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.
In celebration of Documentation Month, I wanted to share a brief workflow diagram tool evaluation that I created early in the LPW project. There are an overwhelming number of tools and platforms for creating workflow diagrams, and I relied on a number of lists and reviews to find some candidates that could potentially work.
While there is a lot to like about the open source diagrams.net, we ultimately decided to use Lucidchart for our project for a few reasons. Lucidchart, along with many of the other freemium and premium tools, has slightly better aesthetics, more templates, and more built-in features to add non-diagram components. Educopia also had a subscription to Lucidchart and experience with the platform on OSSArcFlow, which made it compelling for us to use, while its freemium model also means that libraries can use our templates and shape libraries to create up to three of their own diagrams.
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.
For the last few years LPC has maintained a list of service providers on our website. Although it was very lightly curated and intended to serve as a starting point for research, we felt it was worth maintaining because of the lack of any similar resources.
We have been excited to see the growing interest in researching, tracking, cataloging, and assessing scholarly communications infrastructure. Now that several of these efforts have come to fruition, we feel it’s time to retire our basic list and direct our efforts towards supporting these more comprehensive resources. Because January is when we normally update the list, this is a good moment to sunset the service providers list and direct library publishers to these other resources.
In particular, we would like to recommend the recently-announced Scholarly Communication Technology Catalogue (SComCat), developed by the Coalition of Open Access Repositories (COAR) as part of the Educopia-hosted Next Generation Library Publishing (NGLP) project. NGLP is also doing transformative work on aligning scholcomm infrastructure with academic and values that will add much to this conversation over the next couple of years. Further, we encourage library publishers to follow the Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) initiative, which is the new organizational home of the Census of Scholarly Communication Infrastructure. These efforts have already begun to produce sophisticated tools to support the needs of libraries and other mission-driven publishers, with more in the works.
To avoid broken links, we are retaining the page that the Service Providers List lived on, but replacing the content with a link to this post. We have an archived version of the list for reference, so please feel free to reach out to us at contact@librarypublishing.org if you need it for any reason. We will continue to have a sponsorship program for the Library Publishing Forum that will allow library publishers to connect with service providers.
Documentation: we all know it’s important. It helps to preserve institutional memory, allows future you to get up to speed, and can be a useful resource to share with colleagues. Yet this important activity is often neglected. Why? Well, one hurdle is simply not knowing where to begin. Another, because we are faced with perennial deadlines and constant day-to-day tasks, is that it too often falls to the bottom of our to-do lists. To encourage library publishers to undertake this important work, the Library Publishing Coalition has designated February as Documentation Month!
Documentation toolkit
To support the community in creating documentation, members of LPC’s Professional Development Committee have created a Library Publishing Documentation Toolkit. It consists of four sections: Getting started with documentation, Planning a documentation day, Suggested documentation projects to tackle, and Sharing documentation beyond your institution. The toolkit is available in PDF and as a Google Doc.
Ways to participate in Documentation Month
For everyone:
Create some documentation! The purpose of this event is to support library publishers in creating documentation about their publishing programs, so if it inspires you to create even one piece of documentation, you’re participating!
Follow along on Twitter using the #LPCDocMonth hashtag. We will share a weekly discussion prompt to get you thinking about documentation.
Organize a local documentation day (see the toolkit for instructions). Share a photo or agenda from your event on Twitter with the #LPCDocMonth hashtag & receive a free registration for the virtual 2021 Library Publishing Forum (limit one per library).
For LPC members:
Attend the weekly community calls! In addition to opening and closing calls, we will have an update on the Library Publishing Workflows project and a policy-writing community call.
Participate in an accountability group. We can pair you up with a buddy or two to support each other throughout the month.
More information on how to participate in the member-only events will be shared via the member listserv.
Happy documenting!
