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.

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February 6, 2023

The Benefits of Strategic Affiliation with the Library Publishing Coalition: Insights from the Library Publishing Group of the Library Association of Ireland

By Nancy Adams

A blog post from representatives of LPC Strategic Affiliate the Library Association of Ireland; written by

Jane Buggle
Convenor, Library Publishing Group of the Library Association of Ireland

Marie O’ Neill
Committee Member, Library Publishing Group of the Library Association of Ireland

Library Publishing initiatives are expanding rapidly in Ireland. This expansion is encouraged and supported by a dedicated Library Publishing Group (LPG), established under the auspices of the Library Association of Ireland (LAI) in 2020 with the support of the LAI leadership. The objectives of the LPG¹ include:

To raise awareness of the library publishing movement in Ireland
To disseminate information on the latest developments within the library publishing sector nationally and internationally
To mentor new library publishers and to showcase library publishing initiatives and successes in Ireland
To forge links between open access and institutional publishing presses and libraries
To liaise with relevant agencies such as the Library Publishing Coalition, the IFLA Library Publishing Special Interest Group (SIG), PKP, and other key organisations
To promote and teach the Library Publishing Curriculum to Group members and across the library sector

In 2021, The LPG became affiliated to the Library Publishing Coalition. This blog post will discuss the benefits of this affiliation for the library publishing movement in Ireland.

(more…)

1
Library Association of Ireland (2022), Library Publishing Group. Available at: https://www.libraryassociation.ie/library-publishing-group/ (Accessed 12th December 2022)

January 30, 2023

LPC Documentation Month returns this February!

By Nancy Adams

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 for a variety of factors. This February the LPC Professional Development Committee is excited to announce the return of Documentation Month to kick-start our community documentation chops. For the third year, Documentation Month will provide resources, community support, and strategies to encourage library publishers to undertake this important work. Follow along in the LPC-l mailing list for event details and login information to our events.

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

How can you participate in Documentation Month?

For everyone:

Organize a local documentation day (see the toolkit for instructions). Share a photo or agenda from your event on Twitter with the #LPCDocMonth hashtag & join in on the fun.
Create some documentation! The purpose of this event is to support LPC members in creating documentation about your publishing program, so if it inspires you to create even one piece of documentation, you’re participating!

For LPC members:

Attend this month’s upcoming community calls and workshops

- Friday, February 3rd ; 3-4pm – Documentation Study Hall #1 w/ Corinne Guimont and Cheryl Ball.
- February 10th, 1-2pm Eastern, Documentation Month kick-off community call
- Friday, February 10th; 3-4pm – Documentation Study Hall #2 w/ Corinne Guimont and Cheryl Ball.
- Friday, February 17th; 3-4pm – Documentation Study Hall #3 w/ Corinne Guimont and Cheryl Ball.
- Friday, February 24th; 3-4pm – Documentation Study Hall #4 w/ Corinne Guimont and Cheryl Ball.
- February 27th, 1pm-4pm Eastern, Zoom drop-in Documentation Day sprint

Scheduling information and call-in details for these events will be sent out each week to the listserv. Please feel free to share widely within your institution, but these calls are open to LPC member libraries only, so please do not share outside the community.

Happy documenting!

From the Documentation Month planning group on behalf of the LPC Professional Development Committee

January 25, 2023

2023 Library Publishing Directory: Call for Entries

By Nancy Adams

The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) and the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Library Publishing Special Interest Group (LibPub SIG) are partnering to survey the landscape of scholarly publishing in libraries across the globe. LPC is seeking submissions for its 10th annual Library Publishing Directory. IFLA’s Library Publishing Map of the World is a first-of-its-kind online database of global library publishing initiatives. Together, we invite you to share information about your library’s scholarly publishing activities.

Libraries who fill out only the brief profile will be included only in the IFLA map. Libraries that wish to be included in the print, PDF, and EPUB Library Publishing Directory can go on to fill out the full questionnaire (20-30 minutes to complete). Get started at https://librarypublishing.org/lpdq-2023/. (If your library has had an entry in a previous edition of the Directory, you should have received an email with instructions on how to update your information. Email contact@librarypublishing.org with questions.)

Responses in English are strongly preferred; we may not be able to include responses in other languages.

The call for entries will close on Friday, February 10, 2023.

Note: The call for entries has been extended to Friday, February 24, 2023.

Thank you for joining in this great international collaboration. We look forward to your participation.

