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Roadmap to Library Publishing

First, I’ve determined that there is no one “roadmap” that will lead my library into digital publishing. So, instead of creating a map, I’m going to do the best I can to sketch out the terrain ahead and think about questions that can guide our path.

Broader Context

This section tries to address two main questions: What is happening in the world of scholarly publishing that is relevant to North Park? What is happening within the North Park setting that is relevant to a library published endeavor? Quick thoughts:

  • Continued movement toward Open Access. There is still work to be done in our local context but that is the clear movement. The Covenant Quarterly and Journal of Hip Hop Studies indicate this trend is taking root on campus.
  • Institutional branding. There is a renewed focus in institutional branding and online presence. There could be powerful connections to make here.
  • Publishing and the North Park mission. My sense is that North Park values diverse contributions to the academic community more than creating a specialized repository
  • Chicago. There might be some opportunities to promote North Park within the regional context through research and student projects.

Scope

We need to define the scope of this project. There are many different efforts that fall under the broad category of “digital publishing”, including:

  • Institutional Repositories
  • Digital Humanities
  • Data Repository
  • Open Educational Resources
  • Campus multimedia (lectures, performances, etc.)

Of these options, I think the most appropriate level and scope would be an institutional repository that contains simple/static documents such as PDFs. A next step would be to curate multimedia from across campus.

Even within this scope, the library will need to make editorial and collection development decisions to make sure that (1) we have a critical mass of content and (2) that there is some editorial scope. I think we should prioritize the following content areas and focus on building relationships with relevant parties.

Student Research

  • Honor’s Projects and Papers
  • Student Research
  • Master’s Thesis
  • NPPress Student Research
  • Covenant History Papers
  • Partnerships with different courses/programs.

Faculty/Staff Scholarship

  • Journal Articles
  • Faculty/Staff Presentations and other “gray” literature
  • Papers from campus symposiums
  • Offer hosting/support for existing campus projects

Political Realities/Soft Skills

We would need some strong support from across campus to take on this project and lead the campus here. Given the proposed scope of this project, here are the people I think it would be important to connect with:

  • The President
  • Provost
  • Campus Deans
  • The University Marketing and Communication Office
  • Honors Program
  • Seminary Faculty
  • Faculty/Tenure Committee
  • NPPRESS Leadership
  • Student Research Committee

Some of these needed connections blend into the next set of questions that seeks to define the scope of this project and effort. I think if we have 5 strong allies (willing to contribute the content they are responsible for) that would make a strong starting point.

Management

Do we have the technical and social workflows to produce, distribute and preserve this content? There are many overlapping questions here, but here is an attempt to list the important ones:

  • Do we have the rights/permissions to publish these materials? Who will work with each group to determine these permissions and who will maintain the paperwork?
  • Do we have the staff expertise, staff time, and faculty/staff connections to successfully manage this projects?
  • What is the ongoing cost of this project in terms of hosting costs, incentives and open access fees, etc.?
  • Where does this rank compared to other library/institutional priorities?
  • What are peer institutions doing? What can we learn from them?
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Review: “Library-as-Publisher: Capacity Building for the Library Publishing Subfield”

I’ve been tasked with creating a “Roadmap to Digital Publishing” for the Brandel Library. I’ll post the draft of the “roadmap” I develop later on, but right now I’m in the research phase of the project and wanted to document the sources I’m reading. I could include this as a bibliography in the other post, but this is happening chronologically first and I thought it would be pretty interesting to document. So here is goes!

Library-as-Publisher: Capacity Building for the Library Publishing Subfield

Katherine Skinner, Sarah Lippincott, Julie Speer, Tyler Walters
Volume 17, Issue 2: Education and Training for 21st Century Publishers, Spring 2014 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/3336451.0017.207

Although this article focused more on the professional developement needs of library staff to take on publishing activities, it also provided a very good overview and definition of the library publishing efforts and section on “Core Knowledge and Skills for 21st Century Publishers” could provide a helpful guide.

Definitions

This article borrows the following definition from the “Library Publishing Coalition” (http://librarypublishing.org/about-us) that defines library publishing as:

the set of activities led by college and university libraries to support the creation, dissemination, and curation of scholarly, creative, and/or educational works.

This relatively basic definition seems like a good shared starting point and distinguishing library publishing form other forms of digital humanities work.

Knowledge and Skills

The list of core knowledge and skills identified in this article proved to be very helpful as well. Here is a summary of that section – with my summarizing comments in the form of questions:

  1. Scholarly Publishing Context – what is happening in the world of academic publishing?
  2. Academic Context – why is the role of the library within the larger institution? to publish something unique? enhance the institutional brand?
  3. Soft Skills – who do you need to build relationships with? What political connections need to be forged?
  4. Business Planning and Management – what is your business plan? who is your audience?
  5. Technology and Workflows for Production, Distribution, and Preservation – do you have the technology and workflow to publish (and care for) everything you want to publish? For text, audiovisual, datasets, interactive things, etc.
  6. Editorial and Acquisitions – can you get and edit the stuff you want to publish?

