be equally focused on building in equitable access and community expertise into AV products. Future products will continue to push disciplinary boundaries and foster new community relationships and fresh research. Focusing on discoverability of sources through transcripts and full text search alongside newly-created metadata and captioning will also continue to drive AM’s technological developments in the presentation and accessibility of audio-visual content. For the Bay Area TV Archive (held at San Francisco State University), migration to our SaaS platform Quartex was prompted because of a desire to transcribe and offer closed captions for their audio-visual collections. This has not only enabled accessibility standards to be met but has also greatly improved discoverability of their collections. Beyond teaching and research, preservation and dissemination of audio-visual sources is just as critical. For our teams, conversations with global libraries and archives are focused with increasing urgency on the wealth of collections in analogue formats which are approaching critical levels of degradation. As we have considered here, the unique impact and inherent worth of audio-visual primary sources for higher education teaching and research, preserving these unique

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

collections must be a collective priority for archives, libraries and publishers.

Further Reading

AHA Perspectives on teaching History: Teaching History with YouTube | Perspectives on History | AHA (historians.org)

11 Ways to Use Multimedia Videos in History Lessons: 11 Ways to Use Multimedia Videos in History Lessons / Historical Association

Using Video in the History Classroom Using Video in the History Classroom | History Today

Endnotes

1. Ithaka S&R study on Teaching with Streaming Video Teaching with Streaming Video

2. Id.

3. SAGE Video White paper from 2018 https://us.sagepub. com/sites/default/files/hevideolearning.pdf

4. SAGE research on video and scientific literacy for Charleston Library Conference 2022 Carmichael, Forrest, Frost and Ruediger.pptx & https://group.sagepub. com/press-releases/is-streaming-video-the-key-todeveloping-scientific-literacy-for-students

5. Schrum-Teaching-history-online-1.pdf (bu.edu)

Digital Access in a Pandemic: Integrating and Utilising AM’s Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings at UCLA

By Maureen Russell (Archivist, Ethnomusicology Archive, UCLA) and Supeena Insee Adler (Adjunct Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, UCLA)

UCLA’s Ethnomusicology Archive materials have always been used in academic coursework and in performance ensemble classes, so digital access to the materials during the campus closures of 2020 and 2021 was vital for students, faculty, and international researchers. To support the continuing use of the collections during the closures, the Archive created and implemented a new programme of promotion and training on the use of AM’s digital resource, Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings, which draws on fieldwork held by the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. The training and promotion programme was aimed at both faculty and students to raise awareness of the available access to archival collections while the physical archive was closed.

Use in Class and Ensembles

There were roughly 1,000 students who used the Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings database for their coursework and assignments in 2020 and 2021, across five quarters.

Most classes and ensembles are synchronous but with the campus closures, the ensembles, lectures, and seminars moved online and digital access to the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive recordings through the AM resource was more important than ever. The digital collection was used in two ways: firstly, by teachers preparing materials for the classroom; and secondly, by students independently accessing the material in class.

Shifting to digital resources can take time and adjustment, which is why the knowledge sharing and training sessions created and implemented by UCLA’s Ethnomusicology Archive and the World Musical Instrument Collection were so important. As a result of this collaborative and innovative programme, online classes could be planned in advance of teaching and had greater support across the School of Music and other University departments and schools. The feedback from course instructors in particular was a feeling of being more organised in their class preparation during a changeable time. Having had the opportunity to identify recordings of interest, they were then able to return for further research after the knowledge sharing sessions. It became easy and effective to access the digital recordings that were pertinent to the class. Two examples are given below.

World Music Ensembles

For six World Music Ensembles, the Music of Bali, the Music of Bulgaria, the Music of Ghana, the Music of Java, the Music of Mexico, and the Music of Thailand, the Graduate Student Researchers gave short presentations in class about the AM resource Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings.

Before the pandemic closure, the instructors asked students to use at least one recording from the Ethnomusicology Archive in their final assignment. With the campus closed for the pandemic, starting in March 2020, the instructors required their students to instead choose a recording from the Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings database. In this instance, the digital collection was able to cover for the loss of the physical archival experience and the students were still able to access and use the recordings in their final assignments.

Discovery of World Music Class

A new undergraduate course called “Discovery of World Music,” was carefully designed for Music Department students to discover musics and cultures from around the globe. This class provided a unique opportunity to Western Classical Music students and instructors to expand their sonic experiences. Using the digital collection enhanced understanding and musical appreciation when performance opportunity was limited, and it proved effective in an online teaching environment.

Integration and Training

To achieve such impressive levels of engagement with the digital resource, the Ethnomusicology Archive, led by Archivist, Professor Maureen Russell, and the World Musical Instrument Collection, led by Professor Supeena Insee Adler, organized formal training on AM’s digital resource, beginning with ladder faculty, ensemble directors, and Graduate Student Researchers1 (GSRs) in the World Music Center including the Ethnomusicology Archive and the World Musical Instrument Collection. With this training, these instructors could better support undergraduate students and fellow graduate students on how to access and use the database. The Graduate Student Researchers were especially able to assist the Ensemble Directors to deliver training and knowledge sharing sessions using the digitised archival materials, creating an important link between Ethnomusicology faculty and students, and increasing awareness of what is digitally available at UCLA. And of course, Professor Russell was always available for individualized training and research assistance.

In addition, almost every week throughout the Summer Quarter, faculty and instructors from all departments in the School of Music, including Ensemble Directors, met for knowledge sharing sessions to share resources and ideas for classes and assignments. As a result, more classes across these different departments made use of the digitised materials.

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

“The feedback from course instructors in particular was a feeling of being more organised in their class preparation during a changeable time.”

Ensemble: Ensembles involve a group of performers in a wide range of musical traditions. Under the direction of world class performance faculty, students also premiere extraordinary new works, including those by established composers, students, faculty and alumni.

Impact & Outcome

During a global pandemic, AM’s Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings allowed students to access the resources they needed, inside and outside the classroom, synchronously and asynchronously, to complete primary source assignments. Some were part of the course when students were able to access the physical archive, and some were new course assignments to take advantage of the newly available online resources. As a result of successful knowledge sharing, training and outreach, more classes, both in the Ethnomusicology Department and across the campus, used Ethnomusicology Archive recordings. This broad engagement had a positive impact on students’ experience of the ensembles. Integrating the digital collection also resulted in more collaboration between faculty and students, with students gaining a greater understanding of non-Western musics and cultures.

Judith McCulloh Public Sector Award

In Fall 2022, the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive was awarded the Judith McCulloh Public Sector Award by the Society of Ethnomusicology. The purpose of the Award is “To recognize the valuable impact of many types of ethnomusicological work that benefits the broader public and typically engages organizations outside academic institutions.” The Award recognized the significant contributions of the Ethnomusicology Archive to the broader public, and its reach beyond the ivory tower. Said the McCulloh Award Committee: “Perhaps the most important recent case is the Archive’s ground-breaking online publication of sixty major field collections from the 1960s to the present in collaboration with the British online publisher AM. This fiveyear endeavour has been a model of how to work with collection donors and community expectations, and how to actively provide historically significant field collection to the public.”2

Maureen Russell, Archivist, Ethnomusicology Archive, UCLA

Maureen Russell is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology, specializing in audiovisual archiving, oral history, and information literacy and research skills. In addition, Russell is the Archivist at the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, one of the largest and oldest ethnographic audiovisual archives in North America.

Supeena Insee Adler, Adjunct Associate Professor, Ethnomusicology, UCLA

Supeena Insee Adler is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnomusicology, where she directs the Music of Thailand ensemble. She is the Curator and Conservator of the World Musical Instrument Collection at UCLA. She is also active as a performer, teacher, and instrument technician among the Thai community of Southern California. She has produced major concert events in conjunction with the Royal Thai Consulate General, has consulted with the U.S. Library of Congress as well as the British Library concerning their collections in Thai instruments and audio recordings. Her publications and research interests lie in ritual, classical, and folk musics of Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

About Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings

Presenting content from across the globe, AM’s Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings is a diverse and comprehensive resource that features thousands of audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence, and ephemera from over 60 fields of study, including sites in West Africa, North America, Southeast Asia, and more. Produced in collaboration with the University of Washington and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Ethnomusicology Archive — a world centre for the study of Ethnomusicology — the content within this collection gives access to the cultural and social lives of the source communities represented within the recordings, allowing users a unique insight into the musical traditions of these communities

Endnotes

1. The Graduate Student Researcher at UCLA is an academic apprentice appointment, providing students with an opportunity to learn valuable academic skills.

2. SEM Newsletter 57: 1 (Winter 2023), pp. 29-30.

<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: Another quick note to get you into the reviews!

We have a great group of reviews to share this issue, balanced between books on the library and information science with general reference works. Unfortunately, a common thread here might be intellectual freedom and the rights of libraries to offer their communities resources without fear of attack. We approach this key topic from a few different vantage points. Included in these reviews are books from the ALA on protecting the intellectual freedom of a library collection, the goals in building a children’s core collection for a library, and the issues associated with being a public library director. These issues do not seem like they belong in 2023 — but here we are. We have seen a heightened number of books challenged in our libraries (not to mention the return of diseases like the measles). I really wish we did not have to relive the 1950s.

I very much appreciate the work of the reviewers who really dig into the work and provide context that may be missing elsewhere. Thank you to my reviewers for this issue: Karen Evans (Indiana State University, Terre Haute), Sonnet Ireland, (Washington Parish Library, Franklinton, Louisiana), Colleen Lougen (SUNY New Paltz), Rebecca Michelson (Swarthmore College Libraries) and Steven W. Sowards (Michigan State University). In particular, I want to thank Steve Sowards for being a great reviewer for me and for the previous editor, Regina Gong (now at the University of San Diego). Steve is retiring and we want to send him off with our eternal thanks and gratitude.

As always, I want to thank them for bringing this column together.

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 (new site name) — https://www. squirreldude.com/atg-readers-roundup

Happy reading and be nutty! — Corey

Evans, R. C. (Ed.). Critical Insights: The Brontë Sisters.

Massachusetts: Salem Press, 2022. 9781637000731. 300 pages. $105.00.

Reviewed by Rebecca Michelson (Electronic Resources Specialist, Swarthmore College Libraries)

<rmichel1@swarthmore.edu>

Critical Insights: The Brontë Sisters is part of Salem Press’s Critical Insights series, that provides background and critical analysis on major works of literature and important writers. The Brontë Sisters focuses on all three of the Brontë women: Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, and their contributions to literary history. As subjects, the Brontës are intriguing, mainly because they seem to have lived such normal, albeit extremely short

(Emily and Anne were often ill and both died early) lives. Nevertheless, from their first publications, mystery swirled around them. Perhaps it was their pen names, or perhaps because their writing can be seen as such a departure from literature, and specifically literature by and about women, of the time.

This Critical Insights volume is divided into several sections — an introduction by a scholar, a brief biographical essay on the Brontë family, four “Critical Contexts” essays, and finally, numerous “Critical Readings.” The “Critical Contexts” essays focus on scholars’ historical approaches to the Brontës and their writing, a survey of past literary criticism, and some specific critical lenses — for example, one essay examines Charlotte Brontë’s Villette in the context of class and the travel writing genre. In the first “Critical Readings” section, scholars engage with specific works to explore the shifts in popularity of certain Brontës. Most notably Anne Brontë, whose fame has risen considerably since her death, and Branwell Brontë, the sisters’ brother, who was slated to be an artistic star but instead fell to alcoholism, with his three sisters gaining far more posthumous popularity than he ever would. The second “Critical Readings” section includes surveys of editorial introductions to scholarly editions of Brontë novels, and the third “Critical Readings” section compares various film and television adaptations of Brontë works.

Editor Robert C. Evans was a respected Professor of English at Auburn University until his retirement in 2021 and has contributed to and edited a variety of Critical Insights publications including The Brontë Sisters. Other contributors include English professors, independent researchers, and other academics with interests ranging from 19th-century literature to stop-motion films to the U.S. public education system. This plurality of research and expertise imbues in this Critical Insights volume a diversity of thought — although the core focus is the Brontë sisters and their legacies, the volume and the writers within make clear that one doesn’t need to confine oneself to a study of 19th century literature in order to find inspiration in the Brontës’ works.

Critical Insights: The Brontë Sisters is an excellent introduction to the lives and literature of the Brontës and an equally excellent scholarly companion for reading Brontë novels. Particularly of interest are the second and third “Critical Readings” sections which analyze editorial introductions to the novels as well as film and tv adaptations. Both of the sections would be helpful for use in instruction settings, allowing teachers to select the best scholarly edition of Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights or to build viewing programs of adaptations that can support instruction. These sections are also immensely helpful to researchers who can use this single volume to narrow down the editions most useful to their research.

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.)

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

Hall, Kate and Kathy Parker. The Public Library Director’s Toolkit. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2019. 9780838918593, 216 pages. $56.00 (ALA Members: $51.29)

Reviewed by Sonnet Ireland (Director, Washington Parish Library, Franklinton, La) <sonnet.ireland@yahoo.com>

Becoming a library director for the first time is overwhelming. Even if your predecessor leaves everything organized with meticulous and detailed instructions, it is a truly scary new world. In particular, it is rife with danger as you don’t always know what it is you don’t know. This is compounded exponentially when your predecessor is not meticulous or just left the position unexpectedly. Luckily, a book like this, however, breaks down the things a public library director needs to know in a way that is easy to understand and follow.

Kate Hall and Kathy Parker have 28 years of library director experience between them. On top of being a library director since 2010, first at New Lenox and now at Northbrook Public Library (both in Illinois), Hall has served on the Executive Board of the Illinois Library Association and also as President on the Reaching Across Illinois Library System, giving her a depth of experience with libraries across her state. Parker, with over 35 years of experience in libraries (16 of those years spent serving as director at Glenwood-Lynwood Public Library in Illinois), has also served as a library trustee at her own local library. Though she retired in 2018, she now has her own consulting business where she offers coaching to new directors, as well as helping library boards hire directors, which gives her the ability to understand both the perspective of the director and those who oversee the director.

Broken up into chapters covering topics such as finances, insurance, and emergency planning, the first part of the book outlines key areas that every library director should focus on. Each chapter starts with learning outcomes, so the reader

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.)

knows exactly what to expect from the text. While the chapters themselves have a lot of information, the text is straightforward and not overwhelming. For example, under the Liability Insurance section of Chapter 7 on Insurance, there is a useful grey box of Liability Insurance Terms to Know. This is information that a library director needs to know, but it’s not something that most people think to explain to a new library director. With so much focus on the library part of the equation, we often don’t get the equally important non-library information we need. At the end of each chapter, the authors include a “Review and Reflect” section that offers key takeaways, a self-check list (to help you apply what you’ve read to your own library), and questions for reflection (for more in-depth consideration of your library and its needs). Additional resources are also included at the end of each chapter, including downloads of sample forms or policies that can be accessed at https://librarydirectorstoolkit.com/

The second part of the book is filled with sample documents, checklists, and other useful tools such as the Library Director Training Checklist. This checklist offers new library directors a way to get their bearing in a new position. These items are also on the website under Resources for easy downloading and printing.

This book can be a lifeline to any new library director (or even experienced directors who want to improve their work or policies). Readers should beware that the text cannot answer everything. It’s important for library directors to be familiar with state or local laws that affect them and their libraries, especially now. But this is an important first text that I would recommend to anyone interested in becoming a library director, or someone relatively new in the role.

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.)

Issitt, Micah L. Opinions Throughout History: Law Enforcement in America. Grey House Publishing, 2021. 9781642658460, 548 pages. $226.77

Reviewed by Karen Evans (Chair of Public Services: Circulation, Research & Instruction, Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University, Terre Haute) <karen.evans@indstate.edu>.

This illustrated work presents a fascinating history of law enforcement in North America, from its inception in the 1620s colonies to the COVID pandemic in 2020. The volume provides an understanding of the origin of policing and their power in the United States; touching on pertinent, watershed events in the history of law enforcement. The chapters are organized in a logical format, allowing the reader to follow the progression of law enforcement in the United States from the colonies at Roanoke and Jamestown all the way to the capitol insurrection on January 6th, 2021.

Each of the 28 chapters focuses on a specific law enforcement topic; from the slave patrols in the 1700s; to the private guns (detectives and detective agencies); and to protecting the country during the capitol insurrection. Some chapters focus on specific issues having an impact on law enforcement; legal cases (Mapp v. Ohio), Miranda warning, 911 system, citizen surveillance, Black Lives Matter and “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot;” these chapters look at more than simply law enforcement; they look at issues that have shaped law enforcement in good and bad ways.

