The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.
Jessica has led the way to standing up a robust Discord server to make sure everyone has an opportunity to engage with the Forum, whether they are in Seattle or tuning in from afar. Her expertise and attention to detail will ensure an inclusive and professional virtual complement to the main conference, and will offer a template to build on in future years!
A quote from Jessica:
You can find Jessica on Discord masquerading as her coworkers Luna (cat) and Torvi (dog).
“The LPC/library publishing community is one of my favorites, and I loved the opportunity to help increase opportunities for engagement at LPF with both the sessions and community. I know online engagement is going through a period of change, and I hope the Discord was a welcome opportunity for connections and backchanneling during the conference. Big shout out to my other wonderful members of the RETF for all the community and collaboration over the past year!”
This Kudos was submitted by Jessica’s colleagues on the Remote Engagement Task Force.
The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.
This year, for the first time in the group’s history, the Curriculum Editorial Board (Johanna Meetz, Joshua Neds-Fox, Chelcie Rowell, John Warren, and Rebecca Wojturska) recruited a new group of authors to create updated content for the curriculum. The editorial board scoped out the necessary revisions and new content, created templates and guidance, recruited authors, and supported them through the writing and editing process. The new Policy units won’t be published until next program year, but I wanted to acknowledge the stellar work done by the outgoing cohort of editorial board members in making this work happen. Kudos!
A quote from the Curriculum Editorial Board:
“Thank you for this honor! The updated policy module is the culmination of many years of work from this Board, from previous Board members, many of whom have served two terms, and our former Editor in Chief, Cheryl Ball. We are also grateful to LPC for the funding they allocated to pay the authors for their work, and the authors for their contributions.”
The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.
This year’s Professional Development Committee (Anna Dimoula, Cosette Bruhns Alonso, DeDe Dawson, Lora Lennertz, and Patti Sherbaniuk) set out to create space for conversations about artificial intelligence in library publishing. In a stellar example of follow-through, an exploratory community call led to a webinar (on AI editorial policies), which they followed up by creating guidance for library publishers who wish to document expectations and rules around the use of AI in scholarly publishing. This is a significant contribution to an emerging area of practice in the field, and great work by an LPC committee!
We’re happy to include comments from some of the committee members.
“Working alongside a passionate community of professionals to shape the AI Editorial Policy Guide has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my time as chair of the Professional Development Committee.”—Anna DiMoula
“I do not work in the realm of library publishing so I joined this committee to learn more about it. This group has been great to work with, very knowledgeable and patient with me as a newbie.”—Patti Sherbaniuk
“Serving on the LPC Professional Development Committee has been a great way to contribute to the library publishing community and learn at the same time. I’ve also made some new professional contacts along the way. It has been a valuable experience!”—DeDe Dawson
The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.
This Kudos recognizes the 2024-2026 Staffing Survey Task Force, the group charged with carrying out LPC’s first ever Directory off-year deep-dive survey! Melissa Chim, Miranda Phair, Michelle Brailey, Lauren Collister, Heather Hankins, Alyssa Huffman, Bailey Lake, Barbara Loomis, Joseph Muller, Donna O’Malley, and Anita Walz devised and tested a survey of staffing practices in library publishing, gathered responses, analyzed the survey data, and drafted an interesting and informative report. This was a substantial undertaking, and will contribute significantly to our understanding of how library publishing programs are staffed.
We’re happy to include comments from some of the task force members.
“I really enjoyed the opportunity to be able to contribute to an LPC initiative (and the inaugural deep-dive topic for directory off years) especially as I come from a non-member institution. Many thanks to my fellow committee members for all of their enthusiasm and hard work in completing the project.”—Miranda Phair (co-chair)
“It was a pleasure to work with this group on this timely and important topic. We addressed a big, broad question, and learned a lot from each other and our participants along the way. It’s my hope that this work will be a first step towards improving our understanding and advocacy for staffing and capacity, and that this knowledge can be built upon in the years to come.”—Lauren Collister
“Working on the Staffing Survey Task Force has been an incredibly rewarding experience. It provided a wonderful opportunity to connect with talented colleagues across the field and to learn more about the library publishing climate. I’m excited to see how the data gathered will benefit library publishing programs moving forward! Thank you to the Library Publishing Coalition for putting this task force together!”—Bailey Lake
UJ Press is an Open Access University Press based at the University of Johannesburg Library. The press publishes both Gold and Diamond Access books and journals in print, electronic and audio formats.
