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.

December 5, 2019

LPC Mentorship Program: Looking back at year one, getting involved for year two!

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It’s time to reflect on the pilot year of our new Mentorship Program and to kick off participation for year two! We’ve made some exciting changes for year two – keep reading to learn about our new focus for 2020 (peer mentorship) and how to get involved.

The pilot year: How did it go? (Spoiler: It was great.)

This year, the Library Publishing Coalition Professional Development Committee introduced a new member opportunity: The LPC Mentorship Program. The goals of the program were two-fold. First, the program aimed to orient mentees to the LPC, to enrich mentors’ experiences with the LPC, and build relationships between the two. A secondary goal of the program was to further the development of library publishing through a professional, semi-structured mentorship program. 

Activities of the program included a virtual getting-to-know you meeting to kick things off, continuing with monthly calls and email correspondence between mentors and mentees.  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. An in-person meetup also took place at the Library Publishing Forum in Vancouver to provide an opportunity to further strengthen relationships.  

The meeting at the Forum took place over the lunch hour on the second day, and proved to be quite fruitful! Not all of the mentor/mentee pairs could attend, but we spent the majority of the time sharing out about our experiences and discussing with other participants about what has worked for them, what they enjoyed most, what suggestions they had for improvement, and networking with others that were participating in the pilot year. After the lunch meeting, all mentors and mentees were sent the list of discussion questions we used at the lunch, and were also encouraged to fill out a mid-year survey to assess the program and provide feedback.

The first cohort is currently wrapping up their participation, and their reception of this program has been positive. Participants of the first pilot year had many good things to share, including the following:

“Things are going well! Really nice to have time and energy dedicated to chatting with a peer who does not have the same institutional context as me.” – Emma Molls, University of Minnesota

“I really enjoyed serving as a mentor during this inaugural year of the LPC Mentorship Program. Benefits included expanding my professional network through forming a strong relationship with my mentee, broadening my expertise through learning about library publishing at his university, and the opportunity to contribute back to this wonderful community. All of these positives resulted from a minimal time commitment of about one hour per month to meet with my mentee, so future program participants can be confident that they will receive an outstanding payoff with nominal effort.” — Jody Bailey, Emory University

“The LPC Mentorship program did a fantastic job pairing me with the best mentor for my individual professional development goals. My mentor and I connected from the get-go and I learned so much from her experiences and advice, and made a real friend. Given how thoughtful and personalized the process, I think that this program is an essential tool in an early-career library publishing professional’s toolkit as they start out!” — Amanda Wentworth, SUNY OER Services

“Being quite new to library publishing, the LPC mentorship program was a fantastic way to get a personal & friendly introduction to the world of library publishing outside of my own institution. It was incredibly helpful to compare & contrast how location, institutional history, funding, and size of operation affects our daily workflows. My mentor was very generous and I got access to some excellent resources to share with my team!” — Emily Zheng, University of Alberta

Interested in being a peer mentor in 2020?

In response to a successful pilot year, the LPC Professional Development Committee will be offering the program again, with one key change. The focus for the 2020 year will be on peer mentor relationships, rather than having specific mentor and mentee roles. We hope to welcome many more members into the 2020 LPC Peer Mentorship Program!

Timeline for 2020 Cycle:

  • Applications out now! (Don’t worry, we’ll remind you again about applications in early January! We’ll be accepting applications through Jan. 17.)
  • Matching: We’ll match you with your new Peer Mentor by Jan. 24.
  • Orientation: Participants will receive a packet of information and resources and will arrange their first meeting with their peer mentor in February. 
  • Library Publishing Forum: May 4-6, Worcester, Massachusetts 
    • The LPC Professional Development Committee will host a lunch or meet-up for participants.
  • More throughout your time in the program!
    • Check-in emails (1 month, 3 months)
    • A virtual discussion group (mid-way)
    • A Mid-year Check-in (6 months) with survey
    • Complete 12-month post-cycle/cohort evaluation with exit survey

Apply for the 2020 LPC Peer Mentor Program now!

Fellows Journal. Logo for the Library Publishing Coalition. Background image features bokeh lights in blues and greens.
December 4, 2019

Introducing A.J. Boston, 2019-21 LPC Fellow: Contingent upon serendipity

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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. 

