Posts by Nancy Adams

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May 18, 2021

Transitions: First Year as Faculty

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Transitions is an occasional series where community members reflect on the things they have learned while moving from one institution to another or one role to another. 

By Laura Miller, Florida State University

As I am writing this post, I am about three weeks away from my one-year anniversary as a full-time library faculty member at Florida State University. I transitioned into my current role as Visiting Open Publishing Librarian from a Graduate Assistantship in May 2020. Like many other early-twenty-somethings, I found myself starting my first full-time job remotely due to the pandemic. I am fortunate that my new role was housed in the same department as my assistantship, and that I even report to the same supervisor. Being able to see familiar faces on Zoom and Teams has made the transition from part-time to full-time much easier. Despite having the comforts of familiar colleagues at an institution I’ve called home since 2014, the jump from part-time to full-time and student worker to faculty has not been without its challenges.

As a GA, I worked on a number of open access publishing and scholarly communications projects. Being able to see projects through which I had contributed to or laid the groundwork for in previous years was one of the most gratifying aspects of my transition to Open Publishing Librarian. I’m able to troubleshoot technical issues for journals that were just developing when I was a GA, and I have published revised editions of a textbook I assisted with two years ago. With the added hours in my work week, I am able to pay greater attention to accessibility and refine publishing workflows that were ad hoc before my publishing-dedicated position was created. This more strategic and directed approach to library publishing culminated in the formation of Florida State Open Publishing (FSOP) last Fall which brought my office’s publishing, hosting, and consulting services under one cohesive initiative.  (more…)

Water with the word reflections in all caps with a horizontal line above and below
May 4, 2021

Intersections: Not Quite a Librarian, Not Quite a Publisher: What It’s Like to Work for a Library and a University Press

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Intersections is an occasional series where community members reflect on what they are seeing in other parts of their professional world and what library publishers can learn from it. 

By Annie Johnson, Assistant Director of Open Publishing Initiatives and Scholarly Communications, Temple University @anniekjohn

For the past five years, I have worked for both Temple University Libraries and Temple University Press. Library colleagues at other institutions tend to assume I work for the Press. Press colleagues tend to assume I work for the Libraries. The truth is a bit more nuanced: much of my work involves leading what might be considered typical scholarly communication initiatives within the Libraries. However, my supervisor is the Director of the Press, Mary Rose Muccie, and I support the Press in important ways, particularly when it comes to open access and born-digital projects. That work has involved publishing the Press’s first digital companion to a print book, serving as the primary investigator for an NEH grant to digitize and make openly available out-of-print Press books in labor studies, and launching Temple’s instance of the digital publishing platform Manifold, which the Press now uses as a portal for its open access books. Most recently, we started a joint Libraries/Press imprint, North Broad Press, that publishes open textbooks written by Temple faculty. 

Temple University Press is one of a number of presses that reports to its library. This is an increasingly common situation, which has resulted in the creation of positions like mine that try to bridge the two organizations. Despite its prevalence, some in scholarly publishing still worry about presses reporting to libraries, and question whether such a relationship actually benefits university presses. I understand the concerns, especially when these changes happen during moments when the larger university is in crisis. But I was not hired to dismantle or replace the work of the Press. Quite the opposite: I help the Press experiment with new publishing models in ways that they would simply not have the capacity to do otherwise. My involvement does not take away from the excellent work the Press staff are doing, it enhances it. I help get Temple University Press books out to more people around the globe while strengthening the Press’s relationship with the larger university. (more…)

April 19, 2021

LPC welcomes a new strategic affiliate: CLOCKSS

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The Library Publishing Coalition is delighted to welcome CLOCKSS as a new strategic affiliate! A statement from CLOCKSS:

We are looking forward to working with LPC and the LPC community!

A collaboration of the world’s leading academic publishers and research libraries, CLOCKSS provides a sustainable dark archive to ensure the long-term survival of Web-based scholarly content.

CLOCKSS (Controlled LOCKSS) employs a unique approach to archiving (Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) that was initiated by Stanford University librarians in 1999. Digital content is stored in the CLOCKSS archive with no user access unless a “trigger” event occurs. The LOCKSS technology regularly checks the validity of the stored data and preserves it for the long term. CLOCKSS operates 12 archive nodes at leading academic institutions worldwide, preserving the authoritative versions of 43 million journal articles, over 25,000 serial and 240,000 book titles, and a growing collection of supplementary materials and metadata information. As of March 2020, 64 titles have been triggered and made available from our archive via open access. CLOCKSS participants include 300 libraries and 400 publishers.

This secure, robust, and decentralized infrastructure can withstand threats from technological, economic, environmental, and political failures. A destructive event in one location won’t jeopardize the survival of preserved digital content because the 11 other locations serve as mirror sites to back-up and repair the disrupted location’s archive.

CLOCKSS is governed by and for its stakeholders. Our operations are governed by a Board of Directors with an equal number of librarians and publishers making decisions together about policies, procedures, priorities, and when to trigger content. As an independent, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) not-for-profit charitable organization, CLOCKSS is committed to keeping its fees affordable, for libraries and publishers of all sizes and budgets to participate in CLOCKSS. Low operating costs make it possible to keep this commitment. As a long-term preservation organization, CLOCKSS believes that a robust Succession Plan is required. In the unlikely event of the demise of CLOCKSS, four of our twelve library nodes have committed to continuing the preservation of the content in the Archive.

As the only dark archive that assigns a Creative Commons license to all triggered digital content, CLOCKSS benefits the greater global scholarly community by enabling permanent Open Access to abandoned and orphaned publications. As a result, recovered content becomes perpetually available to anyone with Internet access.

Strategic affiliates are peer membership associations who have a focal area in scholarly communications and substantial engagement with libraries, publishers, or both. See our list of strategic affiliates or learn more about the program.

LPC Strategic Affiliates icon

April 8, 2021

2021 Virtual Library Publishing Forum: Registration, Program, Keynotes, and Plenaries

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The Library Publishing Forum (May 10-14, 12pm to 5pm Eastern) is virtual this year! See below for information about registration, program, keynotes, and invited plenaries.

Registration

Register now! The registration fee is a super affordable US$25 for the whole week. However, we do not want cost to be a barrier to participation for anyone, so waivers will be granted on request. No details necessary – just email contact@librarypublishing.org and ask for a waiver.

Program

The preliminary program for the Forum is available on our website, and it looks great! Full session descriptions are linked on the website and will also be available on our Sched site to registered attendees.

Keynotes

Opening and closing the conference will be Elaine Westbrooks (Vice Provost of University Libraries and University Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) and Kaitlin Thaney (Executive Director of Invest in Open Infrastructure).

Invited plenaries

New this year: we will have two additional invited plenary sessions.

About the Library Publishing Forum

The Library Publishing Forum is an annual conference bringing together representatives from libraries engaged in (or considering) publishing initiatives to define and address major questions and challenges; to identify and document collaborative opportunities; and to strengthen and promote this community of practice. The Forum includes representatives from a broad, international spectrum of academic library backgrounds, as well as groups that collaborate with libraries to publish scholarly works, including publishing vendors, university presses, and scholars. The Forum is sponsored by the Library Publishing Coalition, but you do not need to be a member of the LPC to attend.