Day/Time/Room
June 18, 2026 | 3:45 p.m. to 4:45 p.m. | HUB 250
Title: What Works at Scale? A Conversation on Consortial Library Publishing
Presenters:
- Jessica Kirschner, she/her, Digital Publishing Coordinator, VIVA, Virginia’s Academic Library Consortium
- Amanda Hurford, she/her, Scholarly Communications Director, PALNI
Description: Consortial programs arise when higher education institutions seize opportunities to operate at scale to better serve their faculty, students, and communities. Whether by delivering cost savings or leveraging shared resources, technology, and infrastructure, consortia offer opportunities to do more together. Also, emerging from a desire to serve their institutional communities, library publishing programs seem like a natural fit for consortia to operate at scale through shared resources, technology, and infrastructure. But has this occurred in practice?
This birds of a feather session uses the results of survey of consortial publishing efforts as a starting point of conversation with those who are publishing at a consortial scale, whether central office staff or those partnering with consortia to publish. We will consider:
–What seems to work for your consortia and how can others learn from you?
–What hurdles emerge from offering publishing services at scale? Are there any tensions between the expectations/needs/values of the various institutions you serve?
–How do you make sure you serve all of your institutions, not just those that are well resourced? How do you make sure that you are reaching and interacting with underserved institutions?
–What aspects seem most valued by consortial members (staffing, money, technology, other infrastructure)?
–Are there ways that consortia can work together to operate at a larger scale?
–Is there need for a separate group for communication of consortia involved in publishing?
We hope to leave the session with an action plan for both individual consortia but also potentially organize a community of practice across US consortia.
While the session is aimed at consortial publishers, those who are interested in building capacity for publishing at scale are also welcome to join the discussion.