LPC Blog

The Library Publishing Coalition Blog is used to share news and updates about the LPC and the Library Publishing Forum, to draw attention to items of interest to the community, and to publish informal commentaries by LPC members and friends.

October 15, 2024

Corinne Guimont receives the 2024 LPC Award for Exemplary Service

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On behalf of the LPC Board, we are delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2024 LPC Award for Exemplary Service is Corinne Guimont, Associate Director, Publishing & Digital Scholarship, Virginia Tech Publishing. The Award recognizes substantial contributions by an LPC community member to advancing the mission, vision, and values of the Library Publishing Coalition. 

Corinne was nominated for her established history of active participation in LPC.  In addition to serving as a member of the Research Committee, she represented LPC on the NASIG Digital Preservation Model License Subgroup and co-authored the Digital Preservation Model Policy in March 2022 to support publishers in the creation of preservation policies. She has volunteered as a peer mentor in LPC’s mentoring program and is currently serving as chair of the LPC Program Committee.  In addition to her committee service, her nomination highlighted her work with Cheryl Ball and Matt Vaughn to produce the 2023 Platform Crosswalk.  Corinne’s dedication and investment in LPC’s ongoing success is evident through these and other activities in LPC.  As her nomination mentions, Corinne “is both a proactive member and a conscientious leader dedicated to the future of the Library Publishing Coalition.”

A statement from Corinne:

I am beyond honored to receive the LPC Exemplary Service Award this year. I have learned so much from serving on the various committees, from where we can focus our research to how we’re preserving the work we’re publishing, that has helped shape how I approach my day-to-day work. The opportunities that LPC provides to work with others and better share these findings has been instrumental to how we grow and develop library publishing at large. It has been an honor and a pleasure to work with so many involved in the community, but I’d like to give an extra shout-out for the work Cheryl Ball, Matt Vaughn, and I did with the platform crosswalk project, which wouldn’t have been possible without support from LPC. Thank you so much!

Corinne will receive a complimentary registration to this year’s Library Publishing Forum and a $500 honorarium. 

Please join us in congratulating Corinne!

On behalf of the LPC Board

Janet Swatscheno, President
Harrison Inefuku, President-Elect
Erin Jerome, Secretary
Annie Johnson, Treasurer
Angel Peterson, DEI Officer
Sonya Betz
Elizabeth Scarpelli
Leigh-Ann Butler
Sarah Frankel
Regina Raboin
Amanda Hurford, Past President

September 26, 2024

Library Publishing Coalition Releases 2023–2024 Annual Report

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The Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to announce the release of its 2023–2024 Annual Report.

In addition to outlining LPC’s finances, membership, and ongoing inclusion efforts, the Annual Report highlights several programmatic milestones, including:

  • Launching LPC’s new Community Plan
  • Celebrating 10 years of LPC by the numbers
  • 10th Anniversary Service Leadership Award

LPC is thrilled to celebrate our community’s shared success. We especially want to acknowledge all the hard work that went into the new visioning process and Community Plan as highlighted in the annual report. LPC’s continued sustainability and effectiveness result from the work undertaken by LPC members, staff, our partners, and affiliate organizations. All the people involved in this work offered their time, energy, and expertise to fulfill our vision of an open, inclusive, and sustainable scholarly publishing landscape.

September 20, 2024

Reporting out on the finances of the 2024 Library Publishing Forum

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This is the third of three planned report-outs on this year’s Library Publishing Forum. The other two were on our COVID policy and on the closing plenary discussion. Check them out! 

Conference finances are tricky – ask anyone who has ever planned a multi-day, in-person event. Costs are sometimes unpredictable and revenues almost always are. The last four years have added additional complexities for many conference planners, including wildly fluctuating attendance and binding hotel contracts for events that were forced to go virtual. Conference finances also tend to be somewhat mysterious to attendees, who can be left wondering what their registration fees actually cover and whether the event is intended to break even or to make money for its organizers.  We at LPC are big fans of transparency, so we have decided to report out publicly on the financial details of the Library Publishing Forum. We did this once before (as part of a series of reflections on the 2021 virtual Forum), but our plan is to make it a regular component of Forum planning going forward. To that end, this post will report out on the finances for the in-person Forum held in May of 2024 in Minneapolis, MN. We hope that this post will serve as a resource for fellow conference planners, as well as helping our community better understand the decisions we make around the event.

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September 18, 2024

Wrapping up our 10th anniversary celebration with the LPC Yearbook!

