Elections for the Library Publishing Coalition Board open today and will continue through Friday, March 1. Instructions for voting will be sent to each member institution’s voting representative. This year there are five openings for 3-year terms. The candidates are:
Leigh-Ann Butler, Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa
Biography
Leigh-Ann Butler is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Ottawa, Canada. In her role, she supports over a dozen open access, non-commercial journals, many of which are multilingual, as well as manages the institutional repository, and advises on OA investments and initiatives. Leigh-Ann joined the University of Ottawa in 2022. Before her move into librarianship, she worked as a policy analyst on open access, research data management, and official languages at Canada’s federal granting agency, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and for over 13 years held various program advisory roles within post-secondary institutions in Vancouver and Ottawa.
In addition to her role within the library at uOttawa, she is a research associate at the ScholCommLab, a research lab focused on scholarly communication that is based out of Canada that includes a team of interdisciplinary researchers from across the globe. She is also a member of the Public Knowledge Project’s Multilingual Interest Group, and a member of the Canadian Association for Research Libraries OpenAire taskforce.
Candidate Statement
I am new to this community, having connected with the Library Publishing Coalition in November 2022. Although my time with LPC is brief so far, I have a broad range of experience within research institutions and the government that I believe can help shape my contribution on this Board. I am seeking to build upon my experiences, specifically as it relates to library publishing. I pride myself on being a strong collaborator, who understands that a diversity of voices and perspectives enhance and shape the work we advance. I have been following the work of LPC, but wish to more actively participate. I see joining the Board as a valuable way to grow my knowledge. I hope to leverage my experiences in funding and research to drive forward LPCs critical work around ethical, community-based models for scholarly publishing.
I hope to bring the perspective of Canada’s linguistic and cultural diversity to the forefront. Working within a bilingual research university offers me a deep understanding of the benefits of publishing multilingual research, which often highlight regional issues that can directly influence decision-making at the local level. It is crucial that scholarly publishing facilitate a representation of the diversity that exists within our communities, and this is an area I continue to interrogate in my work, and what I hope to carry forward with the Board.
Statement of Anti-Racist Practice
As a settler who lives and works in unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe territory, I acknowledge the historically racist and oppressive structures that privilege colonial pedagogies within academia. I understand that a shift in the intellectual framework that underpins our institutional culture is required, and that this work demands dedication, openness, ongoing dialogue, and a willingness to reflect on one’s own privilege. I acknowledge that oppressive institutional systems continue to impose barriers to BIPOC communities and strive to incorporate inclusive practices. However, I understand that this work is evolving and complex, and that I have much to learn.
Previously, as a Government of Canada employee and a staff member in the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University, I was an active participant in a multitude of training sessions to reflect on and better understand the institutionalization of systemic racism within the organizations I work. I continue to actively participate in this learning and implement practices within my current work. For example, I am actively seeking out ways to understand the limitations of publishing multiple languages across technical platforms. I believe this is crucial to not only ensuring a diverse representation of voices in the research being published, but also supporting its visibility and discoverability within the scholarly record. Although new to the work in librarianship, I am committed to amplifying and fostering the diversity that exists across the publishing programs I support.
Sarah Frankel, University of Louisville Libraries
Biography
Sarah Frankel is the Open Access & Repository Coordinator at the University of Louisville Libraries. Sarah’s primary focus is coordinating UofL’s institutional repository, ThinkIR, an open access collection of scholarship produced by UofL’s faculty, staff, and students. Sarah provides service to authors, editors, and end users, including undergraduate and graduate students (and the administrators who work with them), faculty and staff, and facilitates the relationships between users and the software vendor, bepress.
She also works with the Endowed Chair of Scholarly Communication to research and promote open access initiatives at the university and answer copyright questions and serves on the Scholarly Communication & Data Management group, which recently created a Libraries Open Access Statement.
Candidate Statement
I have worked in academic libraries for more than 20 years, eight of which I have spent managing the various publishing initiatives at UofL, including 8 open access journals and numerous student collections and faculty publications. Making research openly accessible to all is at the heart of everything I do, and I would bring that philosophy and passion to my work on the LPC Board as well.
I have been through three cycles of the LPC Peer Mentorship program, and I have attended several LPC Forums. I presented at the virtual forum in 2021 on publishing undergraduate research. I am also hoping to attend the 2024 Forum in person, to present about how I incorporate DEI into our publishing practices.
I appreciate the breadth of experience and knowledge of the LPC and after a few years of being an attendee, I am ready to serve the group that has helped me grow in my work in the field of publishing by taking on a leadership role. I am highly organized and really thrive on collaboration and would welcome the opportunity to work with the other members of the Board to move the Coalition forward. Thank you for your consideration.
Statement of Anti-Racist Practice
In my position as the repository coordinator, I strive to see that the scholarship of underrepresented groups gets more exposure through open access publishing and citation diversity. One way we promote both is through The Collective: A ThinkIR BIPOC Initiative that I co-created in 2021. It is my hope that we can increase awareness of OA and better support minoritized researchers through open access library publishing.
