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Library Publishing Through the IFLA Global Lens

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This posting is sponsored by the Library Publishing SIG and published in cooperation with the ARL Section.

This post features Talea Anderson, a Scholarly Communication Librarian at the Washington State University, USA.

I manage our university’s institutional repository, where we publish unique materials including theses, dissertations, student culminating projects, and datasets. In addition, I have taken a leading role in open education initiatives on campus and have, therefore, assisted in preparing open access textbooks. In general, we have opted to publish these texts in Pressbooks. My role in these projects has been largely advisory given staff constraints. Along with Pressbooks, we use Ex Libris products for most of our publishing work—most notably, Esploro, which we are using as our institutional repository.

I am particularly proud of the impact that we have had in open education at WSU. We received support from our President’s and Provost’s Office to provide Affordable Learning grants to faculty in 2016-2020. These grants were used to create OER in 56 courses, impacting 144,000 students during the initial year of implementation for each class. The Libraries did this work in partnership with our Academic Outreach and Innovation unit, ultimately securing millions of dollars in savings for our students.

I have found many resources helpful while learning about OER publishing in particular. Open Education Network provides workshops and community gatherings to discuss workflows, accessibility, fundraising, and many other connected issues. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) provided an Open Education Leadership program that proved especially helpful in allowing me to connect with peers and mentors at other institutions. The Library Publishing Coalition also supported my work and training via their fellowship program, which helped me connect with peers who are focused on accessibility work in publishing. Thanks to those connections, I was able to write my own open access textbook: Accessibility Case Studies for Scholarly Communication Librarians and Practitioners. While compiling this text, I pulled together many of the resources that I found useful while learning about web accessibility in open access publishing.

As for books that changed my life—there are so many but I will call out Frank Arthur’s The Wounded Storyteller, which helped me more clearly understand the differences between medical and social models of disability. I read this book while beginning to think about what I could do as a library professional to widen access to academic resources.

 

Library Publishing Through the IFLA Global Lens

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This posting is sponsored by the Library Publishing SIG and published in cooperation with the ARL Section. Members of the Library Publishing SIG reach out to library publishers and invite them to respond to a series of questions.

This post features Paul Royster, Linnea Fredrickson, and Sue Ann Gardner, who are responsible for the library publishing program at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, which was established in 2005. Their institutional repository is available at https://digitalcommons.unl.edu.

Affiliation: University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries, Lincoln, Nebraska, United States

Describe your work in library publishing.

PR: We always considered the institutional repository as a publishing project. So it was a concise step to developing and finding original materials to publish. Our monograph imprint, Zea Books, has published more than 150 titles. We produce, publish, host, or mirror about 20 journals of various sizes and frequencies. We recruit, edit, design, and typeset as required in each case.

SG: The way we approach our work, all that we do involves library publishing in one form or another, whether it’s publishing books and journals, or populating the institutional repository.

LF: I do a number of things as a staff member in our scholarly communications unit that bit by bit helps to change scholarly communications—for the better is our goal. I help find, prepare, and upload materials—mostly professors’ academic papers—to our institutional repository (though we host all kinds of reports, curricula, proceedings, posters, videos, etc.). We also host entire journals, so I help post those that arrive in final form, and I copyedit and prepare for design and typesetting the articles of those that use our editorial service. We are also book publishers, and I use skills and processes from being an academic press project editor and copy editor to work with authors or editors and ready book manuscripts for design and typesetting. I also do proofreading on all sorts of projects, and I help with supervising some student workers who do scanning and IR uploading.

What attracted you to work in library publishing?

LF: Colleagues found me, thank goodness, while I was in library school mid-career, but with my experience in publishing (most recently in academic and educational publishing), it was a very nice fit to continue that kind of work in a library setting and be involved in changing scholarly communications in the twenty-first century—and for the “twenty-first-century academic library.”

SG: One thing that attracts me to work in library publishing is the collaborative nature of it. Researchers need to communicate with one another, their students, and the public at large, and we help them do that. Roger Chartier has said that authors don’t write books—they write manuscripts. From these, editors and publishers craft books, and that is what we do in our work.

What training resources have you found helpful in your work?

LF: Copy editors train every day with their style manuals—The Chicago Manual of Style, Scientific Style and Format, The Associated Press Stylebook, MLA Style Manual, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, and more. I am also a member of ACES: The Society for Editing (https://aceseditors.org/). I attend virtually the Library Publishing Forums, Southern Miss Institutional Repository Conferences (SMIRC), and the Digital Commons North American Conferences. I write workflow documentation or tips for myself and others, and then after I haven’t done a certain thing for half a year (busy with something else), I use my documentation to retrain myself!

What values and principles inform your work?