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

C hapters include a variety of primary and secondary documents — accompanied by “expert commentary and analysis,” that provide the reader with an opportunity to understand how law enforcement has evolved in this country. Chapters begin with an introduction to the topic and segue into topics covered in the chapter. Source documents are an attractive feature of each chapter and offer a window into American society at that time and help readers understand the context of the topic; the chapter on “The Slave Patrols” uses “Appointment to a Slave Patrol,” January 1856 as its source document. Chapters end with a conclusion, discussion questions, and a list of works used. Chapters can be read independently. Additional resources are available for readers, including notes, primary & secondary sources, glossary, historical snapshots (1880-2021), bibliography, timeline (Antiquity to 2021), and an index. The volume is easy to read, avoiding discipline specific language.

The author Micah L. Issitt is an independent scholar, historian, journalist, and editor. He has authored previous volumes for Opinions Throughout History, including national security vs. civil right, and immigration.

Looking at a specific chapter can help the user understand the unique resources and readability of the volume. Chapter nine on “The Rise of the G-Men: Policing During Prohibition and in the Era of Organized Crime (1920s)” starts with a short introduction and lists the topics covered in the chapter: prohibition, organized crime, Chicago, Al Capone, and Elliot Ness. Discussing prohibition and the Volstead Act, the chapter paints a vivid picture of that timeframe in America, highlighting the factors at play, including women, religion, the black market, and the industrialization of the liquor industry. Illustrations, including a prohibition map of the United States, help readers understand the political and public views of the time. Gangster Al Capone is portrayed as a family man in a newspaper article from The Bismarck Tribune, June 1929 entitled “Chicago’s Al Capone likes to wear apron, cook spaghetti.” The article discusses Capone as a family man who loves his mother and talks with his son every night, while shielding him from his father’s activities. The article provides an interesting side to Al Capone that few probably saw during his illegal activities.

The chapter conclusion discusses how the G-men (FBI) were viewed as heroes against organized crime — and helped illustrate the value of federal law enforcement.

One can pick this book up and read any chapter, learning about law enforcement history in the United States. A valuable work for criminal justice students or arm-chair enthusiasts.

ATG Reviewer Rating: 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.)

Garnar, Martin and Trina Magi, eds. (American Library Association. Office for Intellectual Freedom). Intellectual Freedom Manual. ALA Editions, 2021. 9780838948187, 327 pages, $69.

Reviewed by Colleen Lougen (Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian, SUNY New Paltz)

<lougenc@newpaltz.edu>

Public debate and discussion surrounding intellectual freedom and book challenges in libraries has intensified in recent years. Intellectual freedom refers to an individual’s right to seek and access information from all perspectives without restriction. ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom has published an updated edition of its definitive work, the Intellectual Freedom Manual, to assist library personnel in navigating these complex issues.

In its tenth edition, the manual summarizes the most recent ALA guidelines and policies regarding intellectual freedom and provides comprehensive essays covering the most pressing matters in libraries today. The editors, Martin Garnar and Trina Magi are distinguished academic librarians and recognized leaders in their fields. The manual also includes contributions from several top intellectual freedom experts.

To offer a proactive starting point for those introducing themselves to the topic, the manual outlines five strategies one can implement to promote intellectual freedom in their library. An introduction to the publication contains an overview of its scope and format and describes the new features added since its last edition. This volume has been enhanced with several notable additions, such as discussions of politics and religion in libraries; user-generated content in discovery systems; censorship in programs, displays, and databases; and when to contact law enforcement.

A chapter describing intellectual freedom and its relationship to academic, school, and public libraries was written by former directors of the Freedom to Read Foundation and the Office for Intellectual Freedom, Barbara M. Jones and James LaRue. Another chapter contains the text of ALA’s core intellectual freedom policies, including its Library Bill of Rights and Code of Ethics. The book also provides practical suggestions for creating library policies, as well as handy checklists for simplifying the process. The following six policies are covered and deemed essential for ensuring the protection of intellectual freedom in libraries: collection development and resource reconsideration, internet use, meeting rooms and exhibit spaces, privacy and confidentiality, social media, and library use and user behavior policies. Having a list of the most important policies assists libraries in focusing their efforts.

In the second part of the book, ten chapters address such topics as access, collection development, copyright, and workplace speech. These chapters present a summary of the

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

Be like this squirrel and stay cool out there — Fox Squirrel at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor on August 2nd, 2023.

key concepts for each issue, legal information, guidelines for developing related policies, advice for various types of libraries, reflection questions, relevant ALA policy statements, and many chapters contain a “deeper look” section.

The book concludes with an overview of how to develop messages that effectively communicate intellectual freedom principles to a variety of stakeholders. Furthermore, it provides resources for individuals seeking assistance and opportunities to become involved, as well as strategies for defending intellectual freedom and dealing with controversy. Among the book’s appendices are a glossary, a bibliography, and an index of official ALA policy statements.

A crucial point of this well-organized book is that libraries must maintain current policies to convey their commitment to impartiality, support a range of viewpoints in their collections, services, and programs, and render legitimacy to their actions. Because intellectual freedom and neutrality are guiding principles of the profession, this book can serve as an educational resource for staff and contribute to a culture that values intellectual freedom and explores its intricacies. It could also serve as a textbook for courses in library and information science. The availability of this book is essential, particularly in public and school libraries where challenges and issues may arise frequently.

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.)

Spires, Kendal (ed.). Children’s Core Collection: Collection Development Recommendations, by Librarians for Librarians. 25th ed. Amenia, N.Y.: Grey House Publishing / Ipswich, Mass.: H. W. Wilson Co., 2021. 978-1-64265-804-0. xv + 2,370 pages. $240.00.

Reviewed by Steven W. Sowards (Associate Dean for Collection Strategies and Preservation, Michigan State University Libraries, East Lansing MI) <sowards@msu.edu>.

Available in print or e-book formats, this resource identifies 12,000 titles as a “best” or “opening day” collection for children from preschool through Grade six. Regularly updated, this volume is part of the Core Collection Series which includes other title lists for Middle & Junior High, Senior High, and Young Adult readers. Entries include bibliographic information, subject headings, a Dewey number, a summary, and notes including grade level suitability.

Selection of books for libraries serving K-12 students is (unfortunately) a contested process in America. Some interested parties seek to put books on shelves, others to remove them. Challenges around sexuality and race are widespread: titles dealing with anti-racism, same-sex relationships, gender identity, and reproductive rights are particularly targeted in a political phenomenon that places publishers and librarians in the middle.

Identification of “best” books is not self-evident. Collection development relies on the exercise of judgement and expertise. Librarians have a long history of sharing selection insights with each other, and publishers have taken part by disseminating “best” title resources (the first edition of this work appeared as early as 1909).

The editor’s goal is stated clearly in the preface to Children’s Core Collection: “to emphasize equity, diversity, and inclusion, representing and reflecting a varied community in which many voices can be heard” (page vii). The integrated author, title and subject index offers headings such as “Gay boys,” “Race relations” and “Sex education for children” — and all of these headings recommend books that have been frequently challenged.

The same book can appear on one person’s “best” list, and another person’s list of unacceptable titles. The American Library Association annually publishes a list of “Frequently Challenged Books” — see https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks (Banned & Challenged Books - shared by the American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom). On the other hand, in 2021 a representative in the Texas state legislature sent a list of some 850 titles to school districts around the state, together with questions implying an intent to purge collections — the Texas Tribune has posted that list in PDF at https://static.texastribune.org/media/ files/94fee7ff93eff9609f141433e41f8ae1/krausebooklist.pdf . How do these lists compare: Children’s Core Collection, the ALA list, and the Texas legislative list?

ALA noted frequent challenges to 37 specific books or book series during 2016-2021 (some in multiple years): of these, 13 are works meant for Pre-Kindergarten to Grade six readers. Of those 13 challenged items, seven books and three series are listed in Children’s Core Collection. All seven books feature LGBTQIA themes, while the 3 series — Harry Potter, Skippyjon Jones, and Captain Underpants — are subject to other objections. Of these 10 books or series, five entries appear on the list from the Texas legislature.

We also can consider 30 titles noted in Children’s Core Collection under subject headings for “LGBTQIA+ Fiction.” 14 of those 30 titles appear in the Texas legislative list for potential challenge. One book appears twice, for both English and Spanish language versions: And Tango Makes Three / Con Tango son tres by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson.

It is a sign of the times, that editors and authors making book recommendations are adding political and social justice elements to deliberations about “quality” and the appropriate audience for a book. In this case, Kendal Spires makes his intentions clear — opting for diversity, equity and inclusion — and then hits the target.

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.) — Better yet: I want access to an eBook version. (from the reviewer!)

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

Booklover — Poetry and Process

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

Let the processing of wonderment begin after the artistic infusion from the 2023 Spoleto USA Festival. After three years, with no festival in 2020 and then two modified festivals, it was sheer delight to experience the magic of Nickel Creek in the misty, Spanish moss draped colorful light of the Cistern; the power of female Rwandan drummers punctuating “The Book of Life”; jazz in all of its forms; cabaret and opera collaborating on the same stage in “Only an Octave Apart”; ritualistic dance inspired by “The Rite of Spring”; and then absorbing the 80 musicians of the Spoleto orchestra delivering “The Rite of Spring.” Reading, reflecting, journaling and reviewing with participants will extend far into the summer season.

Now, a little Nobel poetry to continue the artistic infusion — an offering from the 1904 Nobel Literature Laureate, José Echegaray y Eizaguirre and one from the 1919 Nobel Literature Laureate Carl Friedrich Georg Spitteler.

First Echegaray y Eizaguirre’s “Como Hago Dramas” (“How I Make Dramas” — courtesy of an Internet translation — the best I could find.); then one from “Butterfly Songs” that is included in selected poems translated by Ethel Colburn Mayne and James F. Muirhead.

How I Make Dramas

I choose a passion, I take an idea, a problem, a character ... and I infuse it, like dense dynamite, deep of a character that my mind creates.

The plot surrounds the character of a few dolls, that in the world or wallow in the filthy mire, Or they get hot in the febeous light.

I light the wick

The fire spreads the cartridge bursts without remedy, and the main star is the one who pays for it. Although sometimes also in this siege that I put to Art and that flatters instinct, I get the expression from medium to medium!

Butterfly Songs

Long was the time till May and morning dawned together, And crickets chirped, and larks sang high o’er corn and meadow; Then urgent, towards the light and in struggles fierce, convulsive, The caterpillar strove with tears of blood. And lo! ...

Can it be I? Methinks I feel a soul, feel pinions!

I rise, I soar! Up, up! And higher still, to Heaven!

I’ll seek new dangers. Oh! the universe I’ll measure. Earth’s highest happiness is granted now to me: Bodily to behold the things my soul could see.

And what I’ve dumbly honoured, in myself to be.

Echegaray y Eizaguirre was awarded the 1904 Nobel Prize in Literature “in recognition of the numerous and brilliant compositions which, in an individual and original manner, have revived the great traditions of the Spanish drama.” He shared the prize that year with Frédéric Mistral, the subject of a previous Booklover column. On the other hand, Spittler’s 1919 Nobel award was for something quite specific — “in special appreciation of his epic, Olympian Spring.”

The biographical information on both poets is limited. Echegaray y Eizaguirre was Spanish; Spitteler Swiss. Echegaray y Eizaguirre’s education focused on engineering, mathematics and economics after which he established himself as a professor. Spittler, on the other hand, studied the law and theology. However, teaching was something they both shared in common.

Later in Echegaray y Eizaguirre’s life he successfully transitioned into a career in government. His literary accomplishments followed these interesting career paths culminating in the Nobel accolade. This juxtaposition of science and poetry in a Laureate’s life is reminiscent of the first Nobel Literature Laureate, Sully Prudhomme.

Fun fact — One biography states that the Echegaray Street in Madrid, named for the author, is known for its Flamenco taverns. How enticing if that is true!

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

LEGAL ISSUES

Section

Editors: Bruce Strauch (Retired, The Citadel) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com>

Jack Montgomery (Georgia Southern University) <jmontgomery@georgiasouthern.edu>

Legally Speaking — (When) Will the Robots Take Our Jobs?

Column Editor: Ashley Krenelka Chase (Assistant Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law) <akrenelk@law.stetson.edu>

Istarted law school roughly 15 years ago, and right away we heard that computers might take our jobs. The recession had not yet happened and we were all riding high on the idea of six figure salaries and becoming the next bigwig attorney on the local news. But the fear that robots or computers might make attorneys obsolete — largely driven, I believe, by the relatively new and much more accessible online versions of our favorite legal research platform — was already starting to become mainstream.

It is now 2023. Robots have not taken lawyers’ jobs, but I still read countless articles every week about how it’s going to happen. ChatGPT and other generative AI tools have made these fearmongering think pieces more common (and more annoying) but no more accurate. Yes, there may be cause for concern that some parts of attorneys’ jobs will be performed more efficiently by machines, but the things AI can’t do — tell stories in a way that appeals to a very specific jury, format legal documents the way lawyers like to see them, even cite relevant case law — will become our bread and butter, even more now than they always have been.

But this is a column for librarians, so why am I talking about lawyers? When I left family law to become a librarian 10+ years ago, the threat of the robots was never mentioned. I was never told that my newly chosen career path was threatened by computers, and I was assured that EVERYTHING librarians do is so profoundly important that I was making a great choice in terms of my long-term career aspirations (the amount of vocational awe1 ingrained in that statement is a topic for another, non-legal column). Despite the fact that I was never told that robots may make me, a librarian, obsolete, I wasn’t surprised that the rise of ChatGPT has started causing rumblings in librarianship. To me it’s as silly as it is when discussing lawyers, but I do think it warrants a conversation, so here we are.

First, let’s talk about what Generative AI is and what it is not. Artificial intelligence is “[T]he ability of machines to perform tasks that are usually associated with intelligent beings.” 2 Now I don’t know about you, but I know plenty of intelligent beings whose jobs have been taken by computers (like those working in manufacturing) but I don’t consider those machines to be artificial intelligence. When I think of AI, I think of the good, bad, and ugly machines we’ve seen on TV. Commander Data from Star Trek. Cylons from Battlestar Gallactica. Those robots from that Will Smith movie. MACHINE! That will take

over and walk and talk and make us obsolete! But that’s not what we’re talking about right now, and it’s certainly not what we mean when we talk about generative AI like ChatGPT.

Even if you haven’t yet played with ChatGPT, you’ve likely made some use of generative AI. The autocomplete function in our texts and emails is generative AI. It uses a large language model to predict what we’re going to say and how we’re going to say it. And the companies that build those tools are paying attention to the world around us to make corrections to the programming so that particular brand of generative AI becomes smarter.3 But just like the autocomplete on my phone uses the word “ducking” when it knows I mean something else, ChatGPT hallucinates, too.

If we look at the recent goings-on, the propensity of ChatGPT to hallucinate and create bad information becomes clear. An attorney in New York recently filed a brief written by ChatGPT. He didn’t bother to verify any of the information in the brief or check the cases he cited (a problem, of course) and he went ahead and filed it in federal court. But the cases weren’t real. Imagine, an entire court document written on bad law!

And that’s because ChatGPT pulls things from everywhere. The web of knowable things! Any good librarian knows that the web is full of garbage and that’s why we have jobs. I asked ChatGPT to write a professional biography for me and it claimed I was married to a colleague (so silly) and liked to go running for fun (offensive). It said I wrote many things I didn’t and only gave me credit for some of what I did. And it was impossible to know from where the information came! The thing is, the people who were inclined to just search for stuff on their computers and not ask a librarian for help are still going to do that, with or without ChatGPT. And the people who were likely to utilize the library to perform research are still going to do that, with or without generative AI. And that’s ok! Maybe our jobs become more relevant when people are accessing more bad information, provided they have the wherewithal to follow-up on what they’ve found.

Where I do start to worry about generative AI is in the defamation space. On June 5, a Georgia radio host by the name of Mark Walters filed a lawsuit against OpenAI LLC, alleging that ChatGPT produced a legal complaint that accused him of

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

embezzling money from a gun rights group. The problem, of course, is that the text of the complaint ChatGPT created was untrue. Walters has never been accused of working for the group in the complaint, nor has he been accused of embezzlement. The weird thing about all of this, though, is that ChatGPT created this document for another journalist — who didn’t publish what ChatGPT wrote — and then Walters found out about it somehow and decided to sue. Nobody knows whether companies like OpenAI can be held responsible for damages in a case like this, if damages were able to be proven, but we can expect that cases like this will start to be filed pretty regularly as more and more people gain access to the platform.