From the Documentation Month planning group (Allison Brown, Erin Jerome, Emily Stenberg, and Melanie Schlosser) on behalf of the LPC Professional Development Committee
As much as we love the searchable online interface for the Library Publishing Directory, it doesn’t include the introduction found in the print, PDF, and EPUB versions. Each year, the Directory‘s introduction includes a ‘state of the field’ based on that year’s data that highlights trends and new developments in library publishing as reported by the programs that contribute their information. To make it easier to find, we are republishing that portion of the introduction here. This year’s introduction was written by Janet Swatscheno, Ellen Dubinsky, Perry Collins, Ian Harmon, and Laura Miller with an assist from me. Enjoy!
THE 2021 LIBRARY PUBLISHING LANDSCAPE
The yearly Library Publishing Directory provides insights into library publishing activities, allowing us to consider how the field has evolved, prevalent current practice, and possible future directions. While we discuss trends below—often in comparison to prior years—please note that the number and composition of the dataset of Directory listings changes yearly; thus a strict comparison year to year is not possible. Further complicating any analysis of the data are changes to the survey itself. We do try to update the survey as changes in technology and publishing platforms emerge. The Directory Committee routinely evaluates the data model to ensure that it best reflects the library publishing field. Many of the survey questions remain the same year to year and new questions are periodically added. This year’s collaboration with LibPub SIG and the resultant focus on the international community of library publishers prompted the addition of a question about languages used in publications and added additional types of library publisher (public library and consortium).
We also point out that the survey was distributed in August 2020, over 6 months after the COVID-19 outbreak and the ensuing disruption of “business as usual.” We did not attempt to incorporate any questions related to the pandemic and how or if it has affected library publishing activities. This is an area that should be considered in future editions of the Directory.
The Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to announce the publication of the 2021 Library Publishing Directory! This year’s print, PDF, and EPUB versions of the Library Publishing Directory highlight the publishing activities of 136 academic and research libraries. The openly available and searchable online directory includes 151 entries.
The Directory illustrates the many ways in which libraries are actively transforming and advancing scholarly communications in partnership with scholars, students, university presses, and others. Each year, the Directory’s introduction presents a ‘state of the field’ based on that year’s data, which we also publish in a related blog posting.
The 2021 Directory reflects a pilot partnership with the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Library Publishing Special Interest Group (LibPub SIG), and includes international entries, translated by IFLA LibPub SIG members. Libraries who chose to complete the full survey appear in the print, PDF, and EPUB versions of the Directory. All entries appear in the online version. IFLA’s LibPub SIG will also create a first-of-its-kind online database of global library publishing initiatives.
Publication of the 2021 Directory was overseen by the LPC’s Directory Committee:
The Library Publishing Coalition Directory Committee
Janet Swatscheno, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chair Perry Collins, University of Florida Ellen Dubinsky, University of Arizona Ian Harmon, West Virginia University Laura Miller, Florida State University
IFLA Special Interest Group on Library Publishing Subcommittee
It’s time to reflect on the 2020 Peer Mentorship Program and to kick off participation for 2021! The 2020 cohort was special because we tried something new: Rather than having specific mentor and mentee roles, the focus was on peer mentor relationships. Keep reading to learn about how it went, and how to get involved with the next cohort.
The 2020 Cohort – Peer Mentorship in an Unprecedented Time
In 2020, the Library Publishing Coalition Professional Development Committee continued the LPC Peer Mentorship Program after a successful pilot launch in 2019. The goals for the Mentorship Program are twofold: to orient participants to the LPC, encouraging them to build relationships and get involved; and to facilitate professional mentorship around library publishing.
Activities of the program included a virtual getting-to-know you meeting to kick things off, continuing with monthly calls and email correspondence between peer pairs. Participants were provided with a list of suggested questions to help start their mentor/mentee relationship and were then encouraged to continue the discussions in whatever direction was most desirable for the partners.
Unfortunately, the pandemic prevented pairs from meeting in person at the Library Publishing Forum as planned, but an opportunity for a casual meetup in the form of the Peer Mentorship-around took place at the first-ever virtual Forum. During the “-around” participants had a chance to reflect on the Mentorship Program and chat about unexpected aspects of shifting to an online environment for, well, everything. We regretted not getting to see participants in person, but it was nice to check in while enjoying our favorite end-of-day beverage.