(Image credit: See note below)

 

It is an honor to have been named in the second cohort of Library Publishing Coalition Fellows. I thank the community and its leadership for welcoming me, and providing structure and support. In this blogpost, I will introduce myself, my history, and my professional interests.

***

Best Predictor of Future Behavior

Our campus held a celebration of first-generation students a few weeks ago. A colleague on his way there stopped by and asked if I was first gen. I replied that I wasn’t. There is a bit of further nuance to that, which feels appropriate for me to reflect upon here. No, both of my parents attended college, and in fact both held master’s degrees. It was an incredible privilege to grow up in a home where the idea of higher education was not shrouded in mystique, and I don’t know that I ever independently questioned how tuition would be paid for. I suppose it came up, but never in a way that actually made me feel any real concern. Again, just an incredible privilege.

My upbringing could easily have been much different. I was born in South Korea to extremely young parents, who I recently discovered did not complete high school. When I was put up for adoption, I’ve always assumed the decision must have been largely related to financial concerns. The records show I have an older brother, who was not put up for adoption. Had I been firstborn, I would likely be living in Korea now, presumably engaged in some sort of occupation that would seem foreign to the person I became. Instead, I was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, in a solidly middle-class home, raised by white parents that were firmly married, employed, and socially connected. As I told my work colleague, no, I am not a first-generation college student, at least not technically.

With that part of my story established, let me expose another bit of nuance. Both of my American parents have been wheelchair-bound since childhood. My father, a son of Louisville, caught the poliovirus as a child. His mother had been a nurse who administered doses of the polio vaccine to students in his elementary school. To her regret, she did not vaccinate her son, because of the age cutoff. My mother, a daughter of Cincinnati, had a tumor growth on her spine; the surgeon assigned to her was drunk during the removal operation. My parents met each other at the University of Illinois, which was one of the more handicap-friendly institutions in the region at that time. Perhaps it’s the same for everybody, but it has always felt true for me that who I am today has largely been contingent upon serendipity.

How Quickly We Forget

These are things that rarely cross my mind anymore. I’ve lived in a college town in peaceful, rural Western Kentucky for almost 18 years now. Since 2016, I’ve been employed as a tenure-track scholarly communication librarian and assistant professor. My ethnicity, adoption, and parents’ wheelchairs no longer count among the top ten salient factors of my waking consciousness. Though it takes a painful long time for my family to load in and out of our van, it’s because I have three children who need help buckling in, not two parents who need extra time to strap in. When my wife is asked when she “got” her children, the factual answer is “upon birth” and not some date related to paperwork.

I am spilling guts here because I have realized how I have forgotten these things in recent years. It has been incredibly easy to forget both the privileges I grew up with and those I recently gained. In their use of this LPC platform, past Fellows Charlotte Roh and Reggie Raju have reminded me of my privileges. From what I understand, the work Talea Anderson has planned will do so as well.

My Fellow Fellows

From an external view, my road to scholarly communication was perfectly serene. As Reggie discussed in his introductory blog, he was born the son of indentured labourers, transplanted from India to apartheid-era South Africa. While I put in work to get where I am personally and professionally, the situational challenges I faced were a couple orders of magnitude simpler than had I not been the second born to my family in Korea.

At the 2019 Fellows Forum, Charlotte Roh live-streamed her presentation from home. Roh aptly concluded her talk on personal and professional intersections by revealing her (beautiful) newborn baby under her care. At times, I have wondered how much more productive my research output could be without the sleep deficits that accompany co-raising my three young children. That’s a pretty crude thought for me to have, considering the overall health of our family and the herculean efforts my wife puts in as a mother. In truth, I wouldn’t have a career at all without my immediate and extended familial support networks.

As I’ve become acquainted with Talea, I’ve come to know of her interests in web accessibility. In his twenties, my father served on the public transit board in Louisville, where he had a major impact on accessibility for wheelchaired people in the city. For a decade, I’ve luxuriated in my ability to move freely about in both physical and digital spaces. The intent of Talea’s projects seem to be akin to those of my father’s: advocating independence for those not secured it.