I have served on the libraries’ Diversity & Inclusion Advisory Group and served as a co-chair for two years. After the racial unrest of 2020, I participated in several anti-racist discussion groups, book readings and implicit bias trainings, and I continue to regularly examine myself and my work for biases. I am currently serving on the Commission on the Status of Women (COSW) which often allows for collaboration with our fellow presidential advisory group, Commission on Diversity and Racial Equity (CODRE). I would love to bring my experience and perspective to the Board as they work to improve and prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion in library publishing.
Erin Jerome, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Biography
Erin Jerome is the Library Publishing & Institutional Repository Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMass Amherst). She recently facilitated the launch of Open Publishing at UMass Amherst – the new home of eleven open access journals and conference proceedings published by the UMass Amherst Libraries that were migrated from Digital Commons to Janeway. In addition to managing the libraries’ growing journal publishing program, she manages the campus’ institutional repository and co-administers its data repository.
Erin has served on the LPC Professional Development Committee as both a member and co-chair. Beyond LPC, she is currently past- past-president of the New England chapter of ACRL, and is also a certified Carpentries Instructor. She is committed to building platform-agnostic communities within the world of institutional repository practitioners and is one of the co-founders of both the Northeast Institutional Repository Day (NIRD) and the IR Managers Forum.
Candidate Statement
I have been a part of the Library Publishing Coalition community since joining the Professional Development Committee as a member in 2020. As a committee member, I was part of the subgroup that resurrected Documentation Month and helped turn it into an annual event starting in February 2021. I won the Library Publishing Coalition Exemplary Service Award in 2021 for this work.
I find LPC to be such a valuable resource to my continued growth and development as a librarian and I have learned so much from its programming and email list. I would greatly value the opportunity to give back to the LPC community by serving on its board. I’m passionate about creating inclusive communities of practice in the repository administrator world and would love to bring that passion to the library publishing community. The Professional Development Committee has discussed the possibility of what a mentorship program might look like for non-members, as a means of making LPC more inclusive and I would look forward to continuing this conversation as a member of the board.
Statement of Anti-Racist Practice
I acknowledge that racism is particularly prevalent in academia, publishing, and our society. I know that I have gotten to this point in my career by virtue of privilege as a white, cis-gendered woman from an upper middle class background. In my work as a library publisher, it is important to me that we amplify underrepresented voices in scholarly literature and that we do so with the lowest barrier to entry as possible. In my work as the administrator of my campus’ institutional repository, it is my mission to make the creative and scholarly works of my campus community accessible to the widest audience possible by breaking down obstacles to access. I admire the steps that LPC has taken to codify the foundations of its anti-racist practice and look forward to continuing and contributing to that work as a board member.
Annie Johnson, University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press
Biography
Annie Johnson is the Associate University Librarian for Publishing, Preservation, Research, and Digital Access at the University of Delaware Library, Museums, and Press. Her portfolio includes the digital initiatives and preservation department, library information technology, and the University of Delaware Press. Prior to joining UD, Annie was the Assistant Director for Open Publishing Initiatives and Scholarly Communications at Temple University Libraries and Press. At Temple, Annie launched the library publishing program and led the joint Libraries/Press open access imprint, North Broad Press.
Annie has served on and/or chaired the LPC Research Committee, the Program Committee, and the Publication Award Task Force. Most recently, she has been part of the joint LPC/AUPresses University-Based Publishing Futures statement-writing group.
Candidate Statement
I am interested in serving on the Board because the Library Publishing Coalition has been an important community for me throughout my career. When I attended my very first Library Publishing Forum at the University of Minnesota in 2016, I was primarily concerned with figuring out how to actually start a library publishing program. Today, my concerns are a bit different, but no less urgent: in a time where library budgets are flat or declining, how do we ensure that library publishing programs are sustainable and properly resourced? This is a question I have been wrestling with at my own institution, and one I would like to help other members of the Library Publishing Coalition think through as well.
In addition, as a librarian who oversees a university press, I am particularly interested in how the LPC can more deeply collaborate with the AUPresses community. If elected to the LPC board, I would work to find more ways for library publishing staff and press staff to come together to share experiences and jointly advocate for the important work we do within our institutions.
Statement of Anti-Racist Practice
I am committed to fostering a diverse and anti-racist educational environment and workplace and to furthering organizational equity, inclusion, and accessibility goals. I acknowledge my own privilege as a white woman and I recognize that I am constantly learning.
I strive to incorporate anti-racist practice throughout my work. I am currently the co-primary investigator on a Mellon-funded project that draws on UD’s archival collections of twentieth-century American poets, with a focus on poets from historically marginalized groups. This project examines the role that activism has played in poets’ lives and art over time while also exploring the notion of poetry as activism more generally. One of the outputs of this project is a born-digital edited collection to be published by the University of Delaware Press.
