It's Academic

I am posting this on behalf of Russell Hall, PSU Associate Librarian, regarding his attendance at a town hall meeting about Middle States standards for higher education:

“At the town hall meeting I went to last week, the good news is that the chair of the committee stated that information literacy would be put back into the standards in the next revision. The bad news is that libraries are not mentioned at all in the document. The way I see it, this could jeopardize our standing in not just our institution, but across higher education.  What you can do, and I urge you to do this, is email policy@MSCHE.org your comments about why libraries deserve specific and explicit mention in the new standards. The goal of the new standards is to focus on the student learning experience and student learning outcomes, so if you can tie your comments to those concepts, it’s likely you’ll make more of an impact.”

Also of possible interest related to this is Steven Bell’s post for the ACRL Insider Blog about this issue from February: http://www.acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/archives/8299

For more information about the Middle States rough draft: https://www.msche.org/?Nav1=NEWS&Nav2=NEWSROOM&Nav3=STANDARDS&strPageName=

CRD SPRING PROGRAM

* REGISTRATION is now open for the spring program!

* Download the BROCHURE and find full details below.

Expanded Session Descriptions and Presenter Bios

“Benefits and Implementation of Open Access Policies” with Sue Kriegsman

Open-access (OA) literature is defined by Peter Suber as “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.”

Sue will describe Harvard University’s experience with open access, making scholarly information freely available to all,  and the benefits to faculty. She will discuss the elements of an open access policy, the critical step of engaging stakeholders, and implementation options. There will be time for discussion after the presentation.

Sue Kriegsman is the Program Manager for the Harvard Library Office for Scholarly Communication. She identifies and implements ways for Harvard to open, share, and preserve scholarship. Sue has worked at Harvard since 2001 on a variety of digital initiatives such as the Harvard-Google book digitization project as the Project Manager. She also manages the Harvard Library Lab that is an internal grant program to create lightweight, open, and scalable projects bringing innovation to the Library. Prior to Harvard, she was the Project Manager for the Colorado Digitization Project.

“Open Access: Where Are We Now and How Did We Get Here?” with Tom Reinsfelder & John Barnett

Open access to scholarship has been gaining momentum for well over a decade. As academic librarians, we have an opportunity to educate others about open access publishing and advocate for the best interests of our libraries, our institutions, and our researchers. The presenters will describe past situations and actions that have led to current conditions and practices, highlighting recent developments in open access publishing, policy, and legislation. Whether new to the idea of open access or if one has been following the movement for many years, it is critical to keep up with the frequent and often dramatic developments.  Participants will learn more about open access, past and present, and will gain knowledge and resources to better support faculty and students at their institutions.

John Barnett is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Pittsburgh. He is currently Co-Editor of  Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice, a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal, sponsored by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association. He earned his MLIS from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Tom Reinsfelder is the Reference & Instruction Librarian at Penn State Mont Alto. He is the Co-Founder and Co-Editor of  Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice, a peer-reviewed, Open Access journal, sponsored by the College and Research Division of the Pennsylvania Library Association. He earned his MSLS  from  Clarion University, and his PhD  from Indiana University of PA. His dissertation research explored aspects of open access to scholarly research.

“The Library as Publisher” with Timothy Deliyannides & Lauren Collister

Academic libraries are increasingly investing in new efforts to support their research and teaching faculty in the activities they care about most.  Learn why becoming a publisher can help meet the most fundamental needs of your research community and at the same time can help transform today’s inflationary cost model for serials.  Using the 35 peer-reviewed journals published by the University Library System, University of Pittsburgh as a case study, we will explore not only why to become a publisher but exactly how to achieve it, step by step, including careful selection of publishing partners, choosing the right platform for manuscript submission and editorial workflow management,  one-time processes to launch a new journal, conducting peer reviews, maintaining academic quality, and measuring impact.  We will close with a review of tools, services, and communities of support to nurture the new library publishing venture.

Lauren B. Collister, Ph.D., is the Electronic Publications Associate for the Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, responsible for the day-to-day operations of the 35 e-journals published by the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh as well as the 45 e-journals hosted by Scholarly Exchange. She works daily with editors and journal managers to navigate the publishing world, including software training, workflow consultation, and technical and editorial support. Lauren comes from an academic research and teaching background, receiving her Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Pittsburgh in 2013, and is the author of several journal articles, book chapters, and conference publications. As part of her academic life, she has been on the author, reviewer, and editor side of the journal publishing process. She is an open access and electronic freedom advocate. You can find her on Twitter at @parnopaeus.

Timothy S. Deliyannides, MSIS.  As Director of the Office of Scholarly Communication and Publishing and Head of Information Technology, Tim Deliyannides is responsible for the extensive electronic publishing initiatives of the University Library System at the University of Pittsburgh.  With over 25 years’ experience in library information technology, Tim has spent the last decade working with academic units and scholarly associations to promote Open Access to research and to help transform models of scholarly publishing.  Tim oversees a number of author self-archiving repositories for research materials including 35 peer reviewed journals and six subject-based repositories, as well as conference proceedings, electronic theses and dissertations, pre-print publications, and other ‘grey literature’ such as white papers and technical reports.  He is the current Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), the world’s leading developer of open source journal publishing software.

“Paving the way for Open Access” with George Aulisio

In this presentation, the speaker will discuss the trials and tribulations of starting an Open Access policy at a small liberal arts college. The speaker will share his outreach experiences, responses from campus governing bodies, results of an on campus survey that tested faculty awareness and understanding of Open Access, and the next steps for Open Access on his campus.