The concerns of Reggie, Charlotte, and Talea are not quite at the forefront of my research agenda. But thanks to them, and the experience afforded to me through this Fellowship, the blips these topics make on my radar are increasingly audible.

(My eldest. Credit: A.J. Boston, 2017.)

 

For Future Research

Let me now return to the ‘introductory’ purpose of this post, and discuss what I hope to bring to the table. The research areas I hope I can help initiate conversation on in the LPC community are open peer-review, open citation data, research assessment reform, and AI/machine learning in research. Open infrastructure and the Latin American publishing model are heavily on my mind as well. I’ve previously written about (and not abandoned) novel methods of introducing students to scholcomm concepts. (I may have a future blogpost in me, critical of my own work, tbh.) Earlier this year, I was wowed by Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s book Generous Thinking, on reconnecting the work of the academy with the community, which has helped inspire my planned future research writing project, centering around methods to make published research not just more accessible, but more comprehensible to public audiences.

It Could All Be Symposium

As part of my Fellowship, I will serve on the Forum Program Committee. At Murray State University, I coordinate two campus-wide student conferences and one statewide conference annually. (I also oversee a student-led journal, and assist with three faculty-led journals.) I’ve come to view conference planning as not dissimilar to managing a journal. As a community, we’re quite familiar with wrongdoing in scholarly publishing. We’ve also grown in our shared public awareness of wrongdoing in scholarly conferences.

Discourse on conferences has become a trending topic, at least in my feeds. Whether it’s been the harm directed toward our Hathcocks, the harm emanating from our Tennants, or the harms we disagree on as harms, it is no longer an option for us to ignore these. How we handle these as conference participants and organizers must be tackled. I am eager to be further conscious of and conversant in these topics, plus many others. To wit: enforcing mic usage at Q&As; making it more of a question than a comment (I’m guilty); slide accessibility; getting the bathroom sitch in order; considerations of alcohol and animal protein in catering; land acknowledgements; and carbon and currency costs of conference travel. I don’t purport to have the answers, but I am coming to learn that asking the questions is a healthy and vital practice.

***

Thank you for reading.

Image Credit: Suzy Hazelwood, 2018.

December 3, 2019

Jessica Kirschner receives the 2019 LPC Award for Exemplary Service

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On behalf of the LPC Board, we are delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2019 LPC Award for Exemplary Service is Jessica Kirshner, Open Educational Resources Librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University. The Award recognizes substantial contributions by an LPC community member to advancing the mission, vision, and values of the Library Publishing Coalition. Jessica served as the chair of the Directory Task Force during the 2018-19 program year, and is currently serving as the chair of the Directory Committee. She was nominated for the award because of her dedication and effective leadership, both in steering the publication of the 2020 Directory and in revising the Directory’s data model for the future. This award recognizes her unique contributions to the community. 

A statement from Jessica:

“It’s an honor to be recognized with this year’s LPC Award for Exemplary Service. Having served on and chaired the Directory Committee/Task Force, I’ve had the opportunity to work with great colleagues from the library publishing community to review the Directory’s current data model. This work will ensure that the information we collect—and the process we use to collect it—serves the needs of both LPC members and the library publishing community at large. I look forward to the release of the 2020 Directory, as well as the exciting partnership with IFLA through which we will share information on library publishing programs on an even larger scale.”

Jessica will receive a complimentary registration to this year’s Library Publishing Forum and a $50 gift card. She will also be recognized at the Forum.

Water with the word reflections in all caps with a horizontal line above and below
November 26, 2019

Society for Scholarly Publishing 41st Annual Meeting, May 30–31, 2019

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In its Strategic Plan for 2018–2023, the Library Publishing Coalition has a core goal of strengthening the community of library publishers. More specifically, objective 2.4 states that we will “build our support for and engagement with the international community of library publishers.” When the LPC Board of Directors started discussing this year what that support and engagement might look like, one of the ideas we landed on was increased attendance at international conferences (or U.S.-based conferences with many international attendees) since, after all, it is difficult to engage with people one does not know, and conferences are some of the best networking opportunities around. Until this point in LPC’s history, LPC Community Facilitator Melanie Schlosser had been attending all conferences where we felt an LPC presence would be beneficial, but with our goal to increase international engagement, a sole individual could not do it all. Therefore, the Board made the decision to begin sending Board members as representatives to select conferences with an international focus and an alignment with library publishing, and I was selected to attend the 41st Annual Meeting of the Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP). The theme this year was “Shaping the New Status Quo: Global Perspectives in Scholarly Publishing,” so it met the goals of the LPC Board members to become more involved in conversations with scholarly publishing stakeholders beyond North America. 

