LPC News

June 10, 2021

LPC welcomes a new strategic affiliate: ARL

The Library Publishing Coalition is delighted to welcome the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) as a new strategic affiliate!

About ARL:

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in Canada and the US whose mission is to advance research, learning, and scholarly communication. The Association fosters the open exchange of ideas and expertise; advances diversity, equity, and inclusion; and pursues advocacy and public policy efforts that reflect the values of the library, scholarly, and higher education communities. ARL forges partnerships and catalyzes the collective efforts of research libraries to enable knowledge creation and to achieve enduring and barrier-free access to information. ARL is on the web at ARL.org.

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.

April 19, 2021

LPC welcomes a new strategic affiliate: CLOCKSS

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.

April 7, 2021

Participate in this year’s Research Interests Match Program!

LPC’s annual Research Interests Match Program connects individuals interested in finding collaborators for research projects, conference proposals, and more. After filling out a short form, participants are matched based on research interests and given an initial introduction. 

If you are interested in being matched with someone who shares your research interests, fill out the Library Publishing Research Interests Match Form by May 17, 2021. Looking to get involved in research but don’t have a specific topic in mind? There’s a question that allows you to choose a topic from the Library Publishing Research Agenda!

In June, the LPC Research Committee will match participants based on their research interests and provide an initial email introduction for matches. The Program encourages matched participants to connect and discuss shared research interests, but participants are under no obligation to start a collaboration or project. All form responses will be made publicly available to enable further connections. 

This is a new annual program organized around the Library Publishing Forum, so a new form will be issued each spring, and the previous year’s responses will be retired when the new year’s are released. 

This resource was developed by the LPC Research Committee, and modeled on the Research Interests Match for Residents and Early Career Librarians, developed by the ACRL Residency Interest Group. Email contact@librarypublishing.org with questions. 

March 22, 2021

LPC Statement Supporting Asian Americans and Asians

The Library Publishing Coalition stands together with the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association (APALA), the American Library Association’s Executive Board, the Black Caucus of ALA, and other librarians, library institutions, and library users in recognizing and condemning anti-Asian hate crimes in the US and elsewhere. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an increase in discrimination, hate speech and rhetoric, and violence towards Asian Americans, continuing a long history of violence, scapegoating, stereotyping, and exclusion of Asian Americans and Asians in the US. As noted in the statement from ALA, library and information workers must combat cultural bias and bigotry in their work, and in this vein LPC has recently published a roadmap to taking accountable actions for the LPC itself and its member organizations. LPC pledges to combat hate and ignorance and to take anti-racist action in its own community and in collaboration with other information and publishing professionals. In this instance, we direct colleagues looking to take action to resources to combat Anti-Asian violence.

Library Publishing Coalition Diversity and Inclusion Task Force

Library Publishing Coalition Board of Directors

March 3, 2021

New LPC Board members elected

The nine-member Library Publishing Coalition Board oversees the governance, organizational structure, bylaws, and the review and direction of the membership of the Library Publishing Coalition. We have three newly elected Board members, with terms running from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2024:

• Justin Gonder, California Digital Library (2021-2024)
• Willa Tavernier, Indiana University (2021-2024)
• Sarah Wipperman, Villanova University (2021-2024)

They will join the returning Board members:

• Karen Bjork, Portland State University (2019-2022)
• Christine Fruin, Atla (2019-2022)
• Jessica Kirschner, Virginia Commonwealth University (2020-2023)
• Ally Laird, Penn State University (2020-2023)
• Emma Molls, University of Minnesota (2020-2023)
• Jody Bailey, Emory University, jody.bailey@emory.edu (ex officio Past President)
• Melanie Schlosser, Educopia Institute, melanie@educopia.org (ex officio Community Facilitator)

Note: Sarah Hare is stepping down from the Board a year early. We will fill her spot as usual next year. 

Many thanks to outgoing Board members Vanessa Gabler, Scott Warren, and Sarah Hare for their service!

March 1, 2021

Kudos to the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force!

The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.

This Kudos recognizes Cheryl Ball (Wayne State University), Kevin Hawkins (University of North Texas), Harrison Inefuku (Iowa State University), Joshua Neds-Fox (Wayne State University), Angel Peterson (Penn State University), and Willa Tavernier (Indiana University) for their excellent work on the new LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice:

The Diversity and Inclusion Task Force has done a huge amount of excellent work since it convened in July of 2019, but its recently published LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice is likely to have the largest and most lasting impact on the organization. The task force held a community call on anti-racism in September of 2020, and spent the next four months reviewing, organizing, and fleshing out the ideas that arose into a long-term plan for LPC to engage in anti-racist practice. They held extra meetings to accomplish this work alongside their regular activities (such as meeting with representatives from other LPC groups), and put in a substantial amount of time on it outside of meetings, as well. The result is a foundational document for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee that will launch in July of this year, and one that will make it possible for that group to hit the ground running with community-driven anti-racist leadership for the whole organization. The task force deserves the recognition and thanks of the entire community. Kudos!