Ball State University is a public research university in Muncie, Indiana, with over 20,000 students, 120 undergraduate majors, and 100 graduate degrees offered through its seven academic colleges. Ball State University offers a number of highly ranked programs and has a vision to be a national model of excellence for challenging, learner- centered academic communities that advance knowledge and improve economic vitality and quality of life. This vision is shared by the University Libraries where the Digital Scholarship and Scholarly Communication unit advances the creation, dissemination, and preservation of open access research and digital scholarship through collaborative opportunities, workshops and instruction, consultative services, and technology solutions. Our projects span from GIS, to scholarly communication, digital projects, and journal hosting. We strive to focus on innovation, accessibility, and new program development such as textbook and monograph publishing.
Overall, I found this experience invaluable as an early-career professional. The fellowship provided me with a suite of professional development opportunities, including a good amount of networking (and as someone who is not extroverted most of the time, this was extra impactful for me). The elements of the fellowship I’ll cover here are being assigned an industry expert mentor, creating a research poster with other fellows, and attending the Annual Meeting, though we also had regular group check-ins and other professional development opportunities.
A group of early career professionals dressed in business casual smiling on stage against a rich velvet backdrop.
To start, I was assigned a wonderful mentor: David Haber, Publishing Operations Director at the American Society for Microbiology. The thing I appreciate most about our conversations is how I’m able to be myself—I don’t feel the need to tiptoe around my stronger opinions (or language). We’ve only been meeting for a handful of months, but we’ve already been able to learn so much from each other, especially in areas where our opinions don’t quite align. Gaining the perspective of a society journal publisher has been important as I’ve taken on more journal responsibilities in my role, but it’s also been quite useful to know how and what changes happen in other parts of the scholarly publishing ecosystem, especially regarding the development and implementation of new technologies.
The most time-consuming part of the fellowship was creating a research poster to present at the Annual Meeting. The timeline was tight, with the journey from research idea to final poster being just three months. Our group created a poster that sought to visualize where open peer review takes place in open access publications, via data gathered from DOAB and DOAJ. Was it kind of awkward standing against a wall near our poster, waiting for people to talk to me? Yes—but the conversations I had were lovely, extending beyond the poster and into library publishing and accessibility, among other things.
Five panelists sit at a long table on a small stage, passing a microphone around as they answer questions for the audience.
Speaking of the poster presentation, attending this year’s Annual Meeting was incredible! I will say that, with how budgets have shaken out recently, attending the meeting was made possible by my fellowship benefits, which included a travel stipend and registration waiver. I attended sessions on disability and accessibility, journal publishing, AI, and new technologies. I was also invited to be part of a panel of early-career professionals, where we shared our experiences and advice. And of course, it was absolutely lovely meeting up with the other fellows in person for the first time (I also wrote about my experience for The Scholarly Kitchen, if you’d care to read more).
Though my fellowship is technically over, later this year I’ll be rolling onto SSP’s DEIA Committee—I’m excited to see what kind of work this group does while also being in my second year on LPC’s DEIA committee. All in all, I highly recommend that grad students and early-career professionals in the library publishing space apply for this fellowship. It has been such a unique way to learn about the scholarly publishing landscape and make strong connections within the industry—I wouldn’t trade it for the world!
This year we invited sponsors at the Sustainer Level and above to introduce themselves through narratives of how users engage with their platforms/products. Participants can connect with sponsors during and after the Forum through onsite tables, online sponsor channels in the Discord, and Chats with a Sponsor—a scheduled time for you to share and get feedback from sponsors about a publishing pain point you think they might be able to solve.