The Library Publishing Coalition Directory Committee

Karen Stoll Farrell, Indiana University – Bloomington, Chair
Jody Bailey, Emory University
Briana Knox, University of North Texas
Ryan Otto, Kansas State University
Ted Polley, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis
Nicholas Wojcik, University of Oklahoma

IFLA Special Interest Group on Library Publishing Subcommittee

Grace Liu (Canada)
Ann Okerson (USA)

About the Library Publishing Directory

The Library Publishing Directory is an important tool for libraries wishing to learn about this emerging field, connect with their peers, and align their practices with those of the broader community. Last year’s edition featured over 150 libraries in almost a dozen nations.

The Directory is published openly on the web in PDF, EPUB, and as an online database. It includes contact information, descriptions, and other key facts about each library’s publishing services. A print version of the Directory is also produced. The 2023 edition will be published in mid-summer 2023.

About the IFLA Library Publishing SIG Library Publishing Map of the World

The goal of the LibPub SIG map is to document more fully the publishing activities to which IFLA’s members contribute, in order to facilitate a global community of interest and support. While in its first year the focus was on scholarly/academic library publishers, now the SIG is opening submissions to all types of library publishers: academic, public, and others.

Submissions will appear in the IFLA Library Publishing Map of the World, easily accessible by IFLA members and friends, including LPC members.

Submit an entry

January 23, 2023

Transitions: Workflows and Deadlines: Making the Transition from Corporate to Academic Library Publishing

By Nancy Adams

Transitions is an occasional series where community members reflect on the things they have learned while moving from one institution to another or one role to another.

By Corinne Guimont, Digital Scholarship Coordinator, Virginia Tech Libraries

I have been a part of the Library Publishing community for nearly six years, all of them at Virginia Tech. Before then, however, I spent several years in corporate publishing and archives, during which time I learned a number of valuable lessons that I continue to apply to this day. In this blog, I will talk about some of those lessons and how I believe they have helped me in my career at Virginia Tech.

I received my MIS from the University of Michigan in 2015. After this I took a contract job working on eTextbooks to stay close to family in Michigan. I enjoyed the work and took to it fast. It combined the tech skills I learned in college and graduate school with project management experience I had gained from working on grant projects as a graduate student. I worked on a variety of books and subject matters and was able to see a project through in a short period of time. And yet, despite the positives of this work, I continued to have the nagging feeling that I had earned a masters degree to work in libraries and archives, so after six months in the job, when an opportunity arose to work in corporate archives, I took it.

I spent the next year and a half working on a variety of projects for different corporations, mainly looking at metadata and cataloging. While this work brought me closer to my plan of working in metadata and digital preservation in an academic library, it was still not quite there. Because a number of the projects were private, I could not share my work. I had even signed some non-disclosure agreements. As a result, I began searching for new positions, this time focusing solely on academic institutions. The opportunity at Virginia Tech looked like the perfect fit, it was in an academic library where I could incorporate the publishing and project management skills I had gained since completing my MIS. As an unexpected twist, the position included digital humanities work, which was the focus of my BA.

I had to make a number of cultural adjustments as I transitioned to my position at Virginia Tech. These ranged from simple things like struggling to find a parking place on a college campus to recognizing that taking time during the work day to learn things was in fact “work.” More significantly, however, I soon realized that my new profession—library publishing—was still relatively new to the scene (LPC was founded in 2014), and this had definite implications for how I carried out my work. I’ll offer just two examples.

Workflows. In my previous jobs I was given endless workflows and documentation outlining exactly what I needed to do every step of the way. When I was unsure of the next step, I consulted this documentation and moved forward immediately. My new situation was different. Because Virginia Tech was in the early stage of building its publishing program, and my position itself was new, we had little documentation. While I was able to pull from some resources in the library publishing community, this was all fairly new as well, which meant that we found ourselves having to invent our workflows as we went. On the upside, I found that I had to learn every aspect of a project and had more autonomy over my work. On the downside, it took me longer to get acquainted with my work and to train others.

Deadlines. In my corporate experience a deadline was a deadline, and if I did not meet it, I needed a really good reason as to why. Sales goals might be at stake. In my new role, deadlines were flexible, people were flexible, things were negotiable. I have found pros and cons to this shift. The pros being less stress, more time to work through issues, and more time to experiment with projects and platforms, leading to more creative outcomes in the work we produce. The cons being that a project can go on forever, or at least seem like it. In both cases, the pros significantly outweigh the cons, for me at least, and have helped me grow in my understanding of publishing practices.