I was excited to attend this conference for several reasons. First, I’m a long-time reader of the Scholarly Kitchen (SSP’s widely read official blog) who has been at times thrilled, frustrated, and downright angered by the views expressed by the SK “chefs” (regular blog contributors). Second, I’ve worked as a librarian for 10 years, focusing on scholarly communications for the past 4 years, so the conversations at SSP are squarely in my wheelhouse. Finally, before obtaining my MLIS, I worked in scholarly publishing for 10 years; therefore, I was looking forward to chatting with folks in that world again.

What I discovered during the conference was surprising on many levels. Here are a few of the things that surprised me most.

Scholarly publishers and librarians working in scholarly communications have many, many common interests. 

In fact, many of the people I met who work in scholarly publishing have the same primary goal as mine: a fully open environment for scholarly communications. Granted, some of these folks work for publishers that are already fully open, such as PLOS, but some do not. What everyone seemed to be focused on, however, was Plan S and how we are all going to get to an open access environment and still be able to keep subscription revenue–reliant businesses afloat. Yes, some of the big guys were there (Wiley, Taylor-Francis, Elsevier, etc.), but many (most?) of the attendees were from small to medium publishers who are just trying to figure out how to survive in a post–Plan S world. 

SSP offers sessions of great interest to anyone working in scholarly communications, no matter their home base.

In the days leading up to the conference, I perused the program and was frankly surprised to see how many sessions were of interest to me. The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) hosted a well-attended premeeting, “Fact or Fiction? OASPA Lifts the Lid on OA Publishing,” and my day started off on the right foot as I got to chat with a colleague working for Annual Reviews, an SSP Fellow from Nigeria, and another attendee from OCLC. The sessions to follow that day (all sponsored) and in the subsequent two days of the actual conference offered a cornucopia of topics; in fact, for almost every concurrent session, I had a really difficult time choosing which session to attend since for most time slots, a choice of six sessions was offered. Also of particular note were the two keynotes: one by Dr. Mariamawit Yeshak, a faculty member in pharmacognosy at Addis Ababa University, focusing on scholarly research and publishing in Africa; and the other by Betsy Beaumon, CEO and founder of Benetech, in which she discussed the role of technology in increasing equity and inclusion for people with disabilities. 

Highlights of the conference included the following:

  • A presentation from John Maxwell, Director, Publishing Studies Program, Simon Fraser University (who also presented at the Library Publishing Forum 2019), on his survey of open-source publishing tools (a full written report is now available);
  • A panel on publishing expansive digital projects such as the Chinese Deathscape (from Stanford University Press) in which panelists discussed the bleeding-edge technology used to produce these projects and burning questions around how they will be preserved; 
  • A fascinating presentation on the progress of the pilot project to flip some Annual Reviews titles to open access in a “subscribe to open” formula in which subscribers are offered a small discount to make the title open—if enough agree, then the title will be open for that year. 
  • A panel discussion on strategies to move humanities publishers to open access with speakers from De Gruyter, Duke University Press, and the California Digital Library, as well as SK Chef (and librarian) Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe—panelists were still grappling with the question but thought that answers will be a mixed bag of transformative agreements (e.g., publish and read), subscribe to open, and platinum models (i.e., free to authors and to readers)—in fact Hinchliffe offered here that library publishing is a small but growing platinum option.

The conversations at SSP are not all about how to maximize profits in journal publishing. 

I confess that I had a somewhat simplistic idea in my head of what scholarly publishers talk about these days, and it all revolved around money and how they could make more of it. What I found instead was a group of thoughtful professionals who are sincerely looking for a way forward into a fully open-access world. Most wholeheartedly agree that open access publishing has many positives; chief among them is increasing readership generally but also expanding access to critical research in parts of the world that currently cannot obtain it. As a scholarly communications librarian, I can certainly relate to this goal. Their desire to keep their businesses afloat may be different from academic librarians’ goals of ensuring that our libraries are perceived as vital to the work of our campuses, but we definitely share a passion for increased access to knowledge for the global community.