SG: One principle that informs our work is that the repository belongs to the faculty. We don’t own it and it’s not our place to saddle it with a bunch of extraneous policy and gatekeeping. We are allied with the faculty and aim above all to support and amplify their work.

PR:

  • The content belongs to the author.
  • It should be easy to be published if you are serious.
  • Someone somewhere is looking for this information.

What is the impact of your library publishing programme at institutional level?

PR: Our original publishing has a limited impact, perhaps around 20 faculty who have authored or edited works that we publish, and perhaps another 10 or 12 from outside the institution. But if we count all the contributors to the volumes and journals, it would number well into the thousands. So we have extended our institutional brand on a global scale, probably farther than any other media.

SG: We queried a subset of our participants recently to ask them to describe their experience with the UNL Digital Commons. The answers we received showed us that our services have emerged as essential in many of our colleagues’ scholarly communication workflows. An example quote: “[The UNL institutional repository] is indeed a remarkable resource, especially at the global level. My own papers, for which I am one of the authors, get picked up and later cited by people that would never have ready access to them otherwise. For that reason, I consider it a major means of promoting the scholarly strength of the university.”

What do you think is the impact of library publishing in the broader scholarly communications landscape?

PR: Right now, we are in a proof-of-concept stage—showing that professional-level publication is feasible for libraries at a modest scale. I believe we are also proving that online digital and on-demand publication do not require the full apparatus inherited from traditional paper publishing. We seek to change not simply the final form in which the product is delivered, but the entire system of scholarly publishing, including and especially the ownership and access to the means of production.

What are your hopes and aspirations for the global library publishing community?

SG: My hope for the global library publishing community is that we will converge on sustainable funding models. Partnering with for-profit companies and relying on philanthropic organizations each require us to establish intentional fiscal approaches that keep those other domains’ attendant value systems at arm’s length while still partnering with them. Some people think we can and should divest from for-profit businesses and in some cases also not-for-profit philanthropic entities, but I think that this kind of fiscal protectionism is short-sighted. In my estimation, the aggregator BioOne’s funding model as it was around 2010 (and perhaps still is) is an example of a viable funding schema. The details of the flow of funds are available in a conference paper I wrote several years ago called Hot Potato: Who Will End Up Paying for Open Access? Interested readers can find it available in UNL’s institutional repository (https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libraryscience/199/).

Paul Royster: Coordinator for Scholarly Communications

Linnea Fredrickson: Scholarly Communications Production Specialist

Sue Ann Gardner: Scholarly Communications Libraries

IFLA WLIC 2023 Grant Winners Congress Experience

My Experience as a Grant Winner at the World Library and Information Congress 88th IFLA General Conference and Assembly

My name is Anabelly Tinoco Altamirano, I live and work in Costa Rica. In this document I write some of my experiences at the World Library and Information Congress 88th IFLA General Conference and Assembly and in the Dutch country, which gave me the opportunity to appreciate and better understand areas of library science worldwide.

The World Library and Information Congress 88th IFLA General Conference and Assembly gave me the opportunity to meet, interact and learn with librarians from other countries. Such as dynamics of work, cooperation, collaboration, strategic alliances, access to information, open access, artificial intelligence, accessible documentary materials, accessibility in the library from the physical and technological infrastructure. In addition, I learnt about the impact that a library can generate when it integrates and executes any of the Sustainable Development Goals in their strategic plan.

On the other hand, the experiences shared and acquired in the host country of the World Library and Information Congress 88th IFLA General Conference and Assembly have allowed me to have a broader vision of the organization, administration and improvement in libraries, organizations that contribute to the access and generation of knowledge through books, information resources in digital format through technologies and applications.

By participating in several sessions, I was able to reflect and analyze that with effort, collaborative work, strategic alliances and library cooperation, the improvement of a library can be achieved and they could contribute towards the development of their community, users, regions, and countries.

Therefore, many thanks to all the people, organizations and sponsors who contributed to making it a reality for me to attend and participate in the World Library and Information Congress 88th IFLA General Conference and Assembly.

The experience of the World Library and Information Congress 88th IFLA General Conference and Assembly has been enriching, the vision of a congress of international magnitude to share knowledge reaffirms the potential of librarians, the value of knowledge and libraries.

Expanding my knowledge in spaces of personal interaction like this is very valuable, as I realized the value of knowledge, information, culture, language, reading, sources of information, media or mechanisms used to offer users access to information as the fundamental work of the librarian.

Finally, the Congress was a space for analysis and retrospective in library work.

Thank you to the IFLA staff, everyone who collaborated at the Congress, the participating librarians, attendees, the sponsors, Sage and Ex Libris and the host country. Thank you so much.

Anabelly Tinoco Altamirano

Institutional email: anabelly.tinoco@una.cr

Personal mail: anatinocoaltamirano15@gmail.com

 

IFLA WLIC 2023 Grant Winners Congress Experience

This post features Snehal Dilip Bhalerao, one of the 2023 IFLA ARL Grant winners from India.