In libraries, were we to use generative AI to assist with our operations, it would become even more essential that we verify all of the information we get (just as we would, I hope, when researching on one of our other databases). As these platforms get bigger and better, the onus will be on us to verify everything, whether it’s something we get from a patron who has used generative AI or whether we use the AI ourselves. There is no part of me that thinks we are going to lose our jobs to AI, but I do worry that we will get tired and not verify things the way we should. And since a certain segment of society seems to want to sue librarians for doing our jobs, we’d best approach this carefully.

Endnotes

1. https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2018/ vocational-awe/

2. Noam Slonim et al., An Autonomous Debating System, 591 NATURE 379, 379 (Mar. 18, 2021)

3. https://theweek.com/apple/1024138/apple-fixes-itsducking-autocorrect-problem

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

Questions & Answers — Copyright Column

Column Editor: Kyle K. Courtney (Copyright Advisor, Harvard University) <kyle_courtney@harvard.edu>

QUESTIONS FROM A LIBRARIAN about eBooks, copyright, and new state laws: I have been reading about state legislative efforts to help libraries with providing fair and equitable access to eBooks for their patrons. Here are a few questions.

First, what are the main challenges that libraries have when providing eBooks to patrons under standard eBook license?

ANSWER: At present, the most prevalent eBook business model offered by publishers and eBook aggregators is the “leasing” of eBook titles, whereby libraries agree to licensing that gives libraries contractually defined access to materials. Not ownership. This has implications for a library’s collection development, preservation, interlibrary loan, and preservation decision making. Under these licenses, libraries are forced to rent most of their collections. In this environment, publishers, like landlords, can change the lease terms, raise the prices, and prevent libraires from owning their eBook collections. This system is antithetical to a library’s mission, that is, providing ready and equitable access to knowledge to meet their community’s needs. Further, current eBook licenses often contain restrictive terms and are prohibitively expensive. In short, eBook licensing disadvantages libraries and, by extension, our patrons.

Why are states working on eBook laws for libraries?

ANSWER: State legislatures across the United States are recognizing the effect of the current eBook licensing landscape on libraries and the attendant repercussions to the equity and access to resources for the learning, research, and cultural benefit of the public.

While digital content has been available in libraries for over a decade, purchasing that content has become a major roadblock for public institutions. Publishers set the terms of library contracts, which result in agreements with clauses, terms, and definitions that go beyond price and availability problems. Some eBook licenses directly interfere with the library’s mission to provide optimal access, accessibility, preservation, and privacy to our patrons.

As outlined in the “eLending Position Paper” conducted and launched by Reader’s First, common licensing terms also harm the library mission through an accelerating cost system. Licensing terms offered by the five biggest publishers in the United States converted to “metered access only” in 2018, ending the previous perpetual access model for eBooks. “Metered access” is a licensing term that forces a library to relicense the eBook after a certain amount of time or number of checkouts. If the eBook is not re-licensed, the copy “expires” and is removed from the library’s collection. This clause affects the cost of materials since libraries are forced to buy their collections over and over. More insidious, it also interferes with a library’s ability to loan, preserve, and make collection development decisions.

Again, these licenses are not a “purchase” in the traditional sense. The eBooks that your library buys are merely leased to them by intermediaries (like Overdrive) and publishers (like Hachette),often at excessive prices. For example, while

a library collections budget may increase incrementally over a decade, in the same timeframe the average price of an eBook will have tripled, from $15 to $45.

State legislatures have also noted that libraries pay additional licensing fees; arguably, a sort of tax for the library’s access-based mission. According to the recent decision in New York in Hachette v. Internet Archive, the district court stated that Penguin makes $59 million per year just from eBook licensing to libraries, and HarperCollins makes nearly $47 million. Public library funding goes straight from the state’s taxpaying citizens to the publishing houses; however, the public may not receive the same benefit from their investment in these resources, since public libraires will have to pay more for eBooks or pay more frequently for eBooks under metered access.

By way of a concrete example, in 2019 the ALA briefed Congress on this issue and used this example: To purchase one copy of David Kahn’s The Codebreakers, a consumer would pay $59.99 for lifetime eBook access. Simon & Schuster, which owns the eBook rights, charged libraries $239.99 to host and loan out that eBook to one person at a time, for just two years. Under the publisher’s licensing terms, to lend that title for 20 years, the library would pay about $2,400 (about 40 times what a consumer would pay for lifetime access).

The combination of these higher costs per title, increasingly restrictive terms, and metered access means that there is a high price per loan for libraries, and maintaining any robust eBook collection is nearly impossible.

What was the Maryland eBook law and court decision?

ANSWER: Maryland passed an eBooks law in 2021. The law stated that if publishers offer an eBook license to the public, then they must also provide an eBook license to libraries under “reasonable terms.” Here, “reasonable terms” represented these issues simply: equal access to and pricing for digital content for libraries. The Maryland Library Association released a “Statement on Maryland’s Digital Content Law” describing their view of reasonable terms in the eBooks law as derived from testimony from the Maryland General Assembly’s consideration of the bill. For example, reasonable licensing terms might be terms “without restriction on when libraries can access the book or how many copies can be obtained” or “print-equivalent license terms” that are based on “a centuries old model, updated to the digital realm: which would “be fair to publishers, authors, libraries, and users.”

The Maryland eBooks bill passed the Maryland General Assembly unanimously. This was despite stern letters from the American Association of Publishers (AAP) to Maryland legislators claiming that the law was unconstitutional because it created a de facto compulsory license (“must sell eBooks to libraries”) and therefore was preempted by federal copyright law. The eBook law was set to take effect in January 2022.

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

The AAP then sued the state of Maryland on federal preemption grounds, claiming the state was legislating in the federal copyright arena, and called Maryland’s eBook law “radical.” (In the Complaint of American Association of Publishers in Ass’n of Am. Publishers in v. Frosh, 1:21-cv-03133DLB, (D.MD. Feb. 16, 2022), ¶ 37.)

The case went to the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. During the oral arguments, federal judge Deborah L. Boardman interpreted eBook law’s language as an “order to distribute” because it would force publishers to negotiate licenses they might not offer as part of their freedom to license their own copyrighted works. These laws were interpreted as an “order” to sell eBooks to libraires under reasonable terms, which looks a lot like a “compulsory license.” And compulsory licenses or “orders to sell” could be interpreted as a state law interfering with copyright law, which is exclusively federal.

Judge Boardman showed sympathy on the issue, stating that “[l]ibraries serve many critical functions in our democracy…. Libraries face unique challenges as they sit at the intersection of public service and the private marketplace in an evolving society that is increasingly reliant on digital media.” Nevertheless, the judge found in favor of the publishers, stating that federal copyright law provides full legal support for copyright owners to choose to sell, license, or withhold their works from anyone. Under the Copyright Act of 1976, neither states nor the Federal government can mandate copyright owners to license or sell materials to buyers. Such a right “to distribute ... copyrighted work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending,” 17 U.S.C. § 106, is exclusively granted to the copyright owner and voids any state laws requiring publishers to license or sell copyrighted work.

The court said plainly, “[t]he Act’s mandate that publishers offer to license their electronic literary products to libraries interferes with copyright owners’ exclusive right to distribute by dictating whether, when, and to whom they must distribute their copyrighted works. Accordingly, the Court finds that the Maryland Act likely stands as an obstacle to the accomplishment of the objectives of the Copyright Act.” Therefore, the court found that the MD eBook law was likely unconstitutional because the state was treading into federal law territory, which made it preempted under the Supremacy Clause.

How did publishers help to defeat the bill in New York? Like in Maryland, didn’t the New York bill pass the legislature with nearly unanimous vote?

ANSWER : First, yes, the publishers convinced the NY Governor, through the letters, campaigning, and referencing the litigation from MD, to veto the NY law. And, yes, this veto was executed even though this law passed nearly unanimously in the NY legislature.

The NY law was similar to the MD eBook law. It could have similarly been interpreted as an “order” to sell eBooks to libraries under reasonable terms, which looks like a “compulsory license.” And compulsory licenses or “orders to sell” could be interpreted as interfering with copyright law, which is exclusively federal. The NY governor stated in her veto message: “While the goal of this bill is laudable…. But because the provisions of this bill are preempted by federal copyright law, I cannot support this bill.”

Can the library community and the state legislature solve this federal copyright preemption problem with state law?

ANSWER: Not exactly. What can be done is for the states to avoid federal preemption by making new eBook laws about the eBook contracts themselves — not copyright. There are new eBook bills in states like MA, CT, and HI that do not run afoul of the same problems as the MD and NY laws. The library community has learned from these cases — and pivoted. These new eBook bills do not attempt to force publishers into offering licensing agreements for libraries, which was at issue in the MD and NY eBook laws. However, these new state bills aim to preclude restrictive and unfair licensing terms within the contracts themselves through language that is crafted towards state law, including definitions, clauses, and remedies that are more reflective of the needs of the library community.

These states are now looking to their own state-based doctrines as a cornerstone of eBook laws that would enable them to regulate license agreements without mandating that publishers license their works. At their core, these license agreements are contracts, which the state is empowered to regulate under the doctrines of consumer protection, unconscionability, and laws that regulate other unfair or deceptive trade practices. This, combined with the power of state procurement laws, has led states to include specific language or amendments to clarify that states are acting squarely within their rights by regulating, as opposed to mandating, contracts.

Importantly, librarians are emphasizing that they need laws that are less likely to result in federal copyright litigation. A law that is firmly based on state law remedies many of these issues.

Do these new eBook bills impact copyright?

ANSWER: While no court has addressed these new bills, the bills are written to avoid implicating federal copyright law. The state bills have been drafted pursuant to the state’s power inherent in protecting public policy and promoting life, education, public convenience, general prosperity, and the welfare of the state’s population and economy. The very existence of traditional public, school, and academic libraries and their practices of providing nondiscriminatory access to materials promotes the wellbeing of society.

The bills, then, are written to specifically address state contract law, not copyright. The bills attempt to ensure that library eBook licenses are more reflective of the special mission of libraries to provide access to eBooks to the public. Further, the bills are designed to not affect eBook licenses that are offered to individual consumers or commercial entities; they are unique to libraries since their special mission is one of access, preservation, and equity.

States have the power to regulate all types of contracts; that’s why most states already have contract and licensing laws that are incorporated by reference into the eBook bills. Existing laws about consumer protection, contract regulation, and the Uniform Commercial Code are often already part of state law.

Again, the bills do not force the publishers to license works; they merely state that if the publishers want to conduct eBook business in the state, they must follow the state’s law. If the publishers choose to have terms that do not reflect the library’s mission, then they miss the benefit of the state’s or library’s purchasing power — which is worth millions of dollars each year. The bills are written in a way that does not violate publishers’ rights in any way, as it is merely using consumer protection and other laws the way the legislature intended them to be used. For example, consumer protection laws do not violate the rights of companies that they regulate.

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

What do these new eBook bills look like?

ANSWER: The new eBook bills, as informed by a policy paper and model eBook bill in “Mitigating the Library eBook Conundrum Through Legislative Action in the States” (posted at Library Futures) focus on the fair and equitable terms in the eBook contracts themselves. The language utilizes the power of the state to aid libraries in their future eBook contract negotiation.

These bills aim to ensure that the eBook licenses that publishers impose on libraries must include terms that are representative of the library’s mission. (You can see the full description of the problems and solutions at the eBook Study Group site: https://www.ebookstudygroup.org/)

Some new clauses would make the contract terms reflective of the operational needs of the library for maintaining and providing access to their collections. For instance, if a license is offered to a library, the license cannot prohibit a library from loaning eBooks, restrict the number of times a library may loan an eBook over the course of any license agreement, or limit the number of eBook licenses a library may purchase on the same date that the eBook is made available for purchase. As these clauses are introduced, marked up in committee, and negotiated with the legislative bodies, they may change slightly, but the underlying purpose is the same: these clauses are intended to allow the state to regulate library eBook license terms that serve the library mission and the public good.

All states have consumer protection laws that protect the public from deceptive trade acts or practices. Libraries easily fall into the category of purchasers that should be protected under those laws. Additionally, many states have adopted the Uniform Commercial Code into their laws. This adopted law adds remedies for commercial transitions, including licensing. Therefore, when publishers include license clauses that are prohibitive of library operations or are unreasonable (as defined in the state bill) the bill’s language harnesses the state’s legal power to declare them “unconscionable.” Unconscionable contracts are so grossly unfair that a court often will strike an unreasonable clause from the contract.

What have the publishers said about these new eBook bills?

ANSWER: The publishers have formed a new coalition to fight the eBook bills. Titled the “Protect the Creative Economy Coalition,” it includes the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild, the American Booksellers Association, the Copyright Alliance, the Independent Book Publishers Association, the Motion Picture Association, the News Media Alliance, and the National Music Publishers’ Association.

One of Coalitions’ first actions was to hire a D.C.-based white-shoe law firm to write a 14-page letter to the President Pro Tempore of the Connecticut Senate and the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives to challenge Connecticut’s’ eBook bill. This letter, much like the letters sent from the AAP to both the Maryland and New York governors, describes their analysis of the new eBook law in Connecticut. The analysis in the letter utilizes the same arguments from the Maryland litigation: that the bill is preempted by the Copyright Act and subject to constitutional challenges.

The letter further contains a number of dubious statements, such as that the publishers offer eBook licenses to libraries “out of respect for the important work of libraries” (and not, presumably, because they profit handsomely from those contracts?).

What is the benefit of these new bills to libraries and the communities they serve?

ANSWER: The convenience of eBooks is very real. Libraires have the technology to be able to reach every patron, even those that are unable to get to the library physically to access materials. These new eBook bills could help ensure that the convenience of technological access to digital eBooks doesn’t also undermine the library’s mission via restrictive licensing — a mission to provide open, non-discriminatory access to materials.

The eBook bills’ policy goals are to ensure that libraries can fulfill their vital function in society by enabling the lending of books to benefit the general learning, research, and intellectual enrichment of ALL readers by allowing access to these materials. Seniors that can’t get to the library, patrons that are physically disabled, forward deployed members of the armed forces, students on a class trip, and many more benefit from digital access to materials.

This legislation aims to ensure that contractual agreements between libraries and publishers contain equitable licensing terms for the acquisition of eBooks and that literary materials have at least the same utility in digital form as they have in analog form. This inevitably benefits the public since libraries are in service of the readers in their communities.

Further, these bills have sections that safeguard privacy, specifically, that no eBook contract requires, coerces, or enables the library to violate the law protecting the confidentiality of a patron’s library records.

Last, these bills would put all libraries in a position to negotiate better terms, preempt restrictive terms that would be unacceptable in a physical book context, and help stem the untenable costs of providing access to eBooks for communities. This inevitably would free up some budget space for libraries. Leasing and re-leasing the entire library collection over and over and over again is a system that is burdensome to library budgets and long-term preservation and access.

Have there been attempts at the Federal level to carve out a library lending provision in copyright law?

ANSWER: At the end of 2021 and 2022, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Rep. Anna Eshoo (Calif.) launched an inquiry into the eBook licensing business of the largest U.S. publishers and aggregators. “The exorbitant costs and burdensome restrictions of these eBook contracts are draining resources from many local libraries, forcing them to make difficult choices to try and provide a consistent level of service and get books — print or electronic copies — in the hands of their patrons,” the members of Congress wrote. In an openly available letter on the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance website, they requested that each of the publishers respond to a set of specific questions about their licensing models, specific library terms, and eBook costs, among other issues. The publishers and aggregators answered the questions sent by the Congressional offices under an agreement to preserve any proprietary business information. Both offices are working with library advocacy organizations to summarize the responses. These answers will be valuable for future policy and legislative agendas.

Libraries, publishers, and distributors are still searching for how to adapt to the format shift from print to eBook. Libraries need to acquire, preserve, and provide access to books to serve their communities, while respecting the rights of authors and publishers. Finding the right balance thus far has not been wholly successful, and state legislation is a new approach to finding that balance and serving the public interest.

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

The Scholarly Publishing Scene — 2023 PROSE Awards

Column Editor: Myer Kutz (President, Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.) <myerkutz@aol.com>

Judging for the 47th annual Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) PROSE Awards was held earlier this year.

As they have been from the outset, the Awards are focused mainly on scholarly and professional publishing. (For most of their history, the Awards were run out of the AAP’s Scholarly and Professional Publishing Division (PSP). In addition, the PROSE name is of recent vintage.) In keeping with these postpandemic times, some of the twenty-five judges assembled around a table in a conference room in Washington, DC, while others participated by Zoom. Yet the deliberations around the books, journals, and electronic products submitted for awards proceeded as smoothly and with as much intellectual rigor as they ever had, at least in the past two decades or so.