By Michelle Ried, Bridwell Press
BRIDWELL PRESS: Where History and Culture Meet Creativity & Poetry
Founded in 2022, Bridwell Press grew out of the desire to develop a sustainable open-access press that supported global voices and approaches creatively, while continuing the legacy of the former SMU Press that closed in 2010. Early contributors included librarians dedicated to better writing pedagogy, a Brazilian jurist seeking novel approaches to religious understanding, and a progressive Jewish theologian laying the groundwork for mutual respect within interfaith dialogue in the Middle East. This was just the beginning.
What has followed is a journey not just of collaboration, but of community that believes in the truest natures of human goodness and the spirit of the creative mind. Through critical scholarship, advanced translation, and innovative verse, Bridwell Press has emerged as a cutting edge publisher of both contemporary research and poetry, and of thousand-year-old historical and literary works rendered into modern English.
Click image to watch Anthony Elia’s Welcome
Bridwell Press works with teams of scholars and translators from Dallas and Minneapolis to Rome and Hong Kong, and produces titles from Armenian and Spanish to medieval Japanese and Tatar. Our editorial boards are governed by editors from a diverse group of institutions like SMU, Macalester College, NYU, and Oxford University and provide the highest standards of review and production.
Some of the most important works in translation come out of zones of conflict or where historical and literary legacies are not well represented, including poetry and scholarship from Ukraine, literature from 1910s Armenia, Cambodian religious writings from the mid-20th century, 14th-century Mongolian poetic and historical writings, and even 8th-century literature from Japan. Seeking to reveal vastly underrepresented works and make them available open access is an honor that we can share with both students and the greater world of readers.
Here readers can view Bridwell Press Director Anthony Elia welcome folks to reach out to him to talk further about Bridwell’s lists and editorial processes, including their use of Fulcrum as an academy-owned publishing platform.
This year we invited sponsors at the Sustainer Level and above to introduce themselves through narratives of how users engage with their platforms/products. Participants can connect with sponsors during and after the Forum through onsite tables, online sponsor channels in the Discord, and Chats with a Sponsor—a scheduled time for you to share and get feedback from sponsors about a publishing pain point you think they might be able to solve.
By Erin Dunigan, Quire
Quire is a digital publishing tool developed and used by Getty since 2016. Quire is designed for longevity, discoverability, and scholarship. Using plain text files, Quire creates online and e-books as authoritative and enduring as print and as vibrant and feature-rich as the web—all without paying a fee or maintaining a complicated server. Quire has been open source since 2022, and a community of individuals, institutions, and museums worldwide uses it for free. In this blog post, we showcase a few examples of how digital scholarship/publishing staff and subject matter faculty members work with Quire to produce beautiful publications.
Shortly after starting in 2017 as a software engineer working in the Center for Digital Scholarship at Emory University, Yang Li became known as a digital matchmaker for faculty members working on digital projects. Faculty would come to Yang with an idea, and he would experiment to choose which platform would be the best way to bring their scholarship to life. After several years of research and experimentation, Yang chose three tools/platforms that he felt comfortable recommending: WordPress, Manifold, and Quire.
Yang saw Quire as an elegant way to surface valuable research that might otherwise remain inaccessible. Quire stood out for a few reasons, including the way it
outputs a static website that doesn’t require the headache of maintaining a server,
generates PDF and EPUB versions of the website,
enables deep customization, and
is actively maintained by Getty, including up-to-date documentation and training.
Yang recommends Quire to faculty whose work is image-heavy and best suited to a catalogue or monograph format, like the Michael C. Carlos Museum’s 2022 publication And I Must Scream. This exhibition catalogue features both an essay and a catalogue section. The object entry pages in this catalogue are automatically formatted by Quire to include a primary image on the left and artist information, essay, and comparative images on the right, much like a traditional print catalogue.
Quire has a notable learning curve, requiring navigation of the command line and writing content in Markdown and YAML, quickguide documentation for which is provided on the Quire website. Emory Art History Professor Amanda H. Hellman, together with Professor Annie McEwen and PhD Candidate Ellen Archie, were up for the challenge. Motivated by curiosity and a desire to learn, they did the bulk of the work utilizing Quire’s documentation and occasionally engaging with the user forum. When they brought the publication to Yang and asked what needed to be fixed, he was thrilled to say, “Nothing!”