Jody Bailey
Head of Scholarly Communications Office, Emory University Libraries
Library Publishing Coalition Board of Directors, President-Elect

 

Library Publishing Forum 2020, May 4-6, Worcester, MA
November 20, 2019

Attending the 2020 Library Publishing Forum? Interested in joining the LPC?

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The Library Publishing Forum has grown significantly over the last few years—both in size and in the communities and institutions that send representatives. It isn’t necessary to be at a Library Publishing Coalition member institution to attend the Forum, but many libraries use attendance as an opportunity to learn more about LPC as they consider joining. 

After two years of successful preconference events with separate registration fees, we are trying out a three-day Forum with a single registration fee. To cover the cost of the third day, we have raised the standard registration rate from $300 to $400. We recognize that this will increase the cost of Forum attendance for some non-member institutions (especially those who didn’t attend the preconference), and wanted to find a way to let them invest that money in continued involvement in the community of library publishers. 

To that end, we have created an LPC membership opportunity for Forum attendees! Any non-LPC-member library that registers an attendee at the standard ($400) rate can apply $200 of their registration fee (the difference between the member and non-member rate) towards a 2020–2021 LPC membership (which runs from July 1, 2020 through June 30, 2021). LPC’s annual membership dues are US$2,000, so new members taking advantage of this opportunity would have already paid $200 of their dues, leaving them with a $1,800 balance. 

Some details: Only libraries and library consortia eligible for membership in LPC can take advantage of this opportunity. The library would need to apply for LPC membership by August 1, 2020, and it would be limited to applying the $200 from one registration (even if they registered multiple attendees at the standard rate). Libraries that wish to take advantage of the two discounted 2020 Forum registrations that come with LPC membership would need to join for the 2019–2020 membership year, as well. 

How to participate: Forum registration will open in January of 2020. To take advantage of the membership opportunity, register for the Forum at the standard rate and then submit a membership application by August 1st. Mention in your application that you would like to participate in the Forum membership opportunity.

About LPC membership: Membership and engagement with the community can be transformative for new and evolving publishing programs. LPC provides access to a large network of expertise in addition to discounted Forum registrations and member-only resources! Learn more about membership. 

November 12, 2019

LPC and IFLA Library Publishing SIG launch a new partnership

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The Library Publishing Coalition was originally founded as a membership organization for North American libraries involved in publishing. After a couple of years, when we had our feet firmly under us, we opened up membership to libraries around the world. Since then, we have welcomed a handful of members from Europe and Australia, and have been thrilled to include them in the community. However, given our small size, lean staffing and infrastructure, and our continued geographical center of gravity in the U.S. (where the staff and the majority of our member libraries can be found), we remain primarily a North American community. 

We are also deeply committed to participating in the growing international community of library publishers. [1] Over the last couple of years, LPC’s Board has carefully considered various strategies for international engagement. In a typically strategic move, the Board has decided to focus our efforts on supporting and participating in the new Library Publishing Special Interest Group (SIG) within the International Federation of Library Associations. Over the next two years, we will be partnering with the new SIG on two projects:

  • The Library Publishing Directory: It is one of the goals of the new SIG to document library publishing activities among IFLA’s global membership. This winter, the SIG will be working with our Directory Committee to create more paths for international libraries to participate in the Directory. 
  • The Library Publishing Curriculum: Another area of focus for the SIG is increasing the availability of professional development for library publishers around the world. Volunteers from from the SIG and from LPC will identify portions of the Library Publishing Curriculum to adapt, package, and/or translate for greater international impact.

To support this partnership, LPC has joined IFLA as a library membership organization and has committed to sending representatives to international library publishing-related events (including the annual IFLA conference and any mid-term meetings organized by the SIG). We have also invited the SIG to appoint an official liaison to our community, who will help ensure regular communication and coordination between our two organizations. We are delighted to welcome former LPC Fellow Reggie Raju as the first IFLA SIG liaison to LPC. Melanie Schlosser will serve as the primary liaison to the SIG from LPC. Interested in supporting any of these efforts? Please reach out to Melanie (melanie@educopia.org) to find out where volunteers are needed. 