Back in the early years of the Awards, there were only five judges — four retired publishing professionals, some of whom had become consultants, and a medical doctor, who surprised me one year (I chaired the judging when I was a vice-president and general manager of professional-level scientific and technical publishing at Wiley and chair of the PSP executive committee) when he revealed some strident right-wing views during a discussion of a book by E.L. Doctorow. No matter. When it came to medical books, he knew his stuff.

In those days, the best-in-show prize, always known as the R.R. Hawkins Award (Hawkins was Chief of the Science and Technology Division of the New York Public Library from 1942 to 1957, and a key participant in the formative stages of modern scientific and technical publishing), often went to a multi-volume reference work. Charlie Smith, an editor at Macmillan, won a couple of Hawkins awards in the early days, if memory serves. A marvelous raconteur, Charlie repeatedly brought down the house with acceptance speeches that described in graphic detail the dismay of accountants as he rang up huge expenses before the first copies of his many-volume creations hit the warehouse.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t always a huge project for the small crew of judges to easily agree on, and some Hawkins Awards went to books distinguished mainly, it seemed to me, by their inclusion of four-color photographs of birds and plants. Worthy titles, to be sure, but not rising to best-in-show status in my opinion.

Reform came to the PROSE Awards, and a new, expanded crew of judges, which included younger men and women active in publishing, librarianship, and medicine, took over. There were 25 judges this year, with an increase of one judge from 2022, enough judges to provide expert analysis of the entries in the numerous disciplines and formats eligible for the PROSE competition.

In addition, the judging process is more complex than it was in the Awards’ early days. PROSE chief judge Nigel

Fletcher-Jones wrote to me in an email, “The PROSE judging process continues to evolve to reflect changes in academic and professional publishing. Over the last couple of years, for example, we have largely absorbed reference works, textbooks, digital products, non-fiction graphic books, and new journals into subject categories so that all product types have an equal chance of winning a subject-based or greater award (for fairness’ sake as we try this out, we have also maintained discretionary awards for innovation in these product types as well). It has been particularly pleasing to see these previously somewhat orphaned categories make a real impact in the judges’ deliberations regarding their shortlists in the relevant academic and professional fields.

“We will continue to monitor adjustments in the output of commercial and university presses and absorb those changes into the overall PROSE judging process.”

Nevertheless, in recent years, superb single-volume monographs have surged into contention for top PROSE awards, including, of course, the Hawkins. The 2023 Hawkins winner, Spiderweb Capitalism: How Global Elites Exploit Frontier Markets (Princeton University Press), is the most recent example. Recent Hawkins single-monograph winners are Experiments in Skin: Race and Beauty in the Shadows of Vietnam by Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu (Duke University Press) in 2022; Ancient Maya Politics: A Political Anthropology of the Classic Period 150–900 CE by Simon Martin (Cambridge University Press) in 2021; Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President by Kathleen Hall Jamieson (Oxford University Press) in 2019. Only the multivolume Leonardo da Vinci Rediscovered by Carmen C. Bambach (Yale University Press) in 2020 broke the string.

Spiderweb Capitalism is a remarkable book. Hilary Claggett, the PROSE judge who championed the book, wrote to me by email: “It’s one thing to know that billionaires exist, that they are a burgeoning class (2,640, according to Forbes, down 28 since last year), and that they often maintain their wealth by moving money among offshore accounts. It’s quite another to learn precisely how ultra-wealthy individuals, or dominant spiders, in the author’s lexicon, control a hidden network of capital markets by ‘playing in the gray’ areas between licit and illicit activities carried out by smaller ‘spiders,’ including CEOs, lawyers, accountants, agents (‘fixers’), and public relations professionals. Hoang conducted painstaking, meticulously documented, and often dangerous ethnographic research in Vietnam and Myanmar (during its brief foray into democracy) to paint a vivid portrait for readers of how investments in emerging markets succeed and collapse, as well as how the dominant and subordinate spiders feel about their work, their families, and their lives in times of feast and famine. In short, Spiderweb Capitalism won the Hawkins Award for its ambition, audacity, and achievement in clarifying the murky depths of 21st-century capitalism in a way that no previously published book has accomplished.”

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

“In recent years, superb single-volume monographs have surged into contention for top PROSE awards.”

Learning Belongs in the Library — ChatGPT in Teaching, Learning, and Scholarly

Communication: Celebrating the Uniquely Human

Column Editor: David Parker (Publisher and Founder, Lived Places Publishing; Phone: 201-673-8784) <david@livedplacespublishing.com>>

Human intelligence and artificial intelligence have been progressing in parallel for a number of years (though human intelligence had a heck of a head start!) and will be progressing in parallel for the foreseeable future. As a longtime reader and fan of Ray Kurzweil,1 I believe these parallel paths will eventually merge and the distinction between “human” and “artificial” will be rendered meaningless. I do not think anybody can predict when humans will become cyborgs, though Kurzweil suggests 2045. In the meantime, we would do well to celebrate that which is uniquely human while recognizing and benefiting from the gains humans will achieve with artificial intelligence.

The teaching and learning world and the scholarly and educational publishing world, both of which I am a participant in and commentator on, have been, in my view, inflamed with worry at the “sudden” rise of ChatGPT, large language models, and generative artificial intelligence. I share some of these concerns to be sure, but there are uniquely human contributions to be celebrated. On one end of the discussion about ChatGPT in scholarly communication and teaching, I see commentators pointing to the obvious errors it produces (some potentially very harmful). I think this is a risky position to take because AI technology has the potential to improve much faster than we can predict and may “figure out” how to be quite accurate. On the other end of the discussion, I read of those extolling the value of the “human creator” over the artificial to a degree that feels a bit Luddite ish . In many realms, AI generated original content will be more than “good enough” and even better than human generated content. However, returning to my opening line about the human and the artificial moving in parallel, I prefer to take a path that neither celebrates nor dismisses the impact of artificial intelligence in our space. I will leave this discussion to others. I prefer, as a publisher and educator, to focus on the unique contribution human intelligence will continue to make in our collective space for the foreseeable future and focus on how AI will support and enhance the uniquely human. In what follows I will focus just on the uniquely human contributions I feel we must focus on and celebrate.

Content produced by generative large language models (AI) is not real. The importance of and need for true, human stories to increase empathy and improve teaching cannot be understated. A course in border and migration studies that introduces the real, lived experiences of three refugees from Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar should not be replaced by AI. Of course, we could ask ChatGPT to “write me story about refugees from Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar” and ChatGPT will produce fiction of reasonable but unremarkable quality. And other AI solutions can render “photos” of the refugees and the situations they encounter in their forced migration paths. But we need real, human stories. We need connection and we need the rich tapestry of human lived experience in order to teach fully and to learn deeply.

Content produced by ChatGPT and the like is developed through sophisticated algorithms, millions of “parameters” if you will, but it is constrained brilliance. ChatGPT and similar technology attempts to predict the next word and sequences of words based on prompts. These AI models are trained on billions of items available across the web. The connections are, therefore, predictive and by extension predictable. Returning to the story prompt described above, “Write me a story about refugees from Sudan, Syria, and Myanmar.” If you enter this into ChatGPT (go ahead, do it!) you will get a story, but it will not surprise you with any quirky inventiveness or hugely unpredictable outcomes like a topnotch fiction author can.

When I was editor-in-chief for Pearson Education business publishing, I had the good fortune of supporting a campus visit of marketing professor, author, and legend Phil Kotler. During the visit, Phil met with a group of 10 to 15 marketing Ph.D. students to share lunch and discuss their dissertation projects. Phil started with the first student on the left and proceeded around the table. He asked each to describe their research and early findings. As each student completed their discussion, Phil offered suggested resources to read and general suggestions. By the fifth student, Phil was making connections back and forth across all the Ph.D. students’ work and to a broader set of ideas from fields in science, mathematics, anthropology, linguistics, and on and on. Phil Kotler is a genius and his specific genius shown through; that is Phil was able to weave together disparate and disconnected fields of knowledge into a coherent whole with deep meaning for these marketing students. AI will improve and the output will improve, but there is a unique serendipity in human genius that must be preserved and appreciated. Or, put another way, will you put your money on Lewis Hamilton or self-driving technology in the next Formula One race?

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

“I prefer, as a publisher and educator, to focus on the unique contribution human intelligence will continue to make in our collective space for the foreseeable future and focus on how AI will support and enhance the uniquely human.”

Content produced by artificial intelligence is informed by what is available on the web. This is an obvious statement. There is a lot of wrong information on the web. There is a tremendous amount of incendiary opinion on the web. There is virtually no curation, validation, and vetting of the content on the web. AI models, through the development of guiding algorithm logic, are trained to reject and accept information and to value some sources over others, but they can and do propagate false information and often produce alternative results depending on the day the question is asked and entered in the AI tool. This is not to say that humans do not generate false information, changing results, and incendiary opinions; of course, we do as we humans are the primary creators of the content ChatGPT was trained on. But there is much to be recommended by the human subject expert,

the human knowledge curator, the ethical compass, be that as it may be, of the teacher. And, considering where this opinion piece began, the experience, the lived experience between two humans considering, assessing, and arriving at a conclusion together: student and teacher. This is, at least until we are cyborgs, an experience to e cherished.

Endnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near

The Scholarly Publishing Scene continued from page 39

A word about Kimberly Kay Hoang, Professor and Director of Global Studies at the University of Chicago Department of Sociology. In addition to her numerous other activities, she has written two books. The first, Dealing in Desire: Asian Ascendancy, Western Decline, and the Hidden Currencies of Global Sex Work was published in 2015. According to the publisher, University of California Press, “[t]his monograph examines the mutual construction of masculinities, financial deal-making, and transnational political-economic identities. Her ethnography takes an in-depth and often personal look at both sex workers and their clients to show how high finance and benevolent giving are intertwined with intimacy in Vietnam’s informal economy.”

Huang’s second book, Spider Capitalism, came out in 2022. One reason for the seven-year gap between publication of her two books is the sheer amount of in-depth and global research the book required to achieve Spider Capitalism’s high quality. She traveled more than 350,000 miles and conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews with private wealth managers, fund managers, entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, bankers, auditors, and other financial professionals.

One of the joys of being a PROSE judge, as I have been for many years, is learning about the work of researchers and practitioners active in academic and other professional organizations who are making major contributions in a wide variety of disciplines outside my own fields of expertise. For questions about the PROSE Awards or to volunteer to serve as a PROSE Awards judge, please contact the Association of American Publishers at proseawards@publishers.org

Internet searches will, of course, provide additional information about Kimberly Kay Hoang’s superb books. Links to AAP’s press releases about the 2023 PROSE Awards are here:

THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS ANNOUNCES 2023 PROSE AWARD WINNERS FOR EXCELLENCE AND THE R.R. HAWKINS AWARD - AAP

ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PUBLISHERS ANNOUNCES FINALISTS AND CATEGORY WINNERS FOR 2023 PROSE AWARDS - AAP

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

Let’s Get Technical — Building Inclusive Collaborative Acquisitions: The Purchase Request Platform

By Daniel Huang (Resource Acquisitions Manager, Lehigh University) <dlh4@lehigh.edu>

and Maccabee Levine (Sr Library App Developer, Lehigh University) <msl321@lehigh.edu>

Column Editors:

Kyle Banerjee (Sr. Implementation Consultant, FOLIO Services) <kbanerjee@ebsco.com> www.ebsco.com www.folio.org

and Susan J. Martin (Special Collections Librarian, Middle Tennessee State University) <Susan.Martin@mtsu.edu>

Abstract

The Lehigh University Libraries came to the convergence of several important developments in its staffing and systems. The first development was replacing one of the Acquisitions Assistant positions in the Technical Services department with an Electronic Resources and Discovery Librarian. Second, the aging and potential obsolescence of the ILLiad interlibrary loan application and the very successful related GIST patron request add-on for acquisitions workflows. Third, the adoption of FOLIO at Lehigh and hiring of a developer to support the implementation, maintenance, and enhancements of the LSP. And lastly, there was interest in replacing paper recommendation forms.

Lehigh’s development of the Purchase Request Platform (PRP) made it possible for new efficiencies in Acquisitions, somewhat compensating for staff attrition. Furthermore, the data hooks and collaboration tools allowed traditional subject librarians and other staff persons to participate and discuss acquiring new content. This led to the PRP being developed to do more than replace recommendation forms and patron request webforms: the PRP also handles lost items, a subject matter expert browser plug-in, and a host of other features.

The PRP helped Lehigh University develop new collaborations across library departments to discuss and illuminate both acquisitions materials but also acquisitions processes. Enhancing collaboration and giving all library staff a voice in acquisitions is a core goal of what we develop at Lehigh.

Every manager’s least favorite scenario is being down a staff person and that is uniquely difficult in Acquisitions since a lot of the knowledge is specialized. We were down to one Acquisitions Assistant after a long-time staff person’s retirement (replaced by an Electronic Resources & Discovery Librarian, which created a solution for a different kind of problem). How can an Acquisitions Department realign itself using technology to solve the personnel gap?

The first step in our thinking was to develop a workflow solution for one of the simpler processes that everyone already disliked due to paper form complexities and wanted less timeconsuming: user-reported lost print books and librarian-run inventory missing items. With less staff, there would be no time for manual lookups being entered into one giant master spreadsheet and emails and phone calls flying back and forth.

If we know exactly what book we’re talking about, we can do a (tiresome and repetitive) lookup of the exact replacement cost in a vendor system by typing and clicking things on a webpage and then using the right mouse button to put it into that master spreadsheet.

Our goal was to take advantage of the digital landscape to build a new workflow solution that could do it better than a paper form or other traditional stopgap measure: we can do better than a master spreadsheet. The Lehigh University Libraries built the Purchase Request Platform (PRP) around these principles. We had already used the similar add-ons for OCLC ILLiad to utilize its workflow engine to manage acquisitions requests from patrons. Based on that experience (and the expected obsolescence of ILLiad), we knew that workflow solutions are powerful tools that help staff work together but an open source solution was preferable to dependance on vended products.

We decided that when a print book was marked as missing/ lost there was a need for visibility of that moment in time, so we transferred those items from the ILS/LSP into an Atlassian Jira ticket that was visible to the whole library. The Jira ticket process routes the lost item to the correct subject librarian, complete with automatic lookups, pricing information (eBook availability soon), and other relevant routine checks. The job of the librarian at that point in the process is to add comments on preferences and decide a simple Yes or No to the replacement decision. Librarians make their own fate.

By building in data hooks through the Oasis API and several other APIs, the Lehigh Libraries made looking up the price and availability of a print monograph very simple. ProQuest loves the idea of us knowing how to buy stuff faster (you might say it is their “thing”). We also included our internal circulation history, local holdings information, and even consortial holdings. A veritable pirate’s bounty of luxurious information for a librarian to make a quick decision on whether the book ought to be replaced.

Atlassian Jira (inclusive of the free version) allowed for communication between Acquisitions staff and subject librarians. For example, perhaps a book wasn’t good enough for the Engineering Librarian. We used Jira’s notification features to allow him to alert our Humanities Librarian who then used

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

“We can do better than a master spreadsheet.”

Jira’s comments to say she DID want it for the science fiction collection. Some things are stranger than (science) fiction. Furthermore, Acquisitions staff could see the discussion and the flow of the human side of collection development.

To further our goal of making processes less time intensive, we examined yet another process. Our interlibrary loan department is already well trained in including a Yes/No recommendation form with its paper slips. Lehigh’s patrons can circle “Yes” if they want the library to purchase a book they just borrowed via ILL. It does, however, stink for the ILL staff person who has to photocopy that (very successful) paper form and then hand deliver it to Acquisitions. Or add to yet another master spreadsheet. We decided to build a barcode scanner form that lets our frontline staff wand in the ILL books that came back with the recommendation form circled “yes.”

The books are already in our system — ILLiad or Reshare — so we can just pull that data out and put it into Jira (with all the lovely data hooks we mentioned previously). The other enhancement we added was the option for our ILL staff to note that they saw (yet again) a book being returned that just came back for the fourth time (this week) from four different students and they can use the PRP to tag it for purchase consideration. This helped us with not just Acquisitions staff being short on time but also reducing time spent on repetitive ILL orders and is in essence its own book approval plan.

We’re currently also piloting a PRP browser plug-in that lets any librarian submit purchase requests from any website such as a book review page or publisher listing. They can even select eBook or print format and enter in instructions for what to do on delivery and desired edition, fund code, billing information, and so forth. In further development, we’re also about to pilot a patron direct request form to replace all existing Acquisitions forms. We want to make sure that anyone on Lehigh’s campus can order a book (or other media) that they want and Acquisitions and subject librarians can work together to quickly mediate and fulfill that request. We don’t want to fear the reader at Lehigh: the data hooks we’ve built into the PRP will immediately make clear which items we can buy and which ones we can’t.