After the Forum, mentors were encouraged to fill out a mid-year survey to assess the program and provide feedback. We got some great insights on how to make the program even better for future cohorts. More on that below.
On behalf of the LPC Board, we are delighted to announce that the recipients of the 2020 LPC Award for Exemplary Service are Laureen Boutang, Publishing Services Coordinator at the University of Minnesota, and Willa Tavernier, Open Scholarship Resident and Visiting Assistant Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington. The Award recognizes substantial contributions by an LPC community member to advancing the mission, vision, and values of the Library Publishing Coalition. The Board determined that two awards were warranted this year in recognition of the enormous contributions made and leadership demonstrated by these nominees in two programmatic areas that emerged as critical for LPC in 2020.
Laureen Boutang
Laureen Boutang was nominated for the award for her steady leadership of the Program Committee and the success of quickly transitioning the 2020 Forum from an in-person to a virtual form in only 6 weeks. In 2018, Laureen also served as a dedicated and efficient host liaison for the 2018 Forum in Minneapolis. Now that her term on the Program Committee has ended, Laureen has continued her dedication to service to LPC by volunteering to chair the new Publishing Practice Award Committee, which is gearing up to launch its first call for applications. Laureen shares: “Serving as a part of the LPC community inspires me and motivates me every day. I’m so pleased to receive this Award because it means that my contributions have had a similar, positive impact on those around me.”
Willa Tavernier
Willa Tavernier was nominated for her commitment to and efforts for the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. Her organizing and collaborating to prepare LPC’s Anti-Racist statement and subsequent Anti-Racism Community Call were essential to LPC’s acknowledgment of its responsibility to the current cultural moment. As stated by one of Willa’s nominators, “Willa’s advocacy efforts have improved awareness among LPC members (mostly white people) of our role in upholding white supremacy, holding our feet to the fire, and helping us face uncomfortable truths while also guiding us to think and talk about concrete actions we can take to begin to fix these problems.”
On receiving word of receipt of this year’s service award, Willa shares: “I am honored to be recognized by my peers and humbled that it was in large part to working with the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force. As an immigrant from a small island, coming from an entirely different and very homogenous background and needing to find my way in U.S. society and institutions, this award is especially meaningful to me. I think we can all commit to doing the work necessary to see things from the perspectives of underserved/underrepresented groups. I advocate for the Library Publishing Coalition to make anti-racism, equity, and inclusion foundational principles of its work, and to spearhead transformational change in library publishing. I believe that the many unique and talented people in our community can make that happen.”
Laureen and Willa will each receive a complimentary registration to this year’s Library Publishing Forum and a $50 gift card. They will also be recognized at the Forum.
Please join us in congratulating Laureen and Willa.
On behalf of the LPC Board,
Jody Bailey, President Christine Fruin, President-Elect Scott Warren, Treasurer Jessica Kirschner, Secretary Karen Bjork Vanessa Gabler Sarah Hare Ally Laird Emma Molls Melanie Schlosser, ex officio
The Fellows Journal is a forum for the current Library Publishing Coalition fellows to share their experiences and raise topics for discussion within the community. Learn more about the Fellowship Program.
Introduction
Anita Walz, Assistant Director of Open Education and Scholarly Communication Librarian, Virginia Tech
Talea: Anita, you and I started having regular conversations as part of the mentorship that LPC organized for fellows. You’ve been
working for some time now on publishing open textbooks at Virginia Tech but we talked early on about the evolution you all have had when it comes to the accessibility of your OER. I thought it would be interesting to talk through some of the changes you have made, especially when it comes to making STEM textbooks accessible to students.
I’ll preface this by saying that accessibility has proven to be an especially sticky issue for STEM and OER. Complex STEM notation doesn’t translate well to screen readers unless it’s appropriately coded. When publishing workflows involve conversions between file types, all of this becomes still more complex—and PDFs, which are common in the OER publishing ecosystem, are notorious for dealing poorly with STEM notation. The Australian Disability Clearinghouse and Rebus Community discuss some of these issues for anyone who would like to read more.
The Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to announce the publication of the 