Statements from the task force:

Joint statement: “Working on the DEI Task Force is a way for us to demonstrate our commitment to anti-racist work in scholarly publishing. The anti-racist roadmap shows how the LPC stands behind these mandates on diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

Cheryl: “Already I have cited the roadmap to senior library leaders and have begun implementing its suggestions in other areas of my publishing work.”

Angel: “I joined the Library Publishing Coalition in 2020 and working on the anti-racist roadmap was my first official duty within the coalition. It is really inspiring to see our commitment to being a diverse and inclusive community. I fully plan on using these principals in my day-to-day work!”

Willa: “LPC has an amazing sense of community and the support for the work of the DEI Task Force that has come from the community is tremendously inspiring!”

This Kudos was submitted by Melanie Schlosser

March 1, 2021

Kudos to the Documentation Month planning group!

The Kudos program recognizes impactful work done by community members on behalf of the Library Publishing Coalition community.

This Kudos recognizes Allison Brown (SUNY Geneseo), Erin Jerome (University of Massachusetts), and Emily Stenberg (Washington University St. Louis) for their stellar work on Documentation Month:

The idea for a documentation event came up during a community call on creative staffing solutions, and it was picked up by the Professional Development Committee for implementation. It was Erin, Allison, and Emily, however, who brought it to life. They defined the purpose and structure of Documentation Month, created the Documentation Toolkit, planned and hosted community calls, and drafted communications. For five months, they met regularly to plan and did substantial work outside of meetings, coordinating with the Professional Development Committee and Educopia staff to ensure a successful event. Their Documentation Month is likely to serve as a model for future events, within LPC and in the wider community. Kudos!

A statement from Allison, Erin, and Emily:

“When we first began meeting as a group to work on mapping out what our Documentation Month would look like, the project felt incredibly ambitious and just a bit overwhelming. It’s been really amazing to see all the pieces fall into place and to know that the LPC community is just as excited as we are about this endeavor.”

This Kudos was submitted by Melanie Schlosser

February 25, 2021

The LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice

As part of our commitment to anti-racism, LPC’s Diversity and Inclusion Task Force has prepared the LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice. This document owes a great deal to the ideas and input of library publishing workers at last fall’s anti-racism community call, which was hosted by the task force and the Board. In that call, participants were asked to consider how LPC has perpetuated inequality and marginalization of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) and to envision ways that we can adopt anti-racist practice throughout the organization. The task force took the resulting ideas, further developed them, and organized them into an action plan. 

The roadmap consists of a 6-month plan that the task force is currently enacting, and offers a menu of longer-term ideas that the organization and members can choose to implement. The items are organized in six categories: building an anti-racist organization, community building, demographics, education, resource creation, and supporting BIPOC library publishing workers. Several of the items suggested for LPC Committees are to support members in implementing anti-racism in their programs. We want to work together as a community to make library publishing an inclusive, equitable, flourishing endeavor.

As this roadmap is meant to guide the entire organization in anti-racist practice, you will see a number of different LPC groups referenced as being responsible for individual items. These should be considered suggestions from the task force at this point. Since the soon-to-be-established Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee will be working in a consultative capacity with its peer committees and task forces, there will be plenty of opportunities to review the items in the roadmap and decide together what to prioritize. 

This publication is a snapshot of an internal, working document that will be updated as work progresses. As future iterations of the DEI Committee and other LPC groups identify near-term action items, our expectation is that a new snapshot can be generated for the community. 

LPC Diversity and Inclusion Task Force: Cheryl Ball (Wayne State University), Kevin Hawkins (University of North Texas), Harrison Inefuku (Iowa State University), Joshua Neds-Fox (Wayne State University), Angel Peterson (Penn State University), Willa Tavernier (Indiana University)

February 10, 2021

2021 LPC Board election: Candidate bios and statements

Elections for the Library Publishing Coalition Board open today and will continue through Friday, February 26. Instructions for voting will be sent to each member institution’s voting representative. The candidates are:

• Willa Tavernier, Indiana University, Bloomington
• Alissa Miller, Middle Tennessee State University
• Amanda Hurford, Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI)
• Mike Nason, University of New Brunswick
• Kate Shuttleworth, Simon Fraser University
• Justin Gonder, California Digital Library
• Sarah Wipperman, Villanova University

Each candidate has provided a brief biography and an election statement; this year we have also asked candidates to provide a statement on anti-racism.

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