Open Source

We designed the Purchase Request Platform to be open source, because we knew if other institutions said “We could definitely use the PRP if it had feature X,” we’d probably think X was a great idea and want it for ourselves as well. With that in mind, we made a few decisions to make it as easy as possible for others to adopt.

1. Each of the client modules — the sources of new purchase requests — is separate and optional. Some institutions are going to create return slips with the “Should we purchase it?” question, while others are going to have lost or damaged items that need to be considered for replacement. So far we’ve created clients for those two, plus the browser-plug-in for librarians, a client that identifies duplicate ILL requests (for the same item) for possible purchase, and of course the traditional website request form. You should only have to set up what you need.

2. Each of the enrichment services is optional — for the same reason — and most of them support multiple suppliers of data. So, for example, you may want your librarians to see pricing & availability data from OASIS, or Amazon, or list prices from the IsbnDB, or free availability from the Directory of Open Access Books — or some combination. At Lehigh, we’re still figuring out which pricing sources will be most useful to our own selectors and staff, while working with vendors to add others.

3. As a corollary, it’s not hard to add new integrations. Our local holdings enrichment (i.e., we got a request for X title, but how many of those do we have already, perhaps in other formats?) works so far with FOLIO and WorldCat. We are sure there’s an Alma or Sirsi library somewhere that would want to do the same thing. Similarly, Jira is not required if you have another workflow (kanban board) tool you prefer. The PRP integrates with an open source one called Restyaboard, and we’d love to hear from Trello fans out there.

4. Finally, there are no complicated dependencies beyond Jira and whatever existing services you choose to integrate with. The core server component just requires Java and a SQL database.

Our Next Steps

The PRP is far from its final form. We still don’t have a full solution for eBooks because, while Ebook Central is helping integrate its collection into the PRP (coming soon), we don’t have a publisher direct eBook lookup solution yet. Since Lehigh is an early implementer of both Project ReShare ILL and FOLIO, we also built (but have yet to roll out) an often-requested ILL item analyzer that automatically detects items that the library ought to purchase (even if patrons or staff fail to note that fact). And what about streaming media management? Wouldn’t it be cool if a film provider had a data hook to assist PRP in the analysis of media requests?

Next up after that, we’d like to build a spreadsheet analyzer into the PRP where any faculty, student, or staff member can upload a list of items and then it spits out availability and they can plan their materials before they even talk to Acquisitions. That way anyone can submit a list of items and receive back the vendor availability and pricing information included. Not only is this efficient: this would teach everyone at Lehigh how much things cost and how we buy them and what processes are involved.

We’re looking for implementation partners to share the PRP wealth! Please get in touch with us if you want a tool that empowers all levels of the library’s staff and creates new efficiencies and teaches new competencies. We want to help libraries and then get great feedback on how to improve the platform before we develop it further!

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

Wandering the Web — Resources for Alternative Living Spaces

By Rosemary Meszaros (Professor Emerita, Government Documents and Law Librarian, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, KY)

and Roxanne Myers Spencer (Retired, Associate Professor and Coordinator, Beulah Winchel Education Library, Western Kentucky University)

Column Editor: Lesley Rice Montgomery,

MLIS (Catalog Librarian, Tulane University Libraries’ Technical Services Department)

Alternative Living Spaces: Part One: Alternative Houses and Van Life

Alternative living spaces mean many things to many people, depending on lifestyle, culture, economics, need, and sense of adventure. The idea of non-traditional housing is a huge and important topic in this age of remote work, the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement, for retirees, digital nomads, and of course, the growing number of unhoused individuals and families in the United States. This is a large, significant, popular, and complex topic that we cannot cover in its entirety in one column. Part One offers resources on alternative housing for those experiencing housing insecurity, and, on the other side of the spectrum, resources for those considering van life.

Alternative Living Spaces Resources

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) — https://www.hud.gov/topics — HUD provides information as well as resources for various people and organizations such as sales of HUD homes, the Housing Consulting Agency, which provides free counseling to home buyers to make informed decisions, and disaster assistance, among many other services. Topics under Fairness, for example, include fair lending, housing discrimination, and help for disabled persons.

Rocket Homes — https://www.rockethomes.com/blog/ home-buying/alternative-housing — This well-known website with finance and real estate services says, “Why try to pigeonhole yourself into being the owner of a standard-issue, ranch- or colonial-style home. Many people love conventionally styled homes, but what if that’s not who you are?” Concepts and ideas for those considering alternative housing are explored. Tips on making green modifications, unusual construction plans, and more are included.

Life Hack’s 22 Ways to Embrace Alternative Living — https://www.lifehack.org/465651/millennial-mindset-22ways-to-embrace-alternative-living — lists more examples of unusual, creative, and economical ways to consider basic shelter. Although some alternative living spaces may appeal to the more adventurous, there are possibilities for those experiencing housing insecurity, who are willing to consider non-traditional housing such as yurts, tree houses or small shelters built from sustainable building materials.

When on Earth — https://whenonearth.net/20-alternativehousing-ideas-for-the-homeless/ — People experiencing home insecurity have not been overlooked by designers of alternative

housing. Non-profit When on Earth showcases 20 Alternative Housing Ideas for the Homeless and outlines unusual ideas for shelter and resources. From the Cardborigami to the EDAR [Everyone Deserves a Roof], to the Abod Shelters foundation, these are innovative tools and temporary shelters.

Van Life

Fancy the nomadic life? Retired with a thirst for travel on your own terms? Seeking to bring more of the great outdoors into your home? Van life may be your jam. There are many lifestyle and how-to videos, social media groups, blogs, and vendors who can provide you with ideas and materials to help you make your life on the road possible. Bear in mind that each state, city, or municipality has its own regulations for living in a vehicle.

Parked in Paradise — https://www.parkedinparadise.com/ — Among the many RV and van life bloggers, one, Kate Moore, moved into a Dodge Ram Van in 2017 to travel the country and experience life outdoors. Her site evolved from posts on her adventures, to information on living the RV or van life, guides to equipment and furnishings, possible adventure itineraries, suggestions for van conversion DIYers, and more.

Pros and Cons of Van Life: For many younger RV and van life aficionados, leaving a smaller carbon footprint is a very important factor. Self-contained or campground water, electricity, and heating and cooling systems, and no lawns to mow, can make a positive impact on the environment. However, these vehicles, whether cargo vans, converted school buses, or huge motorhomes, are hardly economical to run. This is sometimes a cause for controversy in gas-fueled nomadic life circles. There are, however, ways to make life on the road more sustainable, as these articles show. In this 2019 travel essay “Vanlife Isn’t as Sustainable as You’d Think,” on the website Outside — https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/ essays/is-vanlife-ecofriendly/ — Mara Johnson-Groh compares the environmental impact of sharing a home with friends in the Washington, DC, suburbs to traveling the country in a 2006 Honda Element.

Van Life Lifestyle Suggestions

Christopher Harvey has been on the road since 2018 and owns two websites, Called to Wander — https:// calledtowander.com/ — and Van Life Movement — https:// vanlifemovement.com/ — that provide information and inspiration for life on the road. The latter site bills itself as “an inclusive community that promotes responsibility,

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

sustainability and practical living advice for making the most of life on the road.” In a 2022 piece on the Unsustainable website — https://www.unsustainablemagazine.com/van-lifesustainability/ — Harvey offers useful lifestyle suggestions in “Van Life Sustainability – 11 Tips for Eco-Conscious Nomads,” which provides information on selecting a van with the least environmental impact, tips for kitting out a van with ecoconscious equipment, and more.

KOA Blog https://koa.com/blog/10-tips-for-living-thevanlife-how-to-start-vanlife/ — offers “10 Tips for Living the VanLife/How to Start #vanlife.” These practical tips, such as “having zero expectations,” “downsize your electric,” and “practice (or pay for) parking,” are particularly helpful as Kampgrounds of America are well-known throughout the country.

Diversify Vanlife https://diversifyvanlife.com/ — is a web resource designed to provide a safe space online and for underserved and marginalized populations. This is “...a community of nomads that love the outdoors. Creating a safe space for BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, and People of Color] and

underrepresented individuals in the nomadic community.” Founder Noami J. Grevemberg recently published the inclusive book, Living the Van Life: On the Road Toward Sustainability, Community, and Joy , available on the Diversify Vanlife website.

Bankrate.com — https://www.bankrate.com/loans/personalloans/van-life/ — And finally, how much will it cost, from purchasing, to fitting out a vehicle, to life on the road? With price tags recently starting at around $80,000 and easily doubling, tripling, or more for fully kitted out vehicles, RV and van life is more readily accessible to well-portfolioed retirees and those with well-paid, remote tech jobs. To get an idea of the costs associated with van purchases, outfitting, stats and life on the road in a van or RV, this is a useful guide to getting started.

The Digital Toolbox — Academic Libraries & Publishers Prioritize User-Centered Services and Open Access Resources to Improve Student Academic Success

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

Academic libraries have always striven to provide their campus communities with the resources they need to succeed. So, it’s no surprise that in today’s on-demand society, there’s been a shift in recent years to prioritize usercentered services.

The goal of the user-centered approach is to ensure the library is delivering services, products and experiences that are most meaningful and usable for patrons. User-centered services can include research assistance, reference services, study and meeting spaces, and making information and resources more accessible as well as convenient to use.

In addition to obvious tangible benefits, user-centered services at academic libraries can also help instill in students a sense of belonging. Fostering this connection to the school can serve as a vital component of maintaining student satisfaction, which can impact enrollment and attracting new students.

We spoke with e-Resources Librarian Nancy Kaida about how Northwest Vista College in San Antonio, Texas, has embraced user-centered services for their students.

OverDrive Academic: Please describe the process of shifting a library’s priorities toward user-centered services, and what specific changes have you made in recent years to better serve the needs of your students.

Nancy Kaida: We’re utilizing a variety of face-to-face and virtual analytics. It’s a blend of campus outreach supported with data. For example, library representation in any and all committees on campus and district-wide, including events (college and community). Assessing materials used or needed with vendor tools. For example, turn-a-ways and search trends.

OD/A: How do you solicit feedback from library users, and how is that feedback used to inform decisions about library services, resources and programs?

NK: Chat widgets embedded on all library pages, some vendor platforms and social media interactions. Automated emails from “report an issue” within the ILS system. We use poster boards at the front of the library to solicit feedback and comments. Social media posts help gather student feedback. We also attend a lot of meetings to speak to staff, faculty and administrators.

OD/A: How has your institution worked to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in your library’s usercentered services? Have there been specific challenges in creating awareness?

NK: Two librarians are key members of two DEI committees. One librarian integrated a district requirement for our department goal into a weekly film event for the entire college, including invited speakers to address the week’s topic. The event was heavily attended on campus by students, staff and faculty. The goal was to provide a safe area for controversial

topics lead by a content expert on-campus or invited speaker from the community.

OD/A: How do you measure the effectiveness of the services your institution provides, and what metrics do you use to evaluate their impact on student learning, research outcomes and other institutional indicators?

NK: With all classes and events, we ask for feedback, formally and informally. We also record anecdotal comments to gauge success. With information literacy classes, we conduct random samples of papers to access the quality of sources and citations. In addition, we ask instructors for feedback. Each semester the department meets to assess what went well and areas of improvement.

OD/A: Do you have any predictions on what the future of user-centered services in academic libraries will look like that are different than today? How do you stay ahead of emerging trends and technologies in the field?

NK: Careful integration with artificial intelligence. Library vendors that are developing widgets or products that mimic popular devices and software. For example, a future academic level ChatGPT that extracts from vetted sources curated by humans. Humans are key to quality control. For now, I would be happy with interoperability between subscription vendors providing rich metadata that integrates with public platforms (e.g., Google Scholar). This will increase traffic to library resources.

Our library meets weekly to talk about a variety of topics, including innovation. All in the library are invited, including work study students. Each individual is empowered to contribute their point of view.

Publisher Adoption of Open Access Resources

As we explore the shift in academic libraries prioritizing user-centered services, it’s important to note that publishers are increasingly adopting Open Access Resources (OAR) to increase access and affordability. For a look at how publishers are experimenting in providing OAR more widely, we talked with the Springer Nature Open Access book, marketing and sales teams.

OD/A: How do your OAR differ from traditional publishing models, and what benefits do they offer college students and faculty?

Springer Nature: OAR transform the traditional publishing models by offering college students and faculty unrestricted access to scholarly content for course material and adoptions free of charge. By breaking down financial barriers, we empower students and faculty to explore the latest research findings, fostering innovation and increasing the work’s reach within the academic community.

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

OD/A: In what ways do your OAR align with academic goals and priorities and how can they support students’ learning outcomes?

SN: Our OAR support student success by providing access to cutting-edge research and diverse perspectives that can integrate seamlessly with coursework. These resources equip students with the tools they need to excel by promoting interdisciplinary learning, igniting critical thinking and enabling students to apply knowledge effectively, all of which sets the stage for improved learning outcomes.

OD/A: What measures do you have in place to ensure the quality and accuracy of the content available through your OAR, particularly in fields like science and medicine?

SN: At Springer Nature, all Open Access (OA) submissions undergo a rigorous peer-review process to maintain scientific soundness, meet the international standard set within the discipline and adhere to open data policies. This process ensures that our OAR maintain the highest standards of scientific integrity, which is particularly vital in fields like engineering and medicine.

OD/A: How do you plan to ensure that your OAR remain accessible to college students and faculty over time?

SN: Springer Nature considers Open Access a top priority and we are dedicated to the continuous growth of OAR. Today, our OA book portfolio includes over 2,500 titles with more than 200 million chapter downloads. Ensuring the availability of these widely utilized resources is of great importance, both in terms of maintaining their OA status and ensuring that the content remains suitable for college students and faculty. In addition to being hosted on our website, SpringerLink, all our OA books and chapters are automatically deposited in open access repositories, like the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), and archived with digital preservation services like CLOCKSS and Portico. We are also committed to working and partnering with funders, institutions and organizations worldwide on OA publications to advance discovery, support the publication of cutting-edge research and ensure the financial sustainability of OA models.

OD/A: Can you share any specific examples of how your Open Access Resources have been used in college classrooms or by faculty conducting research, and what impact they have had on student outcomes or research outcomes more broadly?

SN: Professors have integrated OAR into their curriculum to offer students high-quality resources without financial barriers. These resources have increased engagement, deepened comprehension and honed critical thinking skills, which improves student outcomes. Additionally, OAR have facilitated groundbreaking research, empowered global collaborations and fueled advancements across diverse disciplines, all contributing to the collective growth and progress in academia.

The testimonials from Springer Nature authors highlight the impactful ways professors have integrated OAR:

“I’ve been told by colleagues at the university that they have used it in teaching and part of the ease with which it’s been incorporated into teaching is because it’s open access; it’s free. They don’t have to impose upon the library budget to buy another book.”

Dr. Jennifer Wallis, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London

“There have been many benefits to choosing OA for the edited volume of Higher Education in the Era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The book has now received more than 130,000 chapter downloads in less than a year. The reach is much more than I could have hoped for had the book not been OA. It has led to many exciting speaking engagements, conference invitations and learning opportunities.”

Nancy W. Gleason, Director of the Center for Teaching & Learning, Yale-NUS College, Singapore

More author testimonials can be found here.

With patron needs and expectations ever evolving, librarian and former vice president and Chief Strategist of OCLC Lorcan Dempsey has remarked that the time has come to “shift from looking at ‘the user in the life of library’ to ‘the library in the life of the user.’” Academic libraries and publishers have indeed responded to these ongoing shifts by prioritizing user-centered services and OAR to continue delivering campus communities access to the right tools to support their academic goals.

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

Biz of Digital — AI Writing Tools and Data Sharing Mandates: Publishing tsunami or FAIR at last?

By Alvin Hutchinson (Head, Scholarly Communication, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, MRC 154, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013-7012; Phone: 202-6331031) <HUTCHINSONA@si.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>

Scientists today are increasingly urged to share research data. This makes sense to just about anyone except perhaps the scientist on whose shoulders falls the task of preparing data for use beyond their immediate project(s). These data sharing mandates, together with the recent development of automated writing tools, present a variety of potential and largely unpredictable consequences to the scientific publishing world. As with many aspects of artificial intelligence, the implications for publishers, scientists, and research libraries may be significant.