George Aulisio is Assistant Professor, Public Services librarian, and Outreach Coordinator for The University of Scranton’s Weinberg Memorial Library. He has a Philosophy B.A. from Bloomsburg University, a Library and Information Science M.S. from Drexel University, a Philosophy and Metaphysics M.L.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, and he will be entering the Philosophy PhD program at Temple University in Fall 2014. His library research interests revolve around Copyright, Open Access, Professional Ethics, and Sustainability.

“If you build it, they will come (if you invite them thoughtfully): Institutional Repositories in Academic Libraries” with Eric Jeitner & Janelle Wertzberger

The road to a successful institutional repository is a long and involved one – so where would an interested library begin? What are some important initial considerations? What options exist for repository platforms? Eric Jeitner will discuss some of those considerations, as well as the methodology used to decide on the staging for Arcadia University’s ScholarWorks repository.

After picking a platform, decisions must be made about what work belongs in your IR, and why? How can librarians build campus awareness about open access? Who should be promoting your IR? Janelle Wertzberger will talk about the education and outreach efforts that contributed to early and broad participation by faculty and student authors at Gettysburg College. Less than two years after Gettysburg College launched its institutional repository, The Cupola contains over 1,100 items.

Janelle Wertzberger is the Director of Reference & Instruction and has worked in information literacy instruction and reference since 1997. Her professional interests also include open access scholarship. She manages Gettysburg College’s institutional repository, The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College. In addition to working in partnership with students and faculty, she regularly designs and implements public programs designed to support curricular inquiry, encourage critical thinking, and enliven the imagination.

Eric Jeitner works as the User Experience Librarian at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He is interested in the roles that libraries can play in open access, emerging technology, usability, and social justice.

Be sure to REGISTER before May 23!

A few weeks ago, Austin Texas hosted South by Southwest (SXSW) http://sxsw.com/,  the largest music, film, and interactive festival in the world.  Beginning in 1987 with a focus on music, it has now become a place for cutting edge artists, film makers and technologists.  Like bees to honey, librarians have been attending and participating in the festival in recent years. Many find it an opportunity to forge new relationships and work with leaders outside the library to create a new vision of what we do and what we can provide.

For the past couple of years, sxswLAM (SXSW + Librarians + Archivists + Museums) has been one of the boots on the ground at the festival. Primarily attending and presenting at the Interactive festival (SXSWI), their intention is to find opportunities to put information specialists on the map and explore new ways to do our work.  The mission of sxswLAM is to forge “connections outside our traditional workspaces to bring greater awareness to our work and testing the boundaries of how a “traditional” LAMmer looks, acts, and thinks.”  LAMmers attend the festival because they believe that:

1. Library and museum professionals must pull ideas from other industries so they continue to innovate, remain relevant and move our industry forward; explore the arena of interactive technologies – where science, technology, art, commerce and the public good converge to help build our current and future experiences.

2. This is great positioning for libraries to be seen as the creative innovators and community connectors that they are. We help people connect with ideas every day, so it’s important for us to be a part of this conversation on a national stage. SXSWi is all about connections – and LAM is about ensuring libraries, archives and museums are connected.

 Read more about sxswLAM at http://sxswlam.org/

The impact of librarians at the festival has been recognized.  Innovative Interfaces hosted a booth in the Exhibit Hall exclusively for librarians and their partners.  The space wasn’t to just pitch Innovative products, according the Joe Murphy, Director of Library Futures at Innovative, rather “The goal of the Innovative Booth for Libraries is to amplify the visibility of librarianship and expand access for librarians into the technology fields and conversations at SXSW.”

Read more about the Innovative booth and Joe Murphy at: http://libraryfuture.com/sxsw-for-libraries/

Bonnie Tijerina, Head of Electronic Resources and Serials, Harvard University and founder of Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference (ER&L) discusses the importance of attending the festival at http://www.electroniclibrarian.com/ideadrop/why-im-attending-sxsw.

Her organization co-sponsored with ProQuest the #ideadrop house. Its goal was to support “bringing the value of libraries to the world and learning from the best and brightest in tech, public policy, social media and creative communities to libraryland.”

Other organizations that participated and attended this year include: American Library Association, the Association of Rural and Small Libraries, the Digital Library Federation, EveryLibrary, the Freedom to Read Foundation, Urban Libraries Council, Urban Librarians Unite, among others.

Reflecting on the experience at SXSW, the “collaborative impact” was the biggest takeaway according to sxswLAM blogger sallymags. “Our most effective tool was the conversation – one-on-one advocacy with tech leaders, students, entrepreneurs, innovators, fellow librarians and even celebrities.”

Have you ever attended or presented at SXSW? Tell us about your experience. What do you think are the benefits of librarians and information professionals attending SXSW?

Debbie Malone, PaLA Past President (2012) and Library Director at DeSales University in Center Valley, PA, encourages academic librarians to promote the PaLA “PA Forward Speak Up! Authors and Illustrators Speak Up for PA Libraries” initiative which involves authors volunteering to speak about their work at libraries across the state on or around November 6, 2014.  This is an initiative of the PA Forward Basic Literacy Partners Committee.

Authors are asked to complete a survey describing their work, and they are then placed on a speaker list from which libraries can select authors and topics that will interest their communities. Authors would be asked to speak only at libraries within their home counties.

On my own campus I asked three faculty members who I know publish a good bit to participate, and they were eager to do so.  Each library presentation will involve an opportunity for book sales and signings. Faculty members could talk about the research publications – it’s not all about fiction writers.

Thank you for promoting this initiative!

Deb Malone