Elections for the Library Publishing Coalition Board open today and will continue through Friday, March 3. Instructions for voting will be sent to each member institution’s voting representatives. This year there are three opening for 3-year terms. The candidates are:
Sonya Betz, University of Alberta
Biography
Sonya Betz is the Head, Open Publishing and Digitization Services at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, which supports more than 60 diamond Open Access journals through its non-commercial, scholar-led publishing program. Sonya has worked in academic libraries for more than 15 years, and is deeply interested in seeking ways to promote and sustain not-for-profit approaches to scholarly publishing and open access. She has served with the Library Publishing Coalition in a number of roles, including as member and Chair of the Program Committee, as a partner on the Library Publishing Workflows Project, and as the current chair of the Canadian Community Development Working Group. She’s also a member of the Public Knowledge Project’s Technical Committee, the Coalition for Canadian Digital Heritage, and the Advisory Board of the Irish Open Access Publishers.
Candidate Statement
The Library Publishing Coalition has been an important part of my professional life for many years and I care deeply about its success. When I was new to publishing work, this community was an invaluable source of information, support and guidance, helping me navigate the landscape and connect with other practitioners carrying out the same work. Now, as a (slightly more) seasoned professional, I also see the strategic importance of communities like this one in connecting up the many different stakeholders in the scholarly publishing ecosystem and providing channels and opportunities for important conversations to happen.
I’ve served in multiple roles on the LPC since I first volunteered for the Program Committee in 2018, and would welcome the opportunity to engage with the Board, members, and current and future partners in considering strategic directions and big ideas for the LPC as it grows and changes as an organization. I would bring to the organization my enthusiasm for collective action as a strategy to move us towards a more fair and equitable system for scholarly publishing. As a librarian working in Canada, I’m also very interested in thinking about how the LPC might better serve its international members, and would lean on my experience with the Canadian Community Development Working Group to help inform our conversations about this issue.
Statement of Anti-racist Practice
I am a settler who lives and works in Edmonton, Canada, which is situated within Treaty No. 6 territory, homeland of the nêhiyaw / Cree, Dene, Anishinaabe / Saulteaux, Nakota Isga / Nakota Sioux, and Niitsitapi / Blackfoot peoples, and within the Métis’ homeland. I acknowledge that there are very real and damaging structures of racism deeply embedded within our academic institutions and within scholarly publishing systems and practices, and I recognize my own position of privilege within these structures. I am committed to understanding how I (and my organization) can work towards recognizing and then dismantling these systems. As part of this commitment, I’ve undertaken personal and professional learning specific to my role as a manager in the workplace, and actively share, encourage, and organize team-based learning in issues relevant to work we do around publishing and digital collections. I fully recognize that learning is not enough, and we are beginning work towards actively addressing thorny issues such as considering responsible access to digitized collections, developing actionable policies regarding the content we publish, and providing more and better resources for editors, authors, and reviewers.
As Chair of the Program Committee in 2021-22, I ensured that we worked closely with the DEI Committee to implement the actions from the LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice, and considered how to adapt our processes to make the Forum more inclusive and diverse. This work is complex, and ongoing, and our profession and community have a very long way to go.
Corinne Guimont, Virginia Tech
Biography
Corinne Guimont is a Digital Scholarship Coordinator at Virginia Tech (VT). She focuses on new forms of research and publishing in the arts and humanities. Corinne works with faculty and students to create digital publications utilizing a variety of tools and platforms. She leads the Digital Humanities program in the Library and supports other areas of publishing. Corinne also led an initiative to create VT Domains, VT’s Domain of One’s Own program, and currently runs the program as well assists in administering PressBooks.
Corinne has served on the LPC Research Committee and Preservation Task Force. Outside of LPC, Corinne has been a part of the Open Education Network Publishing Cooperative and has previously taught a section on working with authors for the Pub 101 series. Additionally, she served on the NASIG Digital Preservation Model License Subgroup and co-authored the Digital Preservation Model Policy to help publishers create their own preservation policies. Corinne also helped found and chaired the Chesapeake Digital Humanities Consortium from 2019-2021.