Digital tools can now manage and manipulate information far beyond what could have been done just twenty years ago. In newsrooms, for instance, computers can create editorial content without human intervention. The simplest example is the 2-3 sentence sports digest which includes the basic facts about a sporting event: which team won or lost; which player had the most points or scored the winning run, goal or basket; the current league standings, etc. All of this data (in the case of baseball, runs, hits, strikeouts, etc.) are structured and documented so that computer software can read it and create a short human-readable synopsis of each game.

Scientific research today continually generates more and more datasets from natural phenomena and laboratory experiments, much of it formatted in tables, columns and rows. Today, scientists are encouraged if not mandated to share their research data with the aim of making it reusable by future investigators. Currently there are various levels of compliance, but for reuse to become as common as is hoped by the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) standard, datasets would need to be carefully documented, normalized and otherwise structured.

Inevitably the software and platforms that are used to collect and manage research data — whether from sensors, survey instruments or manual capture — will become more sophisticated and will smooth the path to reusability, requiring less intervention by scientists. Some tools have come close. For example, WorkBench allows the use of discipline-specific ontologies to standardize and clean up data sets, potentially

providing some degree of integration among those data that use the same set of terms or concepts. And like baseball box scores, as tabular scientific data becomes more structured, it will likely become easier to use for automatically generating human-readable summaries.

Even before OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, there were several software applications used in the research enterprise that included natural language output. For example, SciNote, an electronic lab notebook that has been available for years, includes a manuscript writer module that generates versions of a draft of a scientific paper. While the product documentation emphasizes the need for scientists to review the draft and make corrections where needed, it appears to remove at least some of the hurdles of the paper-writing process. Assuming tools like WorkBench, ChatGPT and SciNote proliferate and improve over time, there is reason to believe that they will enable the automated creation of a draft manuscript and, eventually, something closer to submission-ready copy.

Initial complaints about ChatGPT center on false and fabricated information created by the software, but that appears to be due to the program relying on unevaluated internet sources. When the software is limited to using structured and curated scientific data as input then presumably much more reliable output can be created. One would hope that any scientist or team using an AI tool to generate a manuscript would review the output carefully to verify accuracy, similar to self-driving vehicles today which despite increasing sophistication still seem to require a human behind the wheel.

Among those impacted by the widespread adoption of textgenerating tools by scientists, research librarians will likely not be spared. If current research incentive and reward structures for scientists remain unchanged, labor-saving writing tools may ensure that the ongoing pursuit of increased publication output by individual scholars reaches unprecedented levels.1 Despite potential drawbacks and limitations to AI-generated texts, the practice could easily compound the already unmanageable volume of scientific research being published. Writing scientific papers — or parts of them — will likely become easier to the point that, together with already-strong incentives for scientists to publish and be cited, we will see a steady increase in the volume of papers.

Discussions about the ethics of using machine-generated scientific manuscripts are too broad to cover here. While several publishers have created policies that deal with artificially-created text (in some cases forbidding AI authorship) it is uncertain whether the generation of draft papers — even if subsequently revised and edited by scientist-authors — is a process that is

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

“Despite potential drawbacks and limitations to AI-generated texts, the practice could easily compound the already unmanageable volume of scientific research being published.”

universally prohibited. Likewise, given academic misconduct practices today, it is not clear to what extent these prohibitions will be followed or could be rigorously enforced.2 But whether prohibited or not, we can expect both the sophistication and use of these tools by scholars to increase over time which would only apply upward pressure on the amount of publications produced today.

On the other hand, some have expressed optimism that these tools may signal the beginning of the end to the reckless pursuit of publication and citation in researcher evaluation.3 If ease of generating papers (or parts of them) results in the body of literature being diluted (or viewed as such), it is possible that research evaluation exercises will begin to de-emphasize pure publication and citation counts as a proxy for research excellence and simultaneously emphasize data collection, curation, and sharing. Where it becomes easier to write more papers, it becomes easier to generate more citations to one’s publications, perhaps diminishing their value. If this came to fruition, instead of a bewildering growth of journals, papers, versions, and repositories, the potential change in research evaluation could lead scientists to spend more time preparing data and less time writing. In that event, sharing one’s data sets, assuming they are cited properly and uniformly, could end up being a more desirable goal than simply churning out an increasing number of papers.

One reason for scientists’ hesitation to share data is that they fear their work will inform another, perhaps rival, scientist’s publication(s). These fears may be well-founded, but if the published literature continues to be watered down as described above, and this is recognized by research evaluation committees, one hopes that data sharing would be elevated in importance. As Digital Science CEO Daniel Hook once optimistically put it, “It is really only a matter of time before having a highly-cited dataset is as important in some fields as a paper in Nature, Science, or Cell.”4

The magnification of the current overload of scientific publications could play out in one or more ways. A greater stream of literature well beyond current research library capacities to manage it may expose the shortcomings of institutional repositories which will likely not scale well, especially given scientists’ known reluctance to deposit reprints. Science librarians will, in that case, need to further develop cooperative digital archiving solutions. Or perhaps responsibility for collection, discovery and storage of scientific papers will fall on a third party, whether nonprofit or commercial.

Recognition and reward of research data sharing in this scenario might take precedence over publishing more and more papers. Were that the case, it would be reasonable to see research librarians accelerate their shift from traditional acquisition and collection of published literature to supporting the standardization, description, discoverability and access to research data produced at their institution.

AI will undoubtedly affect libraries in many ways outside the possible increase in published content to be managed. Reference, discovery, collection development, information literacy and other areas of librarianship could be offloaded to one degree or another onto machines. But as publishing goes, so go libraries.

NOTE: This piece was written in May 2023. It is possible that AI advances in the few months between draft and publication will have influenced these assumptions.

Endnotes

1. Liebrenz, M., R. Schleifer, A. Buadze, D. Bhugra, and A. Smith. “Generating Scholarly Content with ChatGPT: Ethical Challenges for Medical Publishing.” Lancet Digit Health 5, no. 3 (Mar 2023): e105-e06. https://doi. org/10.1016/S2589-7500(23)00019-5

2. Staiman, Avi. 2023 “Academic Publishers Are Missing the Point on ChatGPT” The Scholarly Kitchen https:// scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2023/03/31/guest-postacademic-publishers-are-missing-the-point-onchatgpt/

3. Lund, Brady D., Ting Wang, Nishith Reddy Mannuru, Bing Nie, Somipam Shimray, and Zhang Wang. “ChatGPT and a New Academic Reality: AI-Written Research Papers and the Ethics of the Large Language Models in Scholarly Publishing.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (March 2023). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24750.

4. Pool, Rebecca, “Dare to Share?,” Research Information, 2016, https://www.researchinformation.info/feature/ dare-share.

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

Optimizing Library Services — Fostering Accessibility through Library and Publisher Collaboration

By Hana Levay (Collection Assessment Librarian, University of Washington Libraries) <levay@uw.edu>

Column

Editors:

Ms. Genevieve Robinson (Director of Content Solutions, IGI Global) <grobinson@igi-global.com>

and Ms. Cheyenne Heckermann (Marketer, IGI Global) <checkermann@igi-global.com>

Column Editors’ Note: Recognizing the continued challenges and necessity for providing an accessible library experience for their patrons, Hana Levay writes about progress and actions taken by the University of Washington Libraries to make inaccessible library content more accessible, and how they prioritize content from vendors and publishers that make this transition simpler. As a committed supporter of accessibility of resources, IGI Global has collaborated with Hana on assessing, planning and acting on improving WCAG compliance and overall usability of our content by all. —

CH & GR

Ensuring accessibility in digital library content is not just a responsibility but a fundamental commitment to equal access for all users, including those with disabilities. It is imperative to explore the significance of collaboration between libraries and publishers in achieving universal design and accessibility compliance for online resources. I have highlighted some important insights from my experience at the University of Washington Libraries, showcasing successful efforts made by our libraries to improve web accessibility, prioritize accessibility projects during times of crisis, and how we hold vendors accountable for accessibility improvements. However, improving web accessibility is often a slower process than we would prefer, and may need to be approached one vendor at a time.

Libraries have recognized the importance of assessing thirdparty subscription products for accessibility in accordance with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). A crucial step in this process involves basic tests, such as keyboard navigation, which helps identify potential accessibility issues. By sharing the findings with vendors, libraries encourage them to make necessary updates and improvements. These actions have been effective in inspiring change. For instance, when UW Libraries identified issues with the Global Health database, the vendor, CABI, developed an accessibility timeline to improve their platform. Similarly, IGI Global, an academic publisher, responded positively to accessibility feedback, demonstrating a commitment to action.

Improving accessibility during times of crisis, like the COVID-19 pandemic, can prove to be a daunting task. The onset of the pandemic presented an opportunity for libraries to expedite accessibility projects. By adapting workflows and involving staff and student employees, libraries successfully tackled various accessibility challenges. Keyboard navigation testing emerged as a valuable tool to assess the accessibility of subscribed electronic resources quickly. Through this testing, libraries identified resources that needed improvement and

initiated collaborations with vendors to address accessibility gaps.

The pandemic also highlighted the significance of PDF remediation. Libraries, producing vast amounts of PDF files, prioritized this work to ensure that assistive technologies could efficiently interact with these documents. The effort involved collaboration among staff and student employees, with dedicated training and troubleshooting support from external experts. Looking forward, libraries aim to reduce their PDF footprint and explore alternative formats like HTML for improved accessibility.

Additionally, captioning videos emerged as a critical project, benefiting users with hearing impairments and those in situations where audio cannot be accessed. By employing automated captioning followed by proofreading passes, libraries made hundreds of videos more accessible. This ongoing captioning project signifies a commitment to improving access to time-based media collections.

We show our values in practice, and hold our vendors accountable for providing options for accessible content. A library’s commitment to accessibility extends beyond assessments; it involves holding vendors accountable for the accessibility of their products. Libraries have undergone a learning process, becoming familiar with accessibility standards and testing procedures. With a focus on identifying inaccessible products, libraries can then work with vendors to make improvements collaboratively. However, not all vendors are receptive, compelling libraries to take a decisive stance.

In response to vendors unwilling or unable to improve accessibility, libraries have introduced a procedure for accountability. By not automatically renewing subscriptions of inaccessible products, libraries signal the importance of accessibility in their procurement process. Libraries collaborate with subject librarians to explore alternative options and apply pressure on vendors to prioritize accessibility. Although a few unique resources may receive exceptions, the default position is to cancel inaccessible resources, emphasizing accessibility as a deal-breaker in licensing requirements. When enough libraries consistently reject inaccessible resources, those vendors and publishers will be forced to consider that accessibility is not optional.

The journey to fostering accessibility in digital library content involves active collaboration between libraries, publishers, and vendors. University of Washington Libraries are among those that have taken a proactive approach, identifying, and addressing accessibility gaps in third-party subscription continued on page 54

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

Looking Over the Edge — Connecting Preprints and Peer Review: Toward Better Provenance, Quality, and Trustworthiness

By Alberto Pepe (Director, Strategy and Innovation, Wiley, Co-Founder Authorea) <apepe@wiley.com>

Column Editor: Dr. Sven Fund (Managing Director, Fullstopp GmbH, Berlin, Germany; Phone: +49 (0) 172 511 4899) <sven.fund@fullstopp.com> www.fullstopp.com

In recent years, there has been much talk about preprints, especially with their sharp rise in volume and popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic. Simply put, a preprint is an author-owned copy of a scholarly manuscript shared on a publicly accessible repository, regardless of whether it is intended for publication or not. Preprints are perceived by the scientific community as a rapid and open way to disseminate research results as soon as they are ready for consumption by peers and the scientific community. Preprinting is faster than traditional publishing, but it does not replace it. Preprints bypass the procedures of filtering, peer review, and control offered by academic journals and conferences.

Despite being separate from traditional publishing, preprints (and preprint servers) are, in my opinion, the natural gymnasium where new ideas and experiments around the future of scientific communication are taking place. In this article, I will discuss how building a bridge between preprints and traditional peer review can bring greater reliability, provenance, and trustworthiness to scientific information.

A Bit of History

Preprints are not a new phenomenon. In fact, preprints predate the web! The arXiv, pronounced “archive,” was started in 1991, and since then it has allowed researchers to freely share millions of publication-ready articles prior to formal peer review and publication in the fields of high-energy physics, astrophysics, computer science, quantitative biology, statistics, and more. But, prior to the arXiv, “the photocopy machine was a prime component of the distribution system” (Ginsparg, 2011) and preprints were exchanged physically (in paper format) with personal contacts, mailing lists, and library exchanges (Pepe, 2005; Elizalde, 2017). Institutional repositories, such as the SPIRES-HEP database (Stanford Physics Information REtrieval System- High Energy Physics) at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) and the Document Server at CERN only acted as bibliographic services, helping scientists to keep track of publication information. But while SPIRES greatly improved the flow of metadata, it was still hard to retrieve the full text — the actual manuscript. A new typesetting system would soon emerge and change this.

TeX, pronounced “tech,” was developed by Donald Knuth in the late 70’s as a way for researchers to write and typeset articles programmatically. Soon after the introduction of TeX, Leslie Lamport set a standard for TeX formatting, called LaTeX, which made it very easy for all researchers to professionally typeset their documents on their own. This system made sharing papers easier and cheaper than ever before. Indeed, many, if not most, researchers at the time relied upon team

assistants or typists to write their work, which then had to be photocopied in order to be sent via mail to a handful of other researchers. TeX allowed researchers to write their documents in a lightweight format that could be emailed and then downloaded and compiled without the need for physical mail.

Researchers began to exchange emails containing preprints, quickly hitting their strict disk space allocation limits. To address this problem, an automated email server initially was set up on August 14th, 1991. This service would allow researchers to automatically request preprints via email as needed. It was one of the world’s first web servers. It was renamed arXiv in 1998, and today still serves as one of the most open and efficient forms of research communication in the world.

What made the arXiv so successful? A couple of factors. First, the core community served by the arXiv (physicists and natural scientists) is naturally tech-savvy. Most physicists typeset their articles in LaTeX (still today) and this allowed them to easily exchange manuscripts in this lightweight format, upload the LaTeX to arXiv to generate publisherlevel quality manuscripts. (Until a few years ago, the arXiv would only accept submissions in LaTeX). Second, the world of physics and astronomy has a long-standing tradition of sharing and collaboration. Papers from physics and astronomy collaboration may have hundreds if not thousands of coauthors. It is assumed in these communities that impactful research can only come out of large scale collaborations. In sum, the success of arXiv stems from the introduction of new technological advances paired to a well-developed culture of collaboration and sharing.

While the arXiv is often credited with the creation of the culture and technology around “preprinting,” prepublication exists in other fields. The oldest and most popular service outside of physics is the SSRN. Founded in 1994, the SSRN is a portal for depositing working papers, dissertations, and accepted papers in the social sciences and humanities. Culturally and historically, SSRN was regarded more as a repository (it has been said that a repository is where documents go to “repose”), while the arXiv was always perceived as a more active server where users find the latest cutting-edge research. For example, the two single most important physics findings of the last two decades — CERN’s Higgs Boson and LIGO’s Gravitational Waves — were announced on the arXiv before they were even submitted to academic journals. I believe that something similar has never been seen in the social sciences. That said, recently, the SSRN has become increasingly a content consumption platform in addition to a repository, as discussed later.

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

The Pandemic and the Emergence of Medical and Biological Preprints

Outside of the physical and social sciences, deposits of preprints were virtually non-existent before 2019. Preprinting was not a practice known or adopted by medical, chemical, and biological scientists. Things changed with the inception of domain-based servers in these fields, such as BioRxiv, MedRxiv, ChemRxiv, and more. But, while BioRxiv was started in 2013, it really took off in terms of submissions and popularity with the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic literally shifted the culture of biologists and medical professionals around communication and dissemination of research. It served as a catalyst, propelling the rapid rise of preprints, as researchers sought to share crucial findings swiftly and collaborate across borders, bypassing the traditional time-consuming peer-review process.

As the world faced an unprecedented health crisis, researchers and scientists across the globe raced to understand the novel coronavirus and develop potential treatments and vaccines. Time was of the essence, and the traditional peer-review process was deemed too slow for the urgent need to disseminate critical findings. Preprints emerged as a crucial tool for rapid knowledge sharing during this time, allowing researchers to share their results almost immediately with the global scientific community, as well as the public.

The rapid rise in preprints during the COVID-19 pandemic was staggering. In particular, the number of preprints related to COVID-19 skyrocketed in a matter of months. In April 2020, the volume of COVID-19 preprints about COVID-19 on bioRxiv surpassed 5,000. The number of peer-reviewed publications was similar — something that had never been seen before in the field (The Economist, 2020). To date, about 10% of all preprints on sites such as BioRxiv and Authorea are about COVID-19.

