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 12, 2023

LPC releases new, 5-year Community Plan

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LPC is excited to announce the publication of our new Community Plan, which will guide our activities from 2024 to 2029. Based on deep engagement with the community over the last year, this brief document centers on four areas of focus:

  • Support community members’ well-being and career longevity in the field of library publishing.
  • Advocate for library publishers and give them the tools to advocate for themselves. 
  • Navigate changes in scholarly output, business models, and infrastructure, through a lens of ethics and collaboration.
  • Continue to develop LPC as an inclusive professional space.

The plan also includes a set of “Principles of Action,” which, used alongside our Vision, Mission, and Values, will help us translate this flexible guidance into concrete action plans as needed.  

Many thanks to our Board for their vision and writing, to LPC’s staff for guiding and supporting the process, to the LPC community for contributing the raw material for the plan, and to Kelly Pendergrast for the design.

Here’s to the next five years of community! 

December 5, 2023

LPC welcomes a new member: William & Mary

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Please join us in welcoming William & Mary as a new member of the Library Publishing Coalition! The voting rep for William and Mary is Rosie Liljenquist.

About William and Mary:

William & Mary is a premier public research university. As one of eight “Public Ivy” institutions and as the second oldest college of higher education in the nation, W&M has a long and proud history of excellence in education, innovation, and research. William & Mary Libraries is excited to venture into more specialized publishing support for faculty/researchers including creating open monographs, hosting journals, supporting digital humanities; self-archiving interdisciplinary reports and gray literature, and more.

November 28, 2023

Ally Laird receives the 2023 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 2023 LPC Award for Exemplary Service is Ally Laird, Open Publishing Program Coordinator for Penn State University Libraries. The Award recognizes substantial contributions by an LPC community member to advancing the mission, vision, and values of the Library Publishing Coalition.

Ally was nominated for her significant contributions as Treasurer of the LPC Board during the previous two program years. During this time LPC made substantial changes to its financial structures and processes. Ally supported the Board and the community throughout this challenging transition with diligent analysis and clear communication and, as mentioned in her nomination, “ the end results – solid financial processes, steady membership, and community goodwill – owe much to her work.”

A statement from Ally:

“I feel extremely humbled and honored to have been awarded LPC’s Award for Exemplary Service this year. It was a true pleasure to serve on LPC’s Board and while the work I did as the Treasurer over the past two years, and last year especially, was challenging, I am thankful for the opportunity to help serve our community. The care, thoughtfulness, and support that my fellow Board members and the community provided during the challenging season of having to rethink our financial model and increase our dues for the first time was so exemplary and made my job much easier than it could have been. It’s a beautiful example of why I love and value this community so much! I have grown significantly through my service as Treasurer, and I’m thankful that I was given the opportunity to help our community navigate through this change and help to position the LPC for continued success and stability for years to come. Thank you!”

Ally will receive a complimentary registration to this year’s Library Publishing Forum and a $500 honorarium. She will also be recognized at the Forum.

Please join us in congratulating Ally!

On behalf of the LPC Board
Amanda Hurford, President
Perry Collins, President-Elect
Sonya Betz, Secretary
Justin Gonder, Treasurer
Harrison Inefuku, DEI Officer
Angel Peterson
Elizabeth Scarpelli
Janet Swatscheno
Emma Molls, Past President

November 13, 2023

November 2023 LPC Update

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The November 2023 Library Publishing Coalition Update has been published! In it you’ll find recent news from the Library Publishing Coalition including

Forum News

  • Call for proposals is open
  • Call for applications for Forum Scholarships are open

Community News

  • Version 2.0 of An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing has been published
  • Celebrating 10 years of the Library Publishing Coalition
  • 2022-2023 Annual Report is now available
  • Much more!

Blog Post Spotlights

  • The first in our new series of consortial publishing profiles: Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library
  • Finding the Right Publishing Platform
  • The state of the field: An excerpt from the 2023 Library Publishing Directory

Read the Update

November 9, 2023

Call for Applications for the 2024 Library Publishing Forum Scholarships

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The Library Publishing Coalition is offering scholarships to offset travel costs for first-time Forum attendees from the United States and Canada, with a focus on individuals who will bring new and diverse perspectives to the community. There are two scholarships available, each of which will cover up to $2,000 USD in travel-related expenses, including airfare, hotel, and meals. Scholarship awardees will have Forum registration fees waived and will be paired with a community mentor to help introduce them to the conference and the community. For awardees from non-member institutions, the award includes guest access to the LPC community for the year following the in-person Forum. This would include access to the listserv and service opportunities, and the opportunity to participate in the peer mentorship program. All recipients will also receive a waived registration to the virtual Forum planned for May 2025. 

Eligibility

This round of the scholarship program will only be open to applicants from the United States and Canada. Applications will be accepted from individuals at both Library Publishing Coalition member and non-member institutions. Anyone who has not attended a previous in-person Library Publishing Forum is eligible to apply. (Anyone who has -only- attended the Library Publishing Forum virtually is encouraged to apply for this scholarship for travel funding to the 2024 in-person Forum.)

Ideal applicants will be new to their librarianship career (first 3–5 years), or new to the field of library publishing. Applicants who identify as members of a group (or groups) underrepresented among library and publishing practitioners will be given preference. These groups include – but are not limited to – members of a racial/ethnic minority, first-generation college graduates, immigrants and refugees, persons with a disability, and LGBTQIA+ individuals. Applications from people who could contribute to the diversity of perspectives at the Forum in other ways are also warmly welcomed.

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November 9, 2023

LPC welcomes a new member: Stanford University Libraries

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Please join us in welcoming Stanford University Libraries as a new member of the Library Publishing Coalition! The voting rep for Stanford University Libraries is Friederike Sophie Sundaram.

