Thursday, May 9, 1:15-2:15pm
Room: Barrick Gold Lecture Room (1520)
The Field-Specific Library Partnership Consortium: A Proposal
Jeff Pooley, Associate Professor of Media & Communication, Muhlenberg College
Description: This presentation outlines a proposal for a consortium of academic libraries in the media, film, and communication fields to support non-profit OA publishing. The presentation, while focused on the media studies case, is intended to suggest an adaptable model for other library partnership consortia in disciplines with field-specific libraries and library budgets. The proposal is predicated on a pair of linked arguments about the future of OA publishing. The first is that the author-pays model is both unsustainable and unjust: While workable at a sliver of elite institutions in the rich West, and across a swath of externally funded disciplines, the system breaks down for the Global South, for non-elite Western institutions, and for the humanistic social sciences and humanities. A second claim, which follows from the first, is that a rich, fair and sustainable OA ecosystem will draw from library budgets. A modest proportion of funds propping up the tolled-access present could support a lower-cost ecosystem of library-hosted, university press, and independent nonprofit publishing built atop an open-source infrastructure. With the Open Library of Humanities’ Library Partnership Subsidy model as inspiration, this presentation proposes a field-specific version of the idea, centered on the media studies fields. The consortium differs from the OLH model as a (1) standalone, independent entity governed by librarians, with a (2) field-specific remit. The consortium will act as a dumbbell-like *funding intermediary*, connecting an array of library funders to an array of publishers and platforms. Specific legal and governance issues—including the role of an academic advisory board, sustainability challenges, and potential conflicts of interest—will be addressed. The proposal will conclude with a discussion of the model’s real but limited portability to other disciplinary context.
RavenSpace: Digital Publishing in Indigenous Studies
Darcy Cullen, UBC Press; Beth Fuget, University of Washington Press
Description: RavenSpace is a new publishing platform for media-rich, networked, interactive books in Indigenous studies that provides a digital space where communities and scholars can work together to share and create knowledge. Based on Scalar and other open-source software, the platform meets the standards of peer-reviewed academic publishing and respects Indigenous protocols for accessing and using cultural heritage and traditional knowledge. The idea behind RavenSpace was developed in part through conversations between library and press staff at UBC, who presented their initial thinking at LPF in 2015. In this presentation, we’ll discuss the progress made since then in the first phase of building the platform and publishing the first projects, including adapting the technical pieces and developing the editorial and review processes. We’ll look at pending issues still to resolve for long-term sustainability. We’ll also explore the roles that library-based publishers or digital scholarship centers might play in our initiative.
The Art of Student Publishing: An Exploration of the Significance and Application of Artist Publishing Practices and Discourse for Undergraduate Publishing Initiatives
Dana Ospina, Digital Initiatives Librarian, California State University Dominguez Hills
Description: There exists a long and varied culture of publishing within the history of artistic production, some of which interrogates the presumptions and practices of publishing itself. As someone with a background in art history, and as a current Digital Initiatives Librarian and liaison to visual and performing arts departments, I have begun to explore and research this field of artistic practice and to consider how one would go about introducing some of these concepts and strategies to undergraduates within the context of a library publishing program.
I am motivated to pursue this line of inquiry because of the active engagement in undergraduate scholarly production already underway in library publishing programs: undergraduate research journals, presentation posters, and artifacts of open pedagogical practices are just some of the publication forms that provide library publishing faculty and staff with an opportunity not only to support students in the procedural aspects of creation (i.e. discoverability, access, and preservation), but also in their information literacy development as thoughtful, informed, critical thinkers. The ability for traditional undergraduate research to be nurtured and developed by existing models of scholarly communication is an incredible asset, but what of undergraduate interest and models of production that fall outside more conventional scholarly communication parameters? Can library publishing provide a successful site for these practices, much in the way many library publishing programs have made space for niche publications and nontraditional forms of faculty scholarship? This short presentation begins to address these questions through a discussion of some of the projects, practices, and theories about publishing developed by artists. It is my contention that an awareness of the work of these artists can provide additional perspectives of the process and practice of publishing, and expand the reach of undergraduate publishing initiatives.