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the adoption of preprints in biology and medicine was profound. It brought preprints to the forefront as a legitimate and complementary means of disseminating research findings, side by side with traditional peer-reviewed journals. Researchers, funders, and institutions recognized the importance of preprints in the dissemination of scientific knowledge and the potential they held to drive innovation and collaboration. As a result, the acceptance of preprints in the life sciences community has grown significantly, and they are now seen as an integral part of the scientific communication ecosystem.

As we move beyond the pandemic, the use of preprints in biology and medicine shows no signs of slowing down. Researchers continue to utilize preprints to share their findings swiftly, collaborate across disciplines, and engage with the wider scientific community. Platforms like bioRxiv and medRxiv continue to see steady growth in the volume of preprints across various topics, not just limited to COVID-19.

Benefits and Challenges

The rapid rise in preprints during the pandemic was not without its challenges, but let’s begin by analyzing some key benefits.

First, preprints allow for fast and wide dissemination of research results as soon as authors deem appropriate their distribution. In some fields, a speedy dissemination of research findings may literally save lives.

Second, authors get to publish their work when it is “fresh,” without having to wait weeks (months?) for its review.

Preprints also are naturally Open Access, so they become immediately available to all at no charge. Most servers also offer authors to record their preprints with a DOI, which allows authors to put a stake in the ground for their work, i.e., set a record of priority.

Third, the public availability of preprints may mean more eyes on a given research result. This may lead to rapid evaluation of results and community feedback, which may, in turn, improve and speed up the subsequent peer review process.

Fourth, before preprints, the only “eyes” who were able to see the most cutting-edge research were editors and peer reviewers of journals. As such, peer review was a closed system — until results were published, no one was able to know about them. Preprints open up the “black box” of peer review.

Finally, preprints get cited (by peer reviewed papers, and other preprints). This means that at all times researchers are building their work on the latest science results, and as such science as a whole is moving faster and faster.

But preprints do come with their share of problems. And the rapid adoption and rise of preprints that happened in the last few years shined light on the challenges more than the benefits. Some of the main challenges of preprints include:

1. Provenance: Peer review is not perfect, but it is, still to this day, the best way to put new research under rigorous scrutiny and validation by field experts. Preprints are by definition not peer reviewed. As a result, there is a risk of spreading misinformation, unproven claims, or partial results, which could have serious implications, especially in fields like medicine where public health decisions may be influenced by preliminary findings.

2. Quality Control: Some preprint servers perform rather advanced screening processes (almost comparable to that of traditional peer review), while others do not. With such variations in the rigor and credibility of screening processes, it becomes sometimes impossible for readers (researchers included) to critically evaluate the findings before accepting them as established knowledge.

3. Trustworthiness: As preprints are often accessible to the general public, they are often picked up by the media (and social media). Especially at the height of the pandemic, it was common to see preprints referred to “a new study recently published,” leading to widespread coverage of preliminary findings. Scientific research is a self-correcting, iterative process. While this is common knowledge for scientists, the public was not ready to be exposed to the “rawest” aspect of the scientific making process. Media outlets (and social media) often sensationalized new “studies,” leading to misinformation and confusion, and eventually eroding public trust in science.

Preprints and Peer review

It is not unlikely that in the next few years the scholarly ecosystem will experience a proliferation of technologies, practices, and standards by preprint servers to address the challenges outlined above. For example, preprint servers may find (affordable and scalable) ways to subject submitted content to rigorous peer review and quality control to ensure the provenance and validity of the research they post. Similarly, they might add other indicators of trustworthiness, such as

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

preprint badges, ranking systems, and collections (akin to journals) that indicate the reliability of the posted research. (The risk at hand is that we transform preprint servers into traditional publishers, devoiding them of their novelty, speed, and experimental nature).

Yet, there is an immediate way to mitigate the three challenges outlined above without a drastic investment in technology or practices by the scholarly ecosystem. It involves connecting, whenever possible, a preprint to its peer review status, gathered from the journal it was submitted to. This idea is not new.

From a cultural perspective, authors posting preprints on arXiv have been informally using the “Comments” metadata field to indicate information such as their target journal. For example, at the time of writing, this article contains “Submitted to Physical Review Letters” in its Comments field. Authors can then edit that information at any time, as the paper goes through review. For example, they can change it to be “Under Review,” “Under Revision,” “Accepted,” etc. The obvious shortcoming here is that this is a burden on the authors, and more often than not, information becomes quickly obsolete. Plus, the information cannot be validated in any meaningful way.

From a technological perspective, a more systematic approach to connect preprints to peer review was pioneered by InReview, which connects hundreds of Springer Journals to the Research Square preprint platform. Later it was adopted by other publishers, e.g., Elsevier journals integrate with SSRN, and Wiley journals integrate with Authorea. The mechanism of all these publisher-integrated preprint workflows is similar: authors are asked at journal submission if they wish to automatically post a preprint out of their manuscript. If they opt in, a preprint is immediately posted on the target preprint repository, and it is linked in an automated way to its peer review status (peer review events are received by the journal and posted on the preprint). Here is an example of a preprint which was posted on Authorea following an author opt-in at the Wiley journal Ecology and Evolution. The peer review timeline (Figure 1) shows the exact steps of the editorial and review process.

a first round of revisions at Journal X is extremely valuable information to ascertain the validity of a piece of research when compared with the alternative (no information at all).

2. It creates some basic level of quality control for preprint servers, provided by publishers. Preprint servers can then focus their resources on other matters instead of replicating the initial screening work of editorial teams at traditional journals.

3. Publishing peer review events may be a new concept for authors, editors, and the public, but it is the first necessary step towards fully transparent peer review. It is also the best way to build a sense of shared trust between authors and media (and social media) outlets in an authoritative way.

Publisher-agnostic Preprint Workflows

The systems described in the previous section have an obvious shortcoming: the linkage between a journal submission and a preprint is only established if the author opts-in at one of the participating journals AND they chose to preprint at the enabled publisher-powered preprint server. This creates barriers for journals at publishers not participating in the program, as well as for authors wishing to deposit their preprint at notsupported preprint servers.

At Wiley Partner Solutions, we are working on solutions to offer societies and publishers a journal submission workflow that connects peer review timelines with preprints, regardless of the editorial and submission system in use and of the target preprint server chosen by the author. The system is powered by ReX (Research Exchange), a smart front-end submission system for authors which sits on top of any editorial management and peer review system. ReX also is capable of delivering fulltex, metadata, and peer review events to any preprint server, giving authors a full range of options of where they would want to post their preprint.

Industry standards to describe peer review events in a structured way are still scarce, but we are confident that publishers, societies, and preprint servers will collaborate to create a reliable way to connect preprints and peer reviews. In this context, the DocMaps initiative is building a framework for capturing and describing “the processes used to create documents” in a machine-readable way (this includes the peer review steps employed to evaluate a scientific article).

Conclusion

“Injecting” a preprint with this level of peer review information mitigates the challenges outlined in the previous section. In particular:

1. It allows anyone to understand what level of scrutiny the preprint is being (or was) subjected to. For example, knowing that a preprint has already passed

Preprints have a rich history predating the web and digital formats. Preprint servers evolved from a means of distributing research quickly within specific communities to widely accessible, multidisciplinary online platforms in recent years. Preprints have proven to be very valuable in accelerating the dissemination of scientific knowledge, facilitating collaboration, and encouraging transparency in research. The surge in preprint submissions, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, showcased their potential to rapidly share critical findings and fuel global scientific progress. However, along with the numerous benefits, preprints also come with challenges, including the lack of formal peer review, the risk of misinformation, and concerns about research integrity and provenance.

Despite these challenges, aligning preprints more closely with peer review can significantly enhance the provenance, quality, and trustworthiness of scientific research. I have discussed how

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

ongoing initiatives by some scholarly publishers are now able to post preprints for submitting authors, and automatically “inject” those preprints with peer review events. While useful and scalable, these journal workflows are currently tied to specific publishers and preprints servers. More collaboration, standards, and integrations are needed between publishers, societies, and preprint servers to ensure that the scientific community can continue to harness the potential of preprints, while upholding the rigorous standards of peer review in research, and in turn promoting a more transparent, credible, and trustworthy scientific landscape.

References

Elizalde, E. (2017). On How the Cyberspace Arose to Fulfill Theoretical Physicists’ Needs and Eventually Changed the World: Personal Recallings and a Practitioner’s Perspective. In Advanced Sciences and Technologies for Security Applications (pp. 3–21).

Ginsparg, P. (2011). ArXiv at 20. Nature, 476(7359), 145–147.

Pepe, A. et al. (2005). CERN Document Server Software: the integrated digital library. 9th ICCC International Conference on Electronic Publishing. pp.297-302

Pepe, A., Cantiello, M., & Nicholson, J. (2017). The arXiv of the future will not look like the arXiv. Authorea. http://dx.doi. org/10.22541/au.149693987.70506124

Shuai, X., Pepe, A., & Bollen, J. (2012). How the scientific community reacts to newly submitted preprints: article downloads, Twitter mentions, and citations. PloS One, 7(11), e47523.

The Economist (2020). Scientific research on the coronavirus is being released in a torrent. https://www.economist.com/ science-and-technology/2020/05/07/scientific-research-on-thecoronavirus-is-being-released-in-a-torrent

Optimizing Library Services continued from page 50

products. During times like the pandemic, libraries can take a step back to prioritize accessibility projects, leading to significant progress in PDF remediation and video captioning. By focusing on accessibility compliance, libraries exemplify their commitment to universal design and equal access for

all users. Libraries have the opportunity to advocate for accessibility improvements by engaging vendors, pushing for positive changes, and holding them accountable when necessary. Through these collective efforts, we can create a more accessible and inclusive future for all digital libraries.

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

ATG Interviews Karen Phillips Executive Vice President Learning and UK Executive Lead, Sage

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

and Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu>

ATG: Can you tell us a little bit about your responsibilities as the Executive Vice President Learning and UK Executive Lead at Sage?

KP: I have quite a unique role in publishing and at Sage, which is hugely interesting, and combines working in relatively new and innovative areas of publishing alongside more of a cultural leadership role in the business:

• As EVP of Learning, I head up a division of the business responsible for developing and delivering a suite of Learning Resources that support student success and research excellence in higher education.

• As UK Executive Lead, I am the local lead in Sage’s UK office, responsible for supporting a vibrant, inclusive culture, and strong leadership and management.

ATG: Sage recently had several brand changes including refreshing your logo and dropping “publishing” from the company name. Why has Sage made these changes? Do they reflect a new corporate strategy?

KP: The rebranding reflects a really important moment in Sage’s history. In 2021, our founder Sara Miller McCune passed her shares of the company to an independent trust, guaranteeing our long-term independence and our ability to remain a missiondriven company indefinitely. Our brand changes and messaging around it are to emphasize the difference that our independence makes to the type of publisher we can be.

As an independent company, we are free to think long term and develop products focused on the future needs of higher education rather than quick wins. We are free to do more in terms of publishing in new areas, areas that are progressive and have social impact. We are also free to work in partnership with our library partners, acknowledging shared long-term goals of a flourishing higher education system that enables excellent research and student outcomes.

Our brand changes better reflect all these core aspects of our independence. And, while we are very much a publisher, dropping “publishing” reflects the additional products and services that complement what we offer today, such as Technology from Sage, the portfolio of digital services that ease the teaching and research workflow

ATG: You have also reorganized and renamed some of your products and resources. Can you tell us more about that? How do these changes benefit your library customers? How do they benefit the end user?

KP: Over the last decade, we have developed a wide-ranging suite of learning resources previously called Digital Products. We have reorganized and renamed the suite Learning Resources, and renamed some of the products. These changes make the range of products within the suite as clear as possible, and enables us to describe more clearly what value our products offer. For example, all our business products come under the section named Sage Business — a section of our suite that now includes Business Cases, Business Skills, and Business Foundations.

With these changes, we’ve created a more seamless experience for librarians and their patrons. And we feel we can better convey how the tools we offer through the library can be used across teaching, learning, and research workflows.

ATG: And what about new products and resources? Can we expect any new additions to the current lineup?

KP: Yes, our plan is to keep building on our suite of learning resources. At this time of accelerated digital transformation, our resources are resonating really well with libraries, faculty, and students as they were designed for a hybrid and digital learning environment which we now find ourselves in.

We publish several new products each year, many building on our existing range. For example, within the Sage Research Methods suite, we launch a new video collection each year. We also have plans within Sage Business to regularly launch new products building on where we see high usage and real need from librarians and their patrons. We also develop wholly new product ranges where we see a need, such as Sage Skills, which was developed with a strong focus on the needs of students to develop study, well-being, and employability skills. And we recently launched a series of online courses, Sage Campus, to support both skills needs and research needs in higher education. We are planning for new additions to Sage Campus shortly.

ATG: Sage has invested in the Skilltype platform, acquired Epigeum, a provider of online courses, partnered with Hum, a data and AI company, and recently acquired Hubro Education, a developer of business simulations. How do these different corporate moves fit into Sage’s future strategy? Are there additional corporate moves in the offing that you can share?

KP: These moves are inspired by a very exciting focus on the future needs of the library as the center of higher education in a more digital environment. We are exploring that future in a number of ways, including building the product suite that I have talked about. And as you mention, we are also forming partnerships with companies such as Skilltype that

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

share our vision for a strong future for the library, as part of our Technology from Sage strategy where we offer solutions to support the library and amplify their voice and impact within higher education institutions.

We are also exploring new types of content that will fit within our overall learning resources suite, which currently includes a range of content types, from cases and digital books to video, data, and, more recently, online courses through Sage Campus and Epigeum, and simulations with the Hubro Education acquisition.

With Hum, we will use their AI engine to gain a better understanding of what our readers want to help identify new topic and content opportunities and to recruit authors, editors, and reviewers who are best placed to create that content.

All of these changes further the Sage mission of building bridges to knowledge — supporting the development of ideas through the research process to scholarship that is certified, taught, and applied. Librarians play a key role in this process and their success is key to furthering our mission.

ATG: Will these corporate moves benefit libraries and end users? If so, how?

KP: These acquisitions and investments continue a history of growing our publishing expertise in a way that meets the needs of libraries and their patrons. They are part of a wider commitment to exploring new ways to support learning and research. Through these recent moves, as well as through our wider publishing plans, we can offer the library products that help them to achieve their goals of supporting student success and research excellence.

As examples, our Sage Campus and Epigeum online courses offer library resources to support students through their journey at university, covering everything from health and wellbeing, to key study and research skills training, and employability skills training. The library is often the go-to place for students to reach out for research and study support, and Sage Campus is an excellent resource for the library to help them effectively support their patrons.

Our acquisition of Hubro Education offers excellent simulations for teaching in business and management. Simulations have increasingly been used for teaching business skills to students as they are an effective approach to “learning by doing” in a digital environment. There is a proven benefit to the student and faculty, and an optional benefit to the library to become a partner with faculty in making provision of sims in course teaching possible.

As we continue to grow our suite and learn how new types of technology and content can support education, we hope to support the library in its continued transition to a digital future, with expertly curated and commissioned resources that map well with the needs of learners and researchers.

ATG: Sage has played an active role in open access for more than a decade. Can you tell us more about Sage’s Open Access Portal?

KP: Sure. We started our open access journey in 2011 with the launch of Sage Open, our journal covering the broad spectrum of social and behavioural research (the first of its kind!). The following year we launched titles in medicine and have subsequently developed a portfolio of over 200 titles across the STM and HSS disciplines, including a number of OA titles that we publish on behalf of societies. Many hybrid titles, of course, also support open access publication.

In addition to offering these access options for researchers, we are dedicated to supporting them through the process of publishing OA. For example:

• We have developed the Sage Open Access Author Portal to provide a rich suite of resources to support authors as they choose the route to publish that is right for them.

• We have published educational videos dedicated to helping researchers broaden their understanding of key open access concepts.

• Our monthly “How to get Published” webinar series promotes publishing open access and publishing options in every webinar.

• Our Sage Perspectives blog includes posts detailing, debating, and advising researchers on various aspects of OA publishing.

Whether we are interacting with an early career researcher or a seasoned tenured academic, we want to provide the resources that help them choose the right route to publish and the right home for their research. We encourage librarians supporting patrons (and researching themselves) to take advantage as well.

ATG: How do you think AI bots like Chat GPT will impact academic publishers like Sage? Do you think publishers should get acknowledgement and/or compensation when their works are used by bots?