About Stanford University Libraries:

With over twelve million items, fifty subject specialists, twenty campus libraries, and a broad spectrum of services available, Stanford Libraries are a hub of scholarship on campus. Digital and physical collections span from cuneiform tablets to photographic collections documenting the Civil Rights Movement to contemporary artist books. The Libraries publish exhibit catalogs, bibliographies, scholarly books, essays and poetry, and keepsakes and miscellanea to explore and celebrate the Libraries’ extensive holdings.

October 31, 2023

Library Publishing Coalition Releases 2022-2023 Annual Report

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The Library Publishing Coalition is pleased to announce the release of its 2022-2023 Annual Report.

In addition to outlining LPC’s finances, membership, affiliates, and ongoing inclusion efforts, the Annual Report highlights several programmatic milestones, including:

  • Launching both the Canadian Community Development Working Group and the Research Cohort pilot initiative
  • Publication of An Ethical Framework for Library Publishing, Version 2.0
  • Recommendations from the Preservation Task Force

We are thrilled to celebrate our community’s shared success. LPC’s continued sustainability and effectiveness result from the work undertaken by LPC members, staff, our partners, and affiliate organizations. All the people involved in this work offered their time, energy, and expertise to fulfill our vision of an open, inclusive, and sustainable scholarly publishing landscape.

Water with the word reflections in all caps with a horizontal line above and below
October 31, 2023

Coming Together: Consortial Publishing at the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library in Support of 4 HBCUs in Atlanta, GA

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Consortial publishing profiles is an occasional series highlighting library publishing programs that offer centralized publishing services to multiple institutions within a geographic region or a consortium

By Vanesa Evers, Author, Digital Publishing Librarian, Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library and  Christine Wiseman, Editor, Assistant Director, Digital Services Department

 

What is the focus and scope of the program?

The AUC Woodruff Library supports the teaching, learning and research missions of four institutions of higher education that comprise the world’s largest consortium of HBCUs: Clark Atlanta University, the Interdenominational Theological Center,  Morehouse College, and Spelman College.  Consequently, the Library hosts and supports digital publishing services for all of our member institutions. We host student journals, literary journals, electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs), and faculty-led academic journals using OJS. Since the needs of our partner institution are so unique, we provide very diverse services to each institution.

How and why did it get started?

The Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library (AUC Woodruff Library) has a solid relationship with its stakeholders, including students, staff, and faculty. Over the last few years, publishing opportunities have increased due to the Library expanding its digital platforms like Open Journal Systems (OJS) and Pressbooks. Since the Library serves four institutions, the needs are unique to each institution. Faculty and student editors might need limited assistance with a particular platform, whereas another institution might need more in-depth support with a new project.

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October 19, 2023

2024 Library Publishing Forum Call For Proposals

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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 includes representatives from a broad, international spectrum of academic library backgrounds, as well as groups that collaborate with libraries to publish scholarly works, including publishing vendors, university presses, and scholars. 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 2024 Library Publishing Forum to be held at the McNamara Alumni Center at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, MN on May 15 and 16, 2024! Proposals may address any topic of interest to the library publishing community. The proposal deadline is November 20, 2023.

Note: The deadline for submitting proposals has been extended to December 15, 2023.

Proposal submissions for the Forum are welcome from LPC members and nonmembers, including library employees, university press employees, scholars, students, and other scholarly communication and publishing professionals. We welcome proposals from first-time presenters, representatives of small and emerging publishing programs, and employees of non-member institutions.

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.

Learn more about session formats and submitting on the Forum program web page.

Submit a proposal

LPC Program Committee

Elizabeth Bedford, University of Washington (2023–2024 co-chair)
Jennifer Coronado, Butler University (PALNI) (2023–2024 co-chair)
Jason Boczar, University of South Florida
Corinne Guimont, Virginia Tech
Loftan Hooker, Virginia Commonwealth University
Alexandra Marcaccio, University of Guelph
Emma Molls, University of Minnesota (host liaison)
Melanie Schlosser, Library Publishing Coalition

September 18, 2023

Finding the Right Publishing Platform

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A Research blog post from

  • Corinne Guimont, Digital Scholarship Coordinator & Interim Director, Virginia Tech Publishing, Virginia Tech
  • Matt Vaughn, Open Publishing Librarian, Indiana University Libraries
  • Cheryl E. Ball, Independent publishing consultant and Executive Director of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals

A key job responsibility for many library publishers is to collaborate with authors to determine the best mechanisms to share and publish their research. Open-access publishing has been on library publishers’ radars for over two decades, and the types of publishing that librarians are responsible for has expanded from PDFs in Institutional Repositories to faculty and student journals, digital humanities projects, and open educational resources. Further, authors and editors are interested in publishing their work in a digital and open environment with innovative content, including interactive elements and multimedia. While there are numerous commercial and open-source platforms available for publishing research (i.e., bePress, Drupal, WordPress), the number of academy-owned or -affiliated publishing platforms has flourished in the last five years, and the choices can feel overwhelming to librarians, let alone authors and editors. So, then, how do potential users find out about which platforms may be available? The librarians’ answer: A crosswalk!

We are delighted to announce the release of “Finding the Right Platform” (https://doi.org/10.17613/z27e-0z11), a crosswalk that compares 10 academy-owned and open-source publishing platforms commonly used in library and university press publishing. “Finding the Right Platform” is published under a CC-BY license on Humanities Commons.

The crosswalk begins by asking users what type of project they want to publish and what features they are looking for in publishing platforms. Our goal was to help librarians, publishers, and authors/researchers make a decision to further pursue one platform over another (or to identify and further research a smaller group of platforms that might be suitable for their projects).

This 34-page, hyperlinked crosswalk includes at-a-glance feature comparisons for the following platforms

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