More often, Yang is either directly working on a publication or connecting faculty with external help. He is currently assisting with the exhibition catalogue Making an Impression: The Art and Craft of Ancient Engraved Gemstones. Ruth Allen, PhD, Curator of Greek and Roman Art, wanted to include Reflectance Transformance Imaging (RTI). This allows the viewer to adjust the shadows and light as they move their mouse around an image. With some tinkering, Yang customized Ruth’s publication to include this feature, giving readers the opportunity to explore the luminosity of ancient carved gems in an elevated and unprecedented way.
Yang regularly hears from faculty members that they are pleased with the modern look and feel of their Quire publications, the way the tool structures content, and how it enhances the scholarship through its various multimodal features. After nearly a decade of helping faculty, Yang reflected that Quire is unique in that it “enables you to appreciate the beauty of the project itself; the platform doesn’t get in the way.”
The above awards help first-time participants attend the 2026 Library Publishing Forum. The 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 is being held June 17–18, 2026, in Seattle, Washington. The LPC Forum Scholarship and IFLA International Scholarship both offset travel and registration costs for first-time Forum attendees who bring new and diverse perspectives to the community. They are each assigned a mentor during the Forum and are offered opportunities to engage with the community after the Forum.
LPC/AUPresses Cross-Pollinator Award Recipients
Elizabeth Bedford, University of Washington [LPC member]
Sophia Hebert, Indiana University Press [AUPresses member]
The Cross-Pollinator award is a joint scholarship from the LPC and AUPresses providing free registration to a first-time attendee to each annual meeting: A member of an AUPresses institution receives free registration to attend the LPC Forum, and a member of an LPC institution receives free registration to the AUPresses Annual Meeting. AUPresses is the premier professional development and networking event for university press and nonprofit scholarly publishers. The AUPresses Annual Meeting runs June 13–15, 2026, co-located with the Forum in Seattle, Washington.
The Library Publishing Coalition is excited to announce the release of a new AI Editorial Policy Guide. This document is designed to help editors and those involved in publishing to develop an AI policy for your publishing program. Sections include policy development and maintenance, the fundamental elements included in an AI editorial policy guide, an annotated list of selected examples of AI policies, as well as further resources to aid your policy development.
This policy was developed by the LPC Professional Development Committee as a follow up to an LPC-hosted webinar on AI Policies which included guest speakers from Ubiquity Press (Imogen Clarke) and In the Library with the Lead Pipe (Ryan Randall and Brittany Paloma Fiedler). We encourage you to watch the webinar recording as you think about your AI policy planning.
This document is being released under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY), so we encourage further distribution and adaptation of this guide.
“Working alongside a passionate community of professionals to shape the AI Editorial Policy Guide has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my time as chair of the 
“I do not work in the realm of library publishing so I joined this committee to learn more about it. This group has been great to work with, very knowledgeable and patient with me as a newbie.”—Patti Sherbaniuk
“Serving on the LPC 
“It was a pleasure to work with this group on this timely and important topic. We addressed a big, broad question, and learned a lot from each other and our participants along the way. It’s my hope that this work will be a first step towards improving our understanding and advocacy for 
“Working on the 
Ball State University is a public research university in Muncie, Indiana, with over 20,000 students, 120 undergraduate majors, and 100 graduate degrees offered through its seven academic colleges. Ball State University offers a number of highly ranked programs and has a vision to be a national model of excellence for challenging, learner- centered academic communities that advance knowledge and improve economic vitality and quality of life. This vision is shared by the University Libraries where the Digital Scholarship and Scholarly Communication unit advances the creation, dissemination, and preservation of open access research and digital scholarship through collaborative opportunities, workshops and instruction, consultative services, and technology solutions. Our projects span from GIS, to scholarly communication, digital projects, and journal hosting. We strive to focus on innovation, accessibility, and new program development such as textbook and monograph publishing.
