LPC News

July 25, 2022

LPC welcomes a new member: Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library

Please join us in welcoming the Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library as a new member of the Library Publishing Coalition. The voting rep for AUC is Vanesa Evers.

About the AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library:

Incorporated in 2004, the AUC Woodruff Library partners with the nation’s largest consortium of historically Black colleges and universities which includes Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College, and Spelman College to provide information management, instruction, and access to a variety of global information resources acquired and organized in support of teaching and learning, scholarship, and cultural preservation of the Atlanta University Center. The Library’s Archives Research Center is known for its extensive holdings of materials on the African American experience. In addition to the aesthetic benefits of this state-of-the-art learning facility, the Library has evolved into a model repository of information resources and is a front-runner in the innovative delivery of digital resources.

The AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library is the winner of the 2016 Excellence in Academic Libraries Award in the university category from the Association of Collegiate and Research Libraries (ACRL). Library CEO Loretta Parham was named the ACRL 2017 Academic/Research Librarian of the Year. These top honors recognize academic libraries and librarians for delivering exemplary services and resources in support of their institutional missions.  In May 2022, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) announced the AUC Woodruff Library as its 127^th member, the AUC Woodruff Library becoming the second HBCU to achieve the honor. For more information, visit www.auctr.edu.

July 14, 2022

Publishing Practice Awards Committee Update

For the 2021-2022 academic year, the Library Publishing Coalition’s Publishing Practice Awards Committee enjoyed reviewing a handful of very exciting applications for the categories of Accessibility; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion; and Privacy. During the review process, the Committee was given the opportunity to clarify criteria and consider the challenges of offering this unique award, which seeks to highlight the often invisible process work involved in library publishing.

The Committee greatly appreciates the expertise of guest judge Prof. Jay Dolmage, of the University of Waterloo, who offered great insight into applications regarding the Accessibility category. With an extensive background in social justice and accessibility issues, Dr. Dolmage was an integral part of the Committee’s assessment process.

While no awards will be granted for the 2022 academic year, the Committee will be seeking award nominations for the 2023 academic year in a continued effort to draw attention to the exemplary work being done by library publishers.

July 2, 2022

LPC welcomes a new member: Rice University

Please join us in welcoming a new member of the LPC community: Rice University. Their voting rep is Shannon Kipphut-Smith.

About Rice University, Fondren Library:

As a campus crossroads, Fondren Library brings together faculty, graduate and undergraduate students, staff, alumni and the general public, offering welcoming spaces, excellent collections, and strong services in support of teaching, research and creative expression. Publishing services at Fondren Library align with the library’s efforts to deepen the impact and visibility of Rice research. Services and resources have been developed to support the creation of scholarly publications created by members of the Rice community. Library staff provide consultations on a wide range of scholarly publishing topics, facilitate the assignment of digital object identifiers (DOIs), and manage several digital publishing platforms.

June 30, 2022

Kudos to the 2021-2022 Directory Task Force!

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

This Kudos recognizes members of the 2021-2022 Directory Task Force for their work to evaluate and revise the Directory Survey:

Many thanks to the members of the Directory Task Force (including Perry Collins, Karen Stoll Farrell, Nicholas Wojcik, Rachel Lee, Liz Scarpelli, and Emily Stenberg) for their work to evaluate and revise the directory survey. As a group they tackled several major components: streamlining and reducing workload for participants throughout (e.g., removing/adapting several questions that required counting or tracking down data); rethinking an approach that often artificially separated the work of university presses from that of library publishers; and incorporating a new, short section focused on identifying policies.

The revised survey is a thing of beauty!

This Kudos was submitted by Karen Bjork. 

June 29, 2022

LPC welcomes a new member: University of Delaware

The Library Publishing Coalition is delighted to welcome the University of Delaware as a new member! Their voting rep is Paige Morgan.

A statement from University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press:

The Library, Museums and Press inspires the intellectual, scholarly, and creative achievement of the University of Delaware and global communities with expert staff, excellent service, dynamic learning spaces and access to diverse collections and information resources. 

The Library is the intellectual and interdisciplinary hub of the University. We partner with the campus and the community for scholarly and creative endeavors. We support the University’s efforts to have a positive impact on the community and offer innovative solutions to global problems.

The Library currently offers institutional repository services, and an open and affordable course materials grant. The Press publishes around fifteen monographs a year. We are excited to join the Library Publishing Coalition, and look forward to learning from this community.

June 29, 2022

LPC welcomes a new member: University of Kansas

Please join us in welcoming the University of Kansas as a new member of the Library Publishing Coalition. The voting rep for KU Libraries is Marianne Reed.

About the University of Kansas Libraries:

The University of Kansas Libraries transform lives by inspiring the discovery and creation of knowledge for the university and our global community. KU Libraries are leaders in the global Open Access movement and exhibit a long-standing commitment to advocating for low- and no- cost open educational resources for students at KU and beyond.

Digital Publishing Services, an initiative of KU Libraries, provides publishing services that increase the impact and visibility of the high-quality research of KU faculty, staff and students. Our online open access publishing model follows best practices and standards that are designed to increase the reach and impact of the research, as well as providing long-term stewardship of the material after publication.