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Our thanks to the LPC community for celebrating our 10th anniversary with us over the last year! We’ve had some great conversations (both nostalgic and forward-looking), we’ve eaten some celebratory cupcakes, we’ve given out a special service award, and we’ve welcomed a batch of new members via our 10th anniversary membership special. Now we are putting the icing on the cake that is this year with the publication of the LPC Yearbook.

The Yearbook is an informal, collaborative publication full of photos and quotes contributed by community members, organized by year. If you’ve ever wondered what LPC’s original website looked like (very Drupal-y), or wanted to see photos of our most iconic conference swag ever (the Pubrarian/Liblisher totes from 2016), or just wanted to take a trip down library publishing memory lane, check it out!

Many thanks to the community members who contributed to the Yearbook, but especially Katherine Skinner and Justin Gonder for the wealth of photography.

September 10, 2024

Launching the University-Based Publishing Futures Community

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Please join us on Monday, September 30, 1:00-2:00 pm EDT, for the launch of the University-Based Publishing Futures community.

Register here

In the spring and summer of 2022, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), Association of University Presses (AUPresses), and Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) convened a series of discussions to explore shared values and common interests related to academy-owned scholarly communications infrastructures. These conversations led to the development of a community formation document and proposed plan of action, including a statement of shared values and commitments that we are proud to share on September 30th. Come to this launch webinar to hear organizational and community leaders explain the history of the initiative, what we mean by university-based publishing, and how to participate in our inaugural projects. Presenters will include Peter Berkery and Brenna McLaughlin (AUPresses), Melanie Schlosser (LPC), Annie Johnson (U of Delaware), Kate McCready (BTAA), and John Sherer (UNC Press).

Agenda:

  • Welcome & Background

  • Importance of the University-Based Publishing Initiative

  • Overview of Community Statement

  • Call to Action

  • Questions

September 3, 2024

PKP implements the Library Publishing Curriculum Introductory Module as a PKP School course

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The Library Publishing Coalition, the Library Publishing Curriculum Editorial Board, and the Public Knowledge Project (PKP) are thrilled to announce the addition of the new Library Publishing Curriculum’s Introduction Module to the PKP School’s Getting Started in Library Publishing series. 

PKP’s new course is based on the Curriculum’s Introduction Module, which includes history, theory, and trends around library publishing as an introduction to the field. PKP writes: “The introduction provides a clear, entry-level overview of the basics, covering the essentials of who, what, when, where, and why in library publishing. It’s designed to give newcomers a solid foundation before diving into the more detailed aspects of the field. The Introduction Module was added to the Library Publishing Curriculum in 2024 and was adapted for PKP School in August of this year.”

The new module, alongside the rest of the Curriculum, is also available as a PDF from WSU’s institutional repository. 

PKP School is a collection of online, self-paced courses designed to enhance scholarly publishing practices globally. The courses cover a range of topics, and are available in English and Spanish.   

More details can be found in PKP’s announcement about the new course.

Library Publishing Coalition logo               

August 27, 2024

Welcome to our new members!

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We’re thrilled to welcome these LPC members, who have joined or rejoined in the past few months under the 10th Anniversary Membership Special offer!

 

Brown University

Brown University Digital Publications — a collaboration between the University Library and the Dean of the Faculty, generously launched with support from the Mellon Foundation with additional support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services — creates exciting new conditions for the production and sharing of knowledge. Brown partners with leading scholarly publishers to ensure that these groundbreaking works are validated via rigorous academic review and reach the broadest possible audience for the greatest possible impact. Widely recognized as accessible, intentional, and inclusive, Brown’s novel, university-based approach to digital content development is helping to set the standards for the future of scholarship in the digital age.

University of Maryland

The University of Maryland, College Park (UMD) is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland. As the only public research university inside the Washington, D.C. beltway, UMD has forged strategic partnerships with national institutions and federal agencies to uniquely position the university’s faculty, researchers and students. Driven by its diverse and proudly inclusive community of more than 40,000 students, 10,000 faculty and staff, and 300 academic programs, UMD is fearlessly committed to addressing the grand challenges of our time and serving the public good.
UMD’s library publishing initiatives are developed by its Open Scholarship Services team, whose mission is to increase knowledge equity and to encourage inclusive and creative approaches to public scholarship. In addition to journals and open educational resources, UMD Libraries hope to support digital scholarship projects in collaboration with the forthcoming StoRI Lab, which will foster innovative research storytelling on our campus.