I have now been at Virginia Tech for nearly six years. During this time I’ve worked on a variety of projects including open textbooks (e.g. Introduction to Biosystems Engineering) and complex web-based DH projects (e.g. The American Soldier in WWII), and still I find that my corporate experience affects how I approach each and every project. For example, when exploring options for tools and platforms to employ, I look at needs for documentation and how a particular technology might fit into our workflows. Also, when working on a complex DH project that might take years to complete, I try to keep one eye focused on the end product and the other on discrete milestones that can be met throughout the process, such as publishing a dataset or submitting a grant. I’m convinced that my previous experience has contributed to this.

Ultimately, I have found more growth and fulfillment working in the library publishing world than I would have ever found in corporate publishing and archives but feel I have also greatly benefited from that time in my career. Generally speaking, I have found that library publishing allows for more change and experimentation in publications which aligns with my roots in digital humanities and makes it possible for us to build upon our work. Introducing some workflows, however, can make the publication process more predictable which helps for planning and budgeting purposes. As I grow in my career, I’m looking forward to seeing how the library publishing field continues to develop, as I have already seen tremendous growth thanks to initiatives like dedicated documentation month to encourage programs to generate their own documentation.

January 4, 2023

Angel Peterson receives the 2022 LPC Award for Exemplary Service

By Nancy Adams

On behalf of the LPC Board, we are delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2022 LPC Award for Exemplary Service is Angel Peterson, Open Publishing Production Specialist at Penn State University. The Award recognizes substantial contributions by an LPC community member to advancing the mission, vision, and values of the Library Publishing Coalition.

Angel was nominated by multiple community members for her service on the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee where she serves as a member and rotating chair. During her time on the committee, she has made substantial contributions to LPC’s Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice and the revised LPC Code of Conduct, both important community documents. Further, this award recognizes how Angel went above and beyond by taking on extra responsibilities when necessary and even extending her term on the committee after other members had to resign their positions.

A statement from Angel:

“Thank you so much for this recognition! I am very honored. This award means so much to me because Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion is very important in all aspects of my life. The D&I task force and eventually the DEI Committee was my first venture into the LPC as I only started my library publishing career in 2020 and I have loved every moment of it. Contributing positively to the advancement to DEI in the LPC Community with the Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice and working on updating the Code of Conduct has been rewarding. It means a lot! Thank you.”

Angel will receive a complimentary registration to this year’s Library Publishing Forum and a $250 honorarium. She will also be recognized at the Forum.

Please join us in congratulating Angel.

On behalf of the LPC Board,
Emma Molls, President
Willa Tavernier, Secretary
Ally Laird, Treasurer
Perry Collins
Justin Gonder
Amanda Hurford
Jessica Kirschner
Elizabeth Scarpelli
Janet Swatscheno
Christine Fruin, Past President

December 14, 2022

LPC Peer Mentorship Program Update and 2023 Signups

By Mary Beth Weber

The 2022 cycle of the LPC Peer Mentorship Program is wrapping up, and the Professional Development Committee is preparing for the 2023 cycle. Details of the program and how to participate follow.

Looking Back: The 2022 Cohort

The LPC Peer Mentorship Program was launched in 2019. In the following year, the program began to focus on peer-mentor relationships, which continued into the 2021 iteration. In 2021 and 2022, a series of discussion prompts were sent to pairs monthly. These prompts are optional, and touch on topics such as dealing with burnout, strategies to conduct outreach for one’s library publishing program, and challenges of academic scholarship and how to overcome them.

The 2022 goals of the Peer Mentorship Program were:

Primary: To enrich participants’ experiences with the LPC and build meaningful relationships between peers.
Secondary: To further the development of library publishing through a professional, semi-structured mentorship program.

In early 2022, participants were matched, and then coordinated meeting times according to their schedules. Pairs engaged in monthly calls and email exchanges. The committee provided monthly discussion prompts to guide possible discussion between pairs, though pairs were free to let their conversation take whatever direction appealed to them. Midway through the program year, mentors received a survey to assess the program and to provide feedback, which the committee uses to refine and improve the program. We received five responses, and some valuable insights into how the program was working for participants. Most respondents felt supported and enjoyed their time together .

Interested in being a peer mentor and sharing your expertise? The LPC Professional Development Committee will offer the peer mentorship program again in 2023. Applications are now available! We hope you’ll join us as part of the 2023 LPC Peer Mentorship Program!

The 2023 Cohort: Timeline and Invitation to Apply

Apply for the 2023 Peer Mentorship Program now! We’ll be accepting applications through January 9, 2023.
You’ll be matched with your Peer Mentor by early February.
Participants will receive instructions and orientation materials in February.
Optional meet-up at the Library Publishing Forum (May 8-11, 2023).
(The LPC Professional Development Committee will host a meet-up for participants. Stay tuned for more information!)