We are very excited to have this opportunity to participate in the important work of building the international community of library publishers! 

1. See Objective 2.4 of our 5-year strategic plan: https://librarypublishing.org/about/#strategic-plan

Library Publishing Forum 2020, May 4-6, Worcester, MA
November 4, 2019

Announcing the 2020 LPForum keynote speaker: Claire Redhead

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The LPC Program Committee is pleased to announce that our keynote speaker for the 2020 Library Publishing Forum is Claire Redhead, Executive Director of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA).

Claire RedheadAbout Claire: Claire has an editorial background and 20 years experience of the scholarly publishing industry, beginning with a series of positions in UK publishing houses covering all aspects of academic journal and book publishing. Claire joined the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association in 2012, initially responsible for managing membership and communications for the organisation. Quickly taking the lead to develop and grow OASPA during this time, Claire was appointed Executive Director in 2016. Claire is responsible for overseeing OASPA’s annual conference and program of webinars, works closely with the OASPA board and its members, and sits on a number of industry working groups and committees to represent the views of the open access publishing community. OASPA is an international association with over 140 member organisations that focus on open access publishing or provide supporting services and infrastructure in this space.

The Library Publishing Coalition seeks to collaboratively approach major scholarly communications challenges and implement solutions for the community. OASPA is a strategic affiliate of the LPC in this work, and we welcome the opportunity to learn from Claire about the mission of the association and new policy developments in scholarly publishing and open access. The international perspective and diversity of views represented by OASPA will be critical to our conversations and our goals for the 2020 Forum.

Library Publishing Coalition Quarterly Update
October 31, 2019

LPC Quarterly Update

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Check out our latest Quarterly Update! It includes:

  • Community news
    • Recording and slides from IFLA webinar taught by LPC Board members
    • New LPC Fellows announced: Talea Anderson and AJ Boston
  • Library Publishing Forum
    • Call for proposals
    • Call for scholarship applications
  • Updates from the Library Publishing Workflows project
  • Blog spotlight: What’s our End-Game? A community conversation at the 2019 Library Publishing Forum

Read the Update

Water with the word reflections in all caps with a horizontal line above and below
October 30, 2019

What’s our end-game? A community conversation at the 2019 Library Publishing Forum

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By Kate McCready & Melanie Schlosser

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“It’s one of the strengths of the field that its aspirational reach is grounded by the day-to-day work of publishing, and that its day-to-day activities are clearly linked to such transformative goals. The field’s combination of the two threads, vision and practicality, creates the potential for success.”

***

The Library Publishing Coalition (LPC) Membership Meeting isn’t a typical business meeting. It is held annually at the Library Publishing Forum, but instead of sharing information about the Coalition’s work or conducting organizational business, we gather as a community to discuss timely, relevant topics. All conference attendees—both members and nonmembers—are invited and encouraged to participate, giving voice to different perspectives. 

On May 10, 2019, Forum attendees took advantage of this unique framework to explore a fundamental, and timely, question about the field of library publishing: “What’s our end game?” We explored why we engage in this work. As expected, our deeper dive below the surface of library publishing identified a wide variety of motivations and goals for our work as scholarly publishers and got us thinking about what that means for our organization and for our field.

It was a transformative year for the broader scholarly communications landscape. Individual institutions and consortia made news with collection development negotiations that produced transformative agreements or big deal cancellations (e.g., University of California’s termination of negotiations with Elsevier, and the “read and publish” deal between MIT and the Royal Society of Chemistry). Funders proposed bold requirements in Plan S to make content openly available. Many organizations focused on scholarly communications, such as SPARC, set agendas and spoke out about the need for change. Faculty and campus administrators turned out in record numbers to debate the sustainability of the current scholarly communications model, and the higher ed media was paying attention. Those activities inspired conversations throughout academia and library publishing emerged as a possible (though nascent) alternative to current models. 

Against this backdrop, it felt more important than ever to articulate the motivations for, and ultimate purposes of, our shared work. 

(more…)