Candidate Statement
I have been a part of the LPC community since attending my first forum in 2018. Being a part of the LPC community has helped me grow in my role at Virginia Tech and as a Library Publisher through different professional development opportunities such as webinars, workshops, community calls, and the annual forum. I would like to share the knowledge I have gained to support and shape the future of LPC. I am excited to see existing initiatives continue to grow like the annual documentation month and am looking forward to seeing new initiatives implemented such as the work from the Preservation Task Force.
Throughout my career I have gained a broad understanding of library publications and publishing platforms and practices. I approach my work by setting self-imposed deadlines, collaborating with my colleagues, and being flexible in the goals and outcomes of each project. I hope to bring the same approach to working with the LPC board members and community. I believe LPC’s work has been integral in shaping library publishing programs and how those programs meet the needs of their institutions and I hope to bring my background and skills into supporting this community as a board member.
Statement of Anti-racist Practice
I acknowledge that systemic racism exists in all aspects of our lives and work and continues to create barriers for the BIPOC communities. While I believe many areas of academia and scholarly communication are pushing against these barriers and striving to make changes, it is important that we acknowledge that much of our work is built upon centuries of academic traditions before us that did not acknowledge racist and oppressive structures. I believe that LPC has actively implemented practices to encourage community members to recognize and reflect on these practices and will continue to do so. I personally, have benefited from the space provided by LPC to reflect on my own anti-racist practices and seek opportunities to bring that reflection to my day-to-day work. In my work, I strive to make all publications accessible to as many readers and users as possible through following best practices for both open access and accessibility. And I aim to support authors and researchers in sharing voices and views from all different perspectives and disciplines.
Harrison Inefuku, Iowa State University
Biography
Harrison W. Inefuku is the scholarly publishing services librarian at Iowa State University, where he directs the library publishing program, Iowa State University Digital Press. Prior to starting the Digital Press in 2019, Harrison launched and oversaw the development of Iowa State’s institutional repository. His research interests lie in diversity, equity, and inclusion in library and archival organizations and in scholarly communications. He has published and presented on systemic racism in academic publishing, and his chapter, “Agents of Diversity and Social Justice: Librarians and Scholarly Communication,” co-authored with Charlotte Roh, received the 2017 LPC Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing.
Candidate Statement
The Library Publishing Coalition has been an important community for me. I have benefited greatly from the networks, knowledge, and friendships I have developed through my participation in LPC. Because I have gained so much, it is important for me to be an active participant in the community. I have served on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force and Committee, the Ethical Framework for Library Publishing Task Force, and the Library Publishing Curriculum Editorial Board. I am especially proud of the work I’ve participated in as part of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Task Force and Committee, including the development of the Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice and the use of a rotating chair model that allows all members to develop the leadership skills and ensures that the labor of creating anti-racist and anti-oppressive change doesn’t fall on any one individual.
As library publishing continues to grow and mature, it’s important for LPC to continue to serve as a venue for sharing our knowledge and practice, both within the LPC and with allied organizations. I’m interested in growing LPC’s ability to serve as a hub of knowledge, ensuring that libraries have the knowledge available to build robust and sustainable publishing programs. And although LPC has been valuable for my development as a library publisher, there is a stark lack of diversity within the organization. If elected to the Board, I will continue to advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion, and work to eliminate systemic barriers that hinder those of us who hold marginalized identities from participating in our community.
Statement of Anti-Racist Practice
I am originally from Hawai’i, which means I grew up in a cultural environment in which I was not a racial or ethnic minority and could cast racism as a external problem that I would have to deal with when on the continent. My work around diversity, equity, and inclusion began when I attended college in California, developed during my graduate education in Vancouver, Canada, and has sharpened during my tenure in Iowa. This means that I have moved through live as both privileged and marginalized because of my racial and ethnic identity, depending on the spaces I move through. These perspectives have shaped my work in diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism, including a openness to sharing how past missteps inform my current practice, and a willingness to work within systems to seek change.