I am Snehal Dilip Bhalerao and I studied at the Savitribai Phule Pune University. I currently work as a research fellow at the Centre of Publication Ethics at the Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India. I feel very lucky to have won this grant which gave me the opportunity to attend the IFLA Conference, which was held from 21st -25th August, 2023. IFLA gave me the opportunity to visit Rotterdam and experience another world of libraries.

After visiting IFLA Rotterdam venue, I realized I could gain some valuable knowledge about Libraries which are different from the Indian setting. I had the opportunity to meet, interact and network with many librarians from across the world at the Conference.

The conference was organized in sessions which represented the different interest in IFLA. I therefore attended sessions that were of interest to me. All the conference sessions were very useful to the development of libraries and provided a great source of knowledge to the participants. The various presentations included the sustainable development goal activities in the various countries of the presenters. Topics included the Green Libraries. Some other presentations also showcased the impact of artificial intelligence on libraries and how for instance ChatGPT is helping in all aspects of our lives, both personal and professional, and how to apply it appropriately and effectively.

Again, the conference educated me on the role of IFLA in the development of the LIS profession.

Then there was the Cultural Evening which was organised by IFLA for participants. This event was very exciting and was another avenue for me to meet many colleagues on an informal level. This event comprised partying, eating and dancing. There was also a photo session and I had the opportunity to meet and take photos with the IFLA President. The evening helped me get off my hectic personal life to have some fun and enjoy myself. Thank you IFLA for the cultural evening. It was a very memorable day.

On the last day, there was a Library visit to Belgium by bus. I joined other librarians on this trip. We visited two libraries in Belgium to see how they operate and manage them. These libraries were very beautiful and are currently using AI to enhance their library operations. I initially did not support the use of AI in libraries but after the tour, I got a first hand experience of AI at work and it changed my mind. I have therefore resolved to advocate for its use in Indian libraries. I hope to be able to share my experiences and knowledge with my colleagues in India.

A great thank you to IFLA, I am really grateful for this opportunity. I appreciate IFLA for giving me the learning experience which will help progress my career in the future. I also want to thank the IFLA President and all IFLA Members and Volunteers who guided us during the IFLA Congress -2023 in Rotterdam.

Snehal Dilip Bhalerao

Savitribai Phule Pune University, India

IFLA WLIC 2023 Grant Winners Congress Experience

This post features  Ezequiel Vallejo Ríos who is one of the 2023 IFLA ARL Grant winners. from México.

Attending the IFLA WLIC 2023 Congress certainly opened an opportunity for those of us who are not in mainstream librarianship to see the various aspects of the profession. I experienced this through my interactions with colleagues who are involved in the day to day activities of the profession, their challenges and successes and other experiences from their various perspectives.

The various presentations at the congress were another source of great experience for me as they provided me with the latest trends in the profession, as well as new ideas which I can implement in my own environment. Some general topics which were discussed included  open access, inclusive publication, copyright, adaptation of copyrighted materials to formats accessible with the Marrakesh Treaty, access to culture and the future roles of the librarian in the environment of access to information. Again, there were discussions that addressed how the role of the librarian changes as society demands it, the implementation of technologies such as AI (Artificial Intelligence) or Chat GPT and with this the development of new digital skills to respond to the constant change in the knowledge society, and innovations in libraries.

Again, attending this congress has helped expand my panorama about the profession also to network with librarians from other institutions, as well as exchange ideas, knowledge, and success stories from their libraries which will help guide me in my work going forward.

Without a doubt, it is gratifying to have experienced professionals sharing their lives, and interests with the new generation of librarians who are barely getting involved in the relevant issues of the profession in order to be able to contribute to the discipline. In turn, it is gratifying that young professionals who came with fresh ideas were given the space to contribute to the profesión and also enrich themselves intellectually. Being in these congresses of global trajectory offers us an excellent environment to get involved with the dynamics of the profesión and thus contributing to the profession.

Inclusion, the theme and topics of the congress are a determining factor for more people to be involved in the development and participation of these congresses. As such, the congress organisers could be more open in their ideas, regardless of gender, religion, social status, political ideology or some kind of motor weakness. This would allow for a more inclusive congress.

 

Columbia University Libraries hosts successful assessment mini-conference

Columbia University Libraries/Information Services (CUL/IS) hosted its first assessment and service improvement mini-conference on Thursday, June 20th, 2013. The event, organized by the CUL/IS Assessment Program, was structured as an interactive poster session and included a diverse presentation of topics and methods from various CUL/IS divisions and affiliated libraries that demonstrated a deep commitment to service quality assessment and data-driven decision making.

More details at:  Columbia University Libraries News & Events