Adelphi University

Adelphi University is located in Garden City, New York, a short distance from New York City, with satellite campuses in the city, Hudson Valley, and Hauppauge. Adelphi offers a number of highly ranked degree programs for undergraduate and graduate students with particular strengths in psychology, nursing, business, and social work. The digital publishing program at Adelphi University Libraries, which began in 2022, currently publishes a peer-reviewed scholarly journal and an undergraduate magazine. The program is also responsible for managing Adelphi’s institutional repository, Scholarly Works, and using it to disseminate scholarly and creative content produced by the Adelphi community.

Tufts University 

Tufts University is a student-centered R1 research university, with 10 schools and colleges including Arts, Sciences & Engineering, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Medicine, Dental, Veterinary, and the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy. Tufts libraries currently support publishing activities through repositories, DOI minting, support for OER creation, and the Tufts Scholarly Communication Team. We’ve recently signed a hosting agreement with PKP/OJS and are excited to begin

 

VIVA

VIVA is the consortium of academic libraries in Virginia representing 71 institutions of higher education. Members include 39 public colleges and universities, 31 independent private non-profit institutions, and the Library of Virginia. Since 1994, VIVA has worked to build an equitable, accessible, and robust infrastructure of library resources and services for Virginia higher education students and faculty. VIVA Open Publishing is an Open and Affordable initiative providing centralized publishing support for VIVA Open Grant recipients and support for our member institution’s library publishing programs. For more information, please visit www.vivalib.org.

Water with the word reflections in all caps with a horizontal line above and below
August 13, 2024

A 10-Year Vision for Library Publishing (LPForum24 Closing Plenary Reflection)

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The 2024 Library Publishing Forum opened with a keynote address that looked back on LPC’s first 10 years. Katherine Skinner reflected on the formation of the community, its original goals, and what it has accomplished. For long-time community members, the talk was a trip down memory lane. For newer folks, it was a stellar orientation. It also fit beautifully with our 10th anniversary theme for the conference, but it wasn’t just an exercise in nostalgia. Instead, it provided grounding for the real conversation we wanted to have at the event: where we want to be 10 years in the future. 

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July 16, 2024

LPC welcomes a new strategic affiliate: the Library Accessibility Alliance

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The Library Publishing Coalition is delighted to welcome the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) as a new strategic affiliate! A statement from LAA:

The Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) promotes equitable access to library services and electronic resources. Our member libraries are committed to providing equal access to information for all library users, and we work together to improve vendor products, educate our community, and advance digital accessibility.

And a statement from LPC on the new relationship:

We have already started partnering with LAA to incorporate more accessibility-related education into our programming, and we’re grateful for their help with this challenging but critical topic. As library publishers struggle to meet accessibility requirements, LPC hopes to serve as a resource for both professional development and advocacy. This partnership is supporting that work and our community.

June 24, 2024

Reflecting on the 2024 LPForum COVID policy

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A back view of Katherine Skinner, keynote speaker, with McNamara Memorial Hall in the background
Katherine Skinner gives the keynote at the 2024 Library Publishing Forum. Image credit: Adria Carpenter/U of M Libraries

 

Multiple groups within LPC spent months developing a COVID policy for this year’s in-person Library Publishing Forum. Now that the event is behind us, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on how the policy was developed, how it worked in practice, and the feedback we received from the community. I hope that this blog post, in conjunction with the policy itself, will serve as a resource for other conference planners.

Policy recap

Our COVID policy was designed around three principles:

  1. As the organizers, we have a responsibility to provide the safest possible conference for our community. In the same way that we provide attendees with chairs to sit on and meals to eat, and speakers with microphones so that everyone can hear them, it is our job to provide attendees with a safe conference environment.
  2. Each attendee has a responsibility of care to the rest of the community. This principle is grounded in our community Code of Conduct, which lays out an expectation that community members will follow health guidelines.
  3. The policy needed to be flexible enough that attendees could determine which precautions were possible for them without having to disclose private medical information to conference staff and other attendees.

Once these principles were clear, the policy itself was fairly straightforward: we would provide masks, tests, supplemental air filtration, and boxed meals that could be taken outside; and attendees would manage their own COVID precautions (encouraged by copious and emphatic messaging before and during the conference). There is more detail in the full policy, including a list of precautions that we encouraged attendees to take, but the overall message was that everyone needs to do their part.

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