We help KU faculty, staff and students turn their scholarship into high-quality open access publications and publish them online in a variety of formats:

• Journals
• Books
• Conference proceedings
• White papers
• Departmental research publications

By the end of 2022, Digital Publishing Services will support more than 50 journals through the Journals@KU initiative.

June 21, 2022

Kudos to the 2021-2022 LPC Program Committee!

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

This Kudos recognizes members of the 2021-2022 LPC Program Committee for their excellent planning and work on the 2022 Library Publishing Forum:

Congratulations and mega-kudos to the 2022 LPC Program Committee: Sonya Betz (chair), Jason Boczar, Emily Carlisle-Johnston, Annie Johnson, Lucinda Johnston, Regina Raboin, Pittsburgh hosts Lauren Collister and Dave Scherer (Dave for part of the process at least), and Board liaison Emma Molls. This crew wasn’t satisfied with one event–they planned both a virtual preconference and an in-person event. And they did so with great skill, bringing to the library publishing community two programs full of informative and insightful keynotes and sessions, with good opportunities for socializing in between. They also took on the task of being room hosts for all sessions (both virtual and in-person), showing off some spectacular hosting skills, especially for the Q&As. Well done, all, and thank you!

A few comments from Program Committee members:

I was thrilled to welcome attendees to our Library Publishing Forum 2022 in Pittsburgh, PA, on our beautiful University of Pittsburgh campus. After so long on Zoom, it was a thrill to plan an in-person event and to see so many of you in person, and to introduce some of my favorite places and people in Pittsburgh. Hosting is a lot of work, but with a great local team, an amazing Program Committee, and an outstanding LPC Team, it is manageable and very worthwhile!

—Lauren Collister

With compassion, grace, and fabulous organizational skills, Sonya Betz led the LPC Program to envisioning and then executing the two Library Publishing Community programs. I’m thrilled that I was part of this strong team and had a great experience! Thank you!

—Regina Raboin

I really enjoyed my first year on the committee–met a lot of great people, learned a lot, and am very much looking forward to next year’s event.

—Lucinda Johnston

This Kudos was submitted by Nancy Adams. 

May 12, 2022

Kudos to the 2021-2022 Library Publishing Curriculum Editorial Board!

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

This Kudos recognizes members of the 2021-2022 Library Publishing Curriculum Editorial Board for their excellent work on collaboratively writing a whole new Introductory module for the LP Curriculum:

For the last 18 months, the editorial board of the Library Publishing Curriculum has been spending their monthly 90-minute meetings, as well as (some months) multiple meetings in between, crafting an entirely new module for the Library Publishing Curriculum. In a thorough review of the Curriculum during the first six months after the Board came on, board members pinpointing a critical need that would introduce the curriculum to a range of audiences (students, new librarians, new-to-publishing librarians, and administrators). Despite this work not immediately falling within their charge (it’s optional for them to agree to *write* new/revised content), they unanimously agreed that they wanted to take on this work and began mapping out exactly what this new Introduction module might look like. A brief outline turned into a massive outline, taking into consideration all of the new trends, research areas, genres, and production processes that library publishing has taken on disciplinarily and practically in the half-decade since the original curriculum was published. Our meetings then turned into writing sprints, with the nine board members working in coordinated effort to shepherd different sections of the new introduction into existence. It was a challenge to be brief in some instances, where we knew serious work had been done in recent years, such as DEI efforts in library publishing, but we didn’t have the space to fully expand on those points in the intro (knowing, too, that additional revisions and/or modules might be needed elsewhere in the curriculum to bolster the introductory work of this new module). They co-wrote in a massive Google doc, reviewed each others’ writing on a monthly basis, provided suggestions and citations when they could help others in the group, and showed up week after week the closer we got to the internal deadline to release the first draft to the LPC community for feedback. The intellectual labor and initiative that this editorial board has delivered has gone beyond anything I’ve witnessed in my publishing career. Each and every member of the group should feel a huge amount of pride for their accomplishments, doubly so for doing all this work and showing up consistently during an on-going pandemic. They made my job as Editor-in-Chief easy, and I am eternally grateful.

This Kudos was submitted by Cheryl E. Ball. 

April 20, 2022

Announcing the winners of the 2022 Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing

As participation in library publishing grows, the development of a strong evidence base to inform best practices and demonstrate impact is essential. To encourage research and theoretical work about library publishing services, the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) gives an annual Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing. The award recognizes significant and timely contributions to library publishing theory and practice. 

The LPC Research Committee is delighted to announce that this year’s award recipients are Rebecca Nelson and Becky Thoms, for their article “The practical and the aspirational: Managing the student employee experience in library publishing efforts.” The committee was impressed by the article’s discussion of approaches to managing student work to improve both the experience of students and the quality of their work, and they felt it had applicability to a wide variety of library publishing programs that use both undergraduate and graduate student employees.

Nelson, R. & Thoms, B. (2021) “The practical and the aspirational: Managing the student employee experience in library publishing efforts”, Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication. 9(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.12913 

The authors will be formally recognized at the Library Publishing Forum and will receive a cash award of $250 and travel support for one author to attend the Forum (one complimentary registration and a $500 travel stipend).

Please join us in congratulating Rebecca Nelson and Becky Thoms, as well as all the other nominees on their valuable contributions to our shared body of knowledge.