Other activities for program participants include:

Special mentorship calls hosted by the Professional Development Committee (topics and schedule TBD)
Mid-year (6-months) survey
Post-cycle (12-months) cohort evaluation with exit survey

Apply for the 2023 Peer Mentorship Program, or contact the Professional Development Committee with any questions.

LPC Professional Development Committee

2020-2023 Erin Jerome, University of Massachusetts (2022-2023 co-chair)
2020-2023 Liz Hamilton, Northwestern University (2022-2023 co-chair)
2021-2023 Matthew Hunter, Florida State University
2022-2024 Emily Stenberg, Washington University in St. Louis
2022-2024 Matthew Vaughn, Indiana University Bloomington
2020-2023 Mary Beth Weber, Rutgers University

December 6, 2022

LPC Quarterly Update

By Nancy Adams

The latest Quarterly Update has been published! It’s chock full of information, including

Community News

LPC’s new community planning efforts
Awards open for submissions: Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing AND Publishing Practice
2021-2022 Annual Report
and more!

Library Publishing Forum: CFP now open!

Research: Workflows Project wraps up

Read the Quarterly Update

November 14, 2022

2023 Library Publishing Forum Call For Proposals

By Nancy Adams

The Library Publishing 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 sponsored by the Library Publishing Coalition, but you do not need to be a member of the LPC to attend.

The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) is now accepting proposals for the 2023 Library Publishing Forum! We are thrilled to offer a virtual forum during the week of May 8 to May 11. Proposals may address any topic of interest to the library publishing community. The proposal deadline is December 16, 2022.

Proposal submissions are welcome from LPC members and nonmembers, including library employees, university press employees, scholars, students, and other scholarly communication and publishing professionals. Again, we welcome proposals from first-time presenters and representatives of small and emerging publishing programs.

We are committed to expanding the diversity of perspectives we hear from at the Library Publishing Forum. Working towards some of the “Continuing Initiatives” from the LPC Roadmap for Anti-Racist Practice, we ask all proposals to explicitly address how they are inclusive of multiple perspectives, address DEI, or incorporate anti-racist and anti-oppressive approaches. Presentations about specific communities should include members of that community in their speaker list, and for sessions with multiple speakers, we seek to avoid all-white and all-male panels. Everyone submitting a presentation will also have an opportunity to complete a brief, anonymous demographic survey so we can better understand who is submitting proposals to LPF.

Learn more and submit a proposal.

LPC Program Committee

Jason Boczar, University of South Florida (2022-2023 chair)
Elizabeth Bedford, University of Washington
Emily Carlisle-Johnston, University of Western Ontario
Jennifer Coronado, Butler University (PALNI)
Anna Liss Jacobsen, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Lucinda Johnston, University of Alberta
Melanie Schlosser, Library Publishing Coalition

November 2, 2022

Nominations being accepted for the 2023 Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing

By Nancy Adams

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, theory, and innovative practice in library publishing (for a definition of “library publishing”, see the LPC website home page), the Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to support the Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Library Publishing, which recognizes the best publication from the preceding calendar year. The LPC Research Committee will evaluate submissions and select a recipient for the award.

Winners will be officially announced in the spring and be recognized at the annual Library Publishing Forum. The award recipient(s) will receive a cash award of $250 and complimentary registration to the 2023 Library Publishing Forum. The awardee(s) will also have an opportunity to share their work with the community via a post to the LPC blog.

Nominations may be made either by the author(s) or by any employee of a LPC member institution. Nominated author(s) do not need to be affiliated with a LPC member institution. The deadline for nominations is January 16, 2023.

Learn more and nominate

November 2, 2022

Apply for a 2023 Publishing Practice Award

By Nancy Adams

The Library Publishing Coalition is excited to announce that we are now accepting applications for the third annual Publishing Practice Awards. These awards are designed to recognize and raise awareness of effective and sustainable library publishing practices.

The Publishing Practice Awards will highlight library publishing programs that implement concepts advanced in the LPC’s An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing and/or in the LPC’s Values statement. While a representative publication must be submitted, the focus of these awards is not on publication content but on the process of publishing the piece. This year, award categories are:

Accessibility
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Privacy
Innovation

An award will be available in each category, though all categories may not be awarded each year. Each publisher may submit only one application per year, in a single category. Publishers applying for an award do not need to be affiliated with an LPC member institution.

Award recipients will be publicly recognized by the Library Publishing Coalition and will receive a digital seal that they may place on their website and on the representative publication. Awardees will also share their publication process with the wider library publishing community through a post on the LPC blog, adapted from the essay accompanying their application.

The deadline for application is January 16, 2023.

Learn more and apply