Day/Time: Monday, May 10, 12:00 PM to 1 PM

Keynote Speaker: Elaine Westbrooks

Elaine Westbrooks

Bio: Since August 2017, Elaine L. Westbrooks has been the Vice Provost of University Libraries and University Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She is responsible for the leadership and general administration of the University Libraries which includes 9 libraries with approximately 300 librarians, archivists, and staff.

Westbrooks is a member of the Association of Research Libraries Scholars and Scholarship Committee, the Executive Committee of Triangle Research Libraries Network, the Digital Public Library of America Board of Directors, and the HathiTrust Board of Governors.  She co-edited Academic Library Management: Case Studies with Tammy Nickelson Dearie and Michael Meth in 2017. Because of Westbrooks expertise and leadership in scholarly communications and the crisis of academic publishing, she has been interviewed by numerous media outlets, including VoxInside Higher Education, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Westbrooks has also emerged as a leading thinker on issues related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice in academic Libraries.  She has presented her research at the Digital Library Federation, Coalition for Networked Information, and the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Description: An unsustainable system of scholarly publishing—one marked by cost escalation, opaque licensing, and inadequate infrastructure—means that academic libraries are can no longer access or acquire the extensive journal subscriptions that researchers want. A recent trend to break big deals has focused on the Big publishers. However, little attention has been paid to the role that societies have played in sustaining this system. Westbrooks will talk about how librarians and researchers might work together to disrupt a system that no longer serves any of us. She will also outline the steps needed for libraries and societies to realize a new business model and engagement plan.