KP: Chat GPT and other Large Language Models will impact publishing in many ways. We are focused on understanding what the capabilities will be, experimenting, and learning. At this stage, we can’t predict exactly what the impact will be as the technology is evolving so rapidly. We do, though, already see many opportunities to further enhance areas of the business that currently use AI, such as marketing, production, and customer service, where many existing processes can be automated and enhanced. We are also experimenting in many areas of the business to uncover the potential for creative uses of the new technology. And we are especially interested in how AI can make our publishing output more accessible to all types of learners, including practitioners and policymakers who are using evidence to improve lives.

In terms of whether publishers should be acknowledged and/ or compensated for the use of their works by AI bots, I think the answer is yes to both when it comes to copyright material. From a copyright perspective, you can see similarities to the Google Books or Napster cases where the copyright issues were recognized and acted on. Ultimately, the result in each case has been the development of a functioning commercial market, which benefits everyone.

This type of acknowledgement will also help authors and researchers get deserved recognition for their work and will help AI users sort through the information they are provided and determine what has been vetted by proven scholarly workflows and what may be inaccurate or completely fabricated.

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

ATG Interviews Tim Smith

Head of Portfolio Development, IOP Publishing

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

and Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu>

IOP Publishing has launched a new open access environmental research journal: Environmental Research: Energy. Dr Tim Smith, Head of Portfolio Development at IOP Publishing, tells us why now is the right time for the new journal to be established.

ATG: Why has IOP Publishing decided to launch a journal dedicated to renewable energy?

TS: The impacts of the climate crisis are global in scope and unprecedented in scale. It’s affecting the whole world like never before. One way we can work towards a greener and more sustainable future is by developing sustainable energy sources. That’s where our new open access journal Environmental Research: Energy comes in. It will cover the important challenges related to energy and finding solutions, from the impact and risks to resilience, mitigation, adaptation, security, and more. As a publisher of leading environmental research, we represent and are guided by the scientific research process. In particular, our series of open access Environmental Research journals play a key role in taking responsibility to do what we can to positively change the trajectory of our planet’s future.

ATG: What can you tell us about the development of the environmental research field?

TS: As the climate crisis has intensified, so too has the environmental research effort and the need for scientific rigour, transparency and trust in the scholarly publishing process. The ongoing increasing interest in environmental science now extends well beyond academia to include engineers, economists, policy influencers as well as the general public, creating a greater-than-ever demand for specialised journals and publishing capacity in this area. Sustainable energy studies alone, just one (very important) facet of the environmental research field, has seen an increase in research output of over 600% in the last ten years.

ATG: What role do you see libraries and librarians playing as the field of environmental research continues to develop?

TS: Librarians, of course, have a crucial function in helping to disseminate and signpost academic research. As this field continues to expand in scope and volume, the role of librarians in making this knowledge known and available to as many people who might benefit from it as possible will continue to be critical. It’s also the case that many libraries and their institutions have now set goals that support environmental change. Promoting research that will help mitigate the effects of global warming and deliver sustainable solutions for the planet will not only

support science but the whole scholarly community and global society.

ATG: Do you think there needs to be more journals dedicated to environmental research to match the high volume of research output?

TS: Yes, with the right characteristics as informed by the community, we strongly believe in the importance of environmental research journals and the positive contribution they make in helping to accelerate the process of scientific discovery (as evidenced by the significant growth in this research area). Environmental research journals form the bedrock of trusted knowledge to inform government policies and the new advancements that are required to address the climate crisis.

We know that environmental research studies often overlap, and various traditional research disciplines intertwine within each study. That’s why we offer a whole suite of environmental research journals and are expanding our collection even further. Our Environmental Research series now consists of eight open access journals covering topics from ecology and health to infrastructure, climate and, most recently, sustainable food systems.

ATG: Do you think research output on renewable energy will continue to grow? If so, how will IOP Publishing react to this continued growth?

TS: The output in this research area has grown spectacularly over the last decade and we have a key responsibility in representing and helping to disseminate breakthrough developments that advance the field as broadly as possible. In addition to specialised studies, Environmental Research: Energy particularly encourages multidisciplinary articles that bring together the research disciplines and global stakeholders that are key to the sustainable energy effort. Through our broader Environmental Research series, we are committed to providing an ongoing platform that represents the multidisciplinary nature of environmental research in a way that helps to deliver the changes we need for the sustainability of our planet.

ATG: Why did IOP Publishing decide to make the new journal open access? How many of your other journals are open access?

TS: We believe that research should be made openly available to as many people as possible. Ultimately, the success of the scientific communities that we serve is the measure of our own success as a publisher. Ensuring the widest dissemination and visibility of the research that we publish delivers recognition, impact, and value for the scientific community. The transition to open access is central to our vision of becoming a trusted partner

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

in the advancement of high-quality research that delivers social and economic benefit to the world.

All of IOP Publishing’s proprietary journals now have an open access option and our portfolio now has 25 fully open access journals extending across the sciences.

ATG: How does IOP Publishing make sure everyone who would like to publish in the new environmental journal has the chance to do so? And in doing so, how will you maintain the highest research standards from these authors?

TS: All content published in Environmental Research: Energy will be made openly available for anyone to read. But what is more, we currently also cover all article publication charges so that anyone will be able to publish their valuable and robust environmental research around sustainable energy. We also offer services such as transparent peer review and double anonymous peer review, to reduce barriers to publishing and to ensure the publication process remains as fair, transparent, and objective as possible.

ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Louise Hemmings Editorial Director

AM

Karen Phillips

EVP Learning and UK Executive Lead Sage

Pelham

House, Marlborough, Wiltshire, UK

<louise@amdigital.co.uk>

www.amdigital.co.uk

BORN AND LIVED: Warwickshire, Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

EARLY LIFE: Grew up in a small Midlands town famous for its Roman history and being the heart of the hat-making industry for Victorian England. Graduated with a BA in English Literature and Language from University of Birmingham and MA in Publishing from Oxford Brookes University.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: I took my first job in publishing whilst working on my Masters dissertation and worked as an Editorial Assistant for a small academic press in Oxford. After this, I gained experience across a range of subject areas including fashion, anthropology, literature, history and politics working on scholarly, trade and higher education titles at Wiley and Bloomsbury. I then specialized in academic digital reference and moved to AM as Publisher in 2014.

FAMILY: I have two young sons, Joe (5) and Wilbur (1) with my husband Pete.

IN MY SPARE TIME: I love music and given half a chance (less often than I’d like with young children!) I try to see my favourite bands live. I’m a real foodie and love both cooking and trying exciting new restaurants — hopefully then undoing the worst of the damage with yoga and walking.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.

PET PEEVES: Indecisiveness.

PHILOSOPHY: Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: The publication of the first title I commissioned as an editor was very special, as was becoming Editorial Director at AM in 2021.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: I see the industry as being steered by mission-lead publishers who concentrate on a deep commitment to quality and to building reciroprocal relationships with librarians and scholars — with new types of products emerging designed around those relationships and knowledge exchange, rather than traditional content supplier and producer models.

1 Oliver’s Yard, 55 City Road

London EC1Y 1SP

Phone: +44 7534606573

<karen.phillips@sagepub.co.uk>

BORN AND LIVED: England, have lived in London since graduating from university.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: My career has been at Sage, starting in marketing, moving to editorial as an editor, and then publisher, and then managing different teams within editorial. I now head up our global Learning Resources team.

FAMILY: I am married with two children who are now adults.

IN MY SPARE TIME: I enjoy going to contemporary dance, watching our local football team, Arsenal, and I practice yoga regularly.

FAVORITE BOOKS: My favorite book at the moment is Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus, it’s an inspirational story of a chemist paving her way to success in 1950s America, through brilliant and original thinking and creative and subversive action.

PHILOSOPHY: Listen and learn, and play your part in moving the dial of social justice.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Not so much an achievement, but a recent career highlight was co-facilitating an interview with Sage’s founder Sara Miller McCune where she reflected on her career, establishing Sage, securing our long-term independence, and her passion for social justice which is reflected in much of the publishing program that she started.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: To have established the market-leading suite of high-quality, customer-focused, learning resources that support student success through better learning, well-being, and employability; and to also support researchers through our comprehensive and excellent resources in the Sage Research Methods suite.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: In five years, the information industry will have shifted substantially towards digital. At the moment there are still some products and geographic areas that are still hybrid, but this continues to change. The shift to digital will bring new ways of acquiring knowledge and learning to think critically and to do research.

The growth of Open Access will continue and hybrid journals will continue to become more open. STM will continue to shift more quickly than HSS as the funding to publish isn’t there to the extent that it is in STM.

Hopefully, we will see some good solutions to support HSS research in a new more open environment.

AI will have had a huge impact on how knowledge is produced, and information is disseminated, as well as the potential for new ways of developing and delivering products. Right now, it’s not clear exactly how the industry and higher education will change, but AI will bring significant changes over the next five years.

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

Dr. Tim Smith Head of Portfolio Development

IOP Publishing

Headquarters: No.2 The Distillery, Glassfields, Avon Street, Bristol, UK BS2 OGR

<tim.smith@ioppublishing.org>

www.ioppublishing.org

BORN AND LIVED: Entirely in the UK. I was brought up in a small town in East Sussex before then heading up to Leeds where I studied physics. Following my PhD, I then moved down to Bristol with my family where I was lucky enough to join IOP Publishing!

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: After finishing my physics PhD, I joined IOP Publishing in 2000 initially as an Editor for our condensed matter/materials science journals before moving on to take on Publisher responsibility for a wide range of titles extending across physics, materials science and environmental science. I’ve lost count of the new product launches I’ve been involved with over the last 23 years but right now I’m delighted to be heading up a very talented team in developing our journal subject portfolios to ensure we represent and support the most exciting new research going on today across the physical sciences.

IN MY SPARE TIME: A day doesn’t pass without some sort of musicrelated activity — either playing (for my pleasure, no one elses!), writing (very occasionally) or just listening. I also enjoy most sports and try to fit in outdoor activities when I can (as much as the body now allows!).

FAVORITE BOOKS: Very difficult to say! I recently re-read (after many years) Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges — a wonderful collection of short stories/essays filled with philosophical paradoxes which was well worth revisiting. More generally Thomas Pynchon has always been one of my favourite authors.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Not a very original response but I would be very surprised if there hasn’t been a wholesale shift to open access publishing across the STEM journals sector within the next 5 years.

We’re also really starting to see the major influence (both the good and the bad) of machine learning and AI across many areas of publishing (not to mention the exciting potential it has for research and new scientific discoveries). It’s clearly here to stay and the way in which publishing adapts in both grasping the opportunities and addressing the challenges will, I think, be a key theme for the industry in the coming years.

COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

AM Pelham House, London Road, Marlborough, Wiltshire, UK Website: www.amdigital.co.uk

ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIPS, ETC.: ALA, ACRL, CNI, CMA, ARLIS NA.

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Primary source databases, learning tools and archival publishing platforms.

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE: Higher education institutions, public libraries, archives and heritage institutions.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 150

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/ PUBLISHING PROGRAM: AM has worked with libraries and archives around the world for over 30 years, first creating microfilm content before evolving into to the company we see today. We partner with libraries, archives and heritage institutions to digitise the world’s historical and cultural knowledge, create teaching and research tools that support students in using primary sources in their own research, and provide the technology that allows libraries and archives to publish their own archival collections online.

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

Back Talk continued from page 62

open-access. Libraries would need to organize a distributed network of hosts with a common interface and common metadata standards that would allow authors easy and inexpensive paths to digital distribution (large parts of such a system already exist). At a minimum, creating a concept for a life-cycle for the initially published book will be good for all parties.

Who should participate in such a developmental conversation? The American Council of Learned Societies was visionary twenty-odd years ago with the Humanities Ebook project (not OA, but very moderately priced for libraries). Foundation support for development of standards and tools could be surprisingly modest in cost. AAP and the Authors Alliance could provide moral and intellectual support and “marketing” to academic authors for solutions that serve the needs of all. This can’t be a solo effort, but it can be achieved by collaboration, initially through a pilot project.

What would success look like? Making both legacy and new material more widely available sooner than later would set a welcome and persuasive example of what’s possible. Landslides can happen. They begin with a few stones from the

top of the mountain coming loose and bounding down the slope. Those stones never return to the top: more follow, and then, at some point, more and more and more. I’m convinced that the challenge is to find a way to move towards a tipping point at which, over a quite short period of time, it suddenly seems apparent that what is technologically possible — universal access to a huge universal library — is both desirable and, for the health of free societies, necessary.

What is the goal? Easy, wide access to books, immediately upon publication or not long after, is a worthy goal that is a long way from being realized. We would further enable libraries to be libraries in every respect — institutions that collect, care for, and preserve the cultural products of humankind. Therefore, we need a mix of strategies to make sure that all the books we want to make available and to preserve move into the free space of libraries sooner or later, preferably sooner. Tackling a manageable subset of academic books whose rights have reverted or could revert to authors, is one such strategy.

Let us kick the first stones loose.

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

Back Talk — Kicking Stones Loose: A Modest Proposal

Column Editor: Ann Okerson (Director, Offline Internet Consortium) <aokerson@gmail.com>

Iremember the good public library of my childhood. It seemed to have all the riches of the world’s knowledge and literature spread out before me, free for me to read. Maybe it wasn’t all there, but once I was in that lovely quiet building, there were no obstacles, only riches. The world of digital text ought to be like that — maybe even better. There’s no technology reason why we could not have every book ever published and acquired by a library somewhere instantly and digitally available to the world’s readers.

But that’s not how things are. The books of the 20th and 21st centuries can be surprisingly and painfully difficult to find, access, and read. If, while typing this paragraph, I were to get the urge to read Moby-Dick, I could stop and find an online copy, load it to my device, and start reading, all in the time that it takes to finish this paragraph and write the next one. But a more recent book? Many best-sellers I can probably get from a good public library, but publishers haven’t yet figured out how to make these affordably available for the libraries that provide such a service. Money has to change hands — in many cases a considerable sum — and even then many more contemporary books aren’t available.

Remember Allen Drury? Advise and Consent was a blockbuster bestseller and Hollywood movie of about 1960. He went on to write a variety of political novels and thrillers — absolutely none of which are in my excellent local public library. Nothing of his appears in Hathi Trust’s collection, and, even if it did, likely these could not be made publicly available. Some of his books are available on Amazon — that is, in a proprietary format, for sale only, with unspeakably bad metadata and very little likelihood of a preservation plan in place. I’ve done similar probes on some other authors of literary fiction and non-fiction from the same period: James (later Jan) Morris, Rose Macaulay, Wilfred Thesiger, Alan Moorehead. Struck out on many. So much literature is slipping away from us, as is much of the scholarly writing of recent decades. Really

current books outside the world of popular readership, if electronically available, are almost all behind paywalls and will remain there for a good long time.

There’s only so much we can do about authors who have passed, but what can we do about the flood of works from still-living authors?

Some things are already happening with brand new monographic publications. Knowledge Unlatched is a decade old; various individual academic publishers are advancing experiments, mainly of a medium scale. Central European University Press is noteworthy in this regard. DOAB offers a roadmap to what’s available. But too little movement is happening, and it’s far from clear what sustainable models will emerge.

May I offer one possibility?

Looking backward, first, we should remember that a striking feature of academic publishers’ contracts for a long time (and sometimes even still today) was the reversion-of-rights clause. It said that when a book went “out of print” for some defined period (for example, six months), the author could reclaim the rights that had been assigned to the publisher and make their own disposition of the book’s future. This never happened on any real scale, because a book, whose publisher did not think there was any longer a print market, probably wasn’t a compelling acquisition for another publisher, and authors themselves had no easy way to reproduce such a book in the print era.

But, these days, another possibility opens: take back these rights, digitize, and make the books freely available. There are examples of such actions, but what is required to accomplish them on a larger scale — apart from interest by the author — is a commitment from the library sector to support (with some help) digitization and hosting-in-perpetuity for titles withdrawn from the commercial contract of first publication. To do this requires informed authors to make firm requests of their publishers. My strong sense is that publishers do recognize a point at which the commercial viability of a book has faded and free distribution is, in fact, good for both the publisher and author. (One difficulty is that some publishers will aver that making a book available for sale by print-ondemand is enough to count as keeping the book “in print.” But books trickling out the door at the very far end of the long tail of readership are not, in fact, likely to provide attractive revenue streams.)

What would it take to accomplish this particular scenario? We’d need to reach out to academic authors who’ve written books previously and also to create a toolkit for authors currently writing books, to support early conversations with publishers about a plan for current and future stages of distribution: hardcover, paperback, eBook-for-sale, and eventually eBookcontinued on page 61

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

About Against the Grain

LOVE it!”