At Temple, I was a member of the Libraries’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, where I helped organize educational opportunities to try to get staff thinking and talking more about these issues. In addition, diversity, equity, and inclusion was one of the core principles of our imprint, North Broad Press, and we actively sought out diverse voices to author our books.
Regina Fisher Raboin, University of Mass Chan Medical School
Biography
Regina Fisher Raboin, MSLIS is the Associate Director at the Lamar Soutter Library (LSL), University of Mass Chan Medical School. She oversees the education, clinical, research, scholarly publishing, outreach services, library operations, and technology initiatives at the library. Regina is one of the co-leaders of the Medical Humanities Lab, an integration of the arts and humanities into medical education and healthcare through student, faculty, and staff collaborations fostering humanism in medicine.
Regina is the Editor-in-chief for the Journal of eScience Librarianship (JESLIB). She has presented on STEM resources and information literacy at RDAP Summit (Research Data Access & Preservation), Computers in Libraries, ACRL STS National, ALA, ACRL New England NELIG, and Special Libraries Association (SLA); she has also presented on the history and publication of JeSLIB at the Library Publishing Forum (LPF). She sits on both UMass Chan’s and Tufts University’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees (IACUC) where she is a protocol reviewer and voting member. Regina is active in the Medical Library Association’s (MLA) Leadership and Management Caucus, the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL) Second-in-Command (SIC) group, the Boston Library Consortium’s (BLC) Associate University Librarians (AUL), and previously in the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC). Regina is the Lamar Soutter Library’s representative on the Massachusetts Commonwealth Consortium of Libraries in Public Higher Education Institutions, Inc. (MCCLPHEI).
In 2016-2017, Regina co-developed and launched the inaugural BLC Leads Program, a 6-month multi-faceted program to prepare library professionals to take on increasingly demanding rolls in BLC libraries. This continues to be a signature program for the BLC.
Candidate Statement
When UMass Chan was announced as the 2020 site for the Library Publishing Forum, I knew that I, and my Lamar Soutter Library colleagues, would be part of a dynamic and collegial Program Planning Committee. I learned much about collaboration and camaraderie during this time, and although the COVID pandemic stopped the Forum from being held in-person, the pivot to a virtual program was exciting and monumental. After this experience, I knew I wanted to continue to be involved in the Program Planning Committee. I volunteered to continue and was accepted and involved with the next two virtual programs.
Having experienced the LPC’s leadership and broader community commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, and missing the progressive debates and discussions centered on scholarly publishing, I decided to self-nominate for a Board position.
Since 2015 I have been an editor, and now Editor-in-chief with the Journal of eScience Librarianship. I feel I would bring experience in managing an open-access journal, migrating to a new platform, and using shared leadership to evolve the journal and its scope.
Leadership development and mentoring have been an interest and focus since the beginning of my career as a librarian. I have identified and participated in opportunities to progress in understanding my leadership style, as well as assisting colleagues in developing leadership skills too. I was a co-leader in designing and implementing the Boston Library Consortium’s (BLC) Leads, a program that “positions mid-level library professionals to scale their leadership responsibilities or grow their leadership skills within their current position.” Currently, I am co-chair for the MA Commonwealth Consortium of Libraries in Public Higher Education’s (MCCLPHEI) Professional Development Committee. In 2021 I co-authored the chapter, “Leading Through a Crisis: The Application of Servant Leadership During COVID-19”. I feel these experiences could help realize the Board’s current goals and identify new ones for the Professional Development Committee, and its programs and publications.
Statement of Anti-Racist Practice
I acknowledge that as a cisgender, heterosexual, middle-class white woman I come from a place of privilege in my work and life. Racism in all its forms is woven throughout society, and in particular higher education – it is a societal problem that needs to be addressed through continual acknowledgement of its existence and anti-racist education. I feel it’s imperative for me to use my privilege to support my institution’s goals in identifying racist issues and creating educational initiatives to combat racism and cultivate anti-racism. One aspect of this journey is to create a safe, supportive, and transparent environment so that LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and neurodiverse colleagues can thrive in their work. My organization and Library have instituted and invested in several antiracist initiatives: DRIVE: Diversity, Representation and Inclusion for Value in Education, an initiative for creating a representative and bias-free curriculum across all research and clinical education, that includes a curriculum appraisal tool; a Library Diversity and Equity Department Plan (DEAP), guided by the school’s Diversity and Inclusion Office (DIO) that includes an updated interview and hiring process and on-boarding plan; and a collaboration between the Library, the DIO, and Office of Health Equity (OHE), has led to the creation of a librarian position that promotes diversity in faculty recruitment and retention and supports the research needs of the Diversity Pillar in the UMass Chan Strategic Plan. Personally, I am committed to further exploration of racism, and to use my place of privilege to foster anti-racism.