As a library publisher, my work to center DEI in the development of the Digital Press has been intentional, with the diversification of voices, identities, and perspectives represented in the scholarly record a core aim of the Digital Press. I have included diversity, equity, and inclusion in our publishing agreements, worked with our journal editors to diversify their editorial boards, and am currently working on creating educational materials for our editors and authors on anti-racist publishing practices. It’s important for me to lay a strong anti-racist foundation for the Digital Press, so it can remain a core value, regardless of who is leading or working in the program.
Angel Peterson, Penn State University
Biography
Angel Peterson is the Open Publishing Production Specialist at Penn State University Libraries in the Open Publishing unit of the Research Informatics and Publishing Department. In her role at Penn State, she provides content migration and production support for multiple open access bibliography and monograph publications using Drupal.
Angel ensures digital accessibility of the various publications by making certain the websites are accessible, providing training and guidance to our journal, bibliography, and monograph editors on PDF and Drupal accessibility, and designing training modules for editors. She oversees one student employee and one intern who work on PDF remediation for three journal publications. Angel also hosts monthly accessibility conversations to discuss articles, hold live demonstrations, and have practical discussions on digital accessibility.
Angel has presented at various conferences on her accessibility initiatives including the GW Ethics in Publishing Conference and the MLA Convention. She has also presented at the Library Publishing Forum about a bibliography case study. Angel has served the LPC since 2020 in the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force and then the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee. She won the 2022 LPC Exemplary Service Award.
Candidate Statement
I began my library publishing career in the spring of 2020. My first venture into the Library Publishing Coalition was watching webinars from 2018 and 2019 as part of my library publishing training. In May of that year, I attended the virtual Library Publishing Forum and even though I was still learning my job duties, the library publishing field, and various other aspects of my new position, I was able to see the value and connection of this community. I started attending more and more community calls, including the inaugural Anti-Racism Community Call facilitated by the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. After that call, I immediately joined the task force and eventually the committee. I have also volunteered to help update the Code of Conduct. Participating in the LPC has provided me with a sense of belonging. This is why I am interested in serving on the board: the community we have created.
If I am elected to the board, I will strive to provide others with that same sense of belonging by being a welcoming representative of the board, continuing to support community calls, and using our website for resources. I would like to work with fellow board members to grow the LPC membership by reaching out to nonmember institutions and looking at the pricing structure of membership. I will support the initiatives set forth by our committees to help this community continue to thrive.
Statement of Anti-Racist Practice
At Penn State, I serve on the libraries’ Diversity Community of Advocacy. We “promote diversity and inclusion within the University Libraries and to facilitate creating and maintaining a welcoming and respectful environment for all library employees and patrons.” I serve on two sub-committees: the race and racism group and I co-chair the LGBTQIA+ group. Both working groups hold training events, including the history of redlining in Pennsylvania, the history of voter suppression and the upcoming joint presentation on oppressive practices of health care. These sessions are for employees, so all employees have a basic understanding of the history of racism in the United States and how that has affected communities of color. You can’t “bring everyone to the table” if people don’t see the need.
In the Open Publishing program we have been evaluating the publications that we support and are working to see how we can support more publications from diverse perspectives in order to ensure we are supporting a broader spectrum of diverse voices. We work to ensure that all our journal publications have a diverse editorial board through our editorial advisory board review process and providing feedback.
As a member of the Diversity and Inclusion task force, we created the Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice stemming from the 2020 Anti-Racism community call. I worked to update the roadmap each year as initiatives have been implemented and new ones added. We want to break down barriers in the LPC to be even more welcoming and inclusive. I am committed to continuing to learn and break down barriers for all communities.