Overall, this was a very helpful article. The two sections I’ve highlighted were particularly relevant – even as I read the article from an “institutional roadmap” when the original article was written in terms of professional skills and development. The Notes section as provided to be quick valuable in highlighting other relevant sources and authorities.

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Review – Publisher of the Community: We’re All Doomed

I just watched R. David Lankes’s recent keynote and wanted to post a short review of the material he covered.

Information

“Publisher of the Community: We’re All Doomed” Closing keynote for the NISO Workshop on “Using the Web as an E-Content Distribution Platform: Challenges and Opportunities.” http://quartz.syr.edu/blog/?p=6265

Abstract: We need to build platforms for scholarship and knowledge development, not information and content delivery. These platforms are not about APIs and eContent, but about people and content. We need to strive not for discovery, but epiphanies.

[vimeo id=”109836897″]

Reflection/Response

I really enjoyed this presentation and will take a few new ideas from it. Beyond new ideas, it was refreshing and inspiring and perhaps a bit challenging to hear his thoughts about collections and technology.

Lankes began by talking about the “death of documents” in that the definitions of documents are changing in rapid and new ways. Digital stuff is different at a fundamental level and the editorial process is radically different because digital information resources are living, changing things. There is continuity in this change but, overall, the change has been a massive paradigm shift. The words “ebooks” and “ejournals” are really just metaphors – we are trying to fit new information into old information formats.

This section flooded my mind with thoughts.

  • In my work moving the Covenant Quarterly online, how can I respect both the “old format” while embracing the new opportunities of a digital environment?
  • I asked a very similar question about my work with the Northfield Historical society – how do I work with that community and not just their collection? Great questions that are constantly reframing my approach.

Lankes also argues for a “sea change” in the history of library and library services – we need to stop thinking about content. There have been massive shifts in the last 40 years:

  • Collection focus. Our primary role was collecting and preserving documents. This worked…but only worked with a functional infrastructure of knowledge producers (academics and publishers) and libraries. Technical revolutions changed that – things like cheap paper and ink – and libraries had to change and evolve. The modern conception of a “book palace” – a building full of books – is a product of this period of time. This model is breaking – and totally broken by the digital revolution and the internet. Creating MARC records for webpages is crazy.
  • Service focus. Cataloging is a service – that has both internal and external audiences. Question – are we really applying our services to the external audience? From library orientation to information literacy – that’s a sign of the shift from collections to service focused libraries. This is a big change…but it’s not enough. It’s still operating in the “consumption” model of information. This model creates an artificial line between the knowledge consumption process and the knowledge creation process.
  • Conversation focus. It’s not about putting content online – it’s about making libraries as centers for conversations as mediators and participants. Conversations create revolutions. Move beyond collecting and organizing metadata toward capturing scholarship itself.

A Netflix for education doesn’t work because education isn’t based on consumption – it’s based on learning and learning is based on conversation and participation.

However, I do take issue with some of these claims. First, this presentation created vocational confusion. Lankes argues – persuasively, I might add – that libraries must move beyond a focus on collections to a focus on service and even beyond that to community conversations. However, my library and my position in the library are organized around the first two areas – collections and services – and my job is focused squarely on maintaining access to our collections and a few of our services. So while I’m inspired by the claims that we need to focus beyond those things I wondered what those new services and platforms for community conversations could actually look like and – as importantly – how do we move in that direction without the required skills? Lankes said that “People create restrictions that technology has removed” but that gives me pause for several reasons. First – the technical challenges to what Lankes proposed are not trivial. The technical infrastructure takes time and energy and expertise that many libraries and community groups simply lack. Second, how do we manage this change?

These – of course – are criticisms as much as they are struggling to think through the ramifications of his argument in my local context and in the context of my future.

CC image from Flickr - https://flic.kr/p/hKQMcN
CC image from Flickr – https://flic.kr/p/hKQMcN

Looking forward, I’d like to think more about the following things and perhaps explore them in library school:

  • The history of the book and the history of libraries. It seems like many librarians take this background and context for granted but I think it deserves intentional study.
  • Focus on building conversations. I think this means a focus on reference and instruction but – beyond that – how can I work with the communities I’m a member of?
  • How can I embody that belief – that the real goal of learning isn’t the consumption of knowledge or the production of knowledge but mediating and participating in that conversation? I try and do that here on my blog – but my attempts have been mixed. I will renew that effort!

Okay. I think that’s enough in the way of reflections. That’s plenty to think about and plenty to wrestle with for now.

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More on “More Product, Less Process”

As promised in an earlier entry, I would seek out different perspectives and responses to the paradigm shifting article “More Product, Less Process” and offer my reflections.

More Product, Less Process: Why It Matters to Archivists, Librarians, and Researchers a video from the ALCTS webinar series.

[youtube id=”YqftrBsHAl8″ align=”center”]

A presentation by Dennis Meissner, one of the authors of the original paper, largely duplicates the methodology and findings of the paper but is still and engaging and interesting example. It is less formal and less technical, but just as compelling in an audiovisual format. Meissner uses this quote from Winston Churchill to again set the tone of this presentation and mode:

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results

Again, Meissner largely covers the same ground as the article, especially in the first half of the recording. However, one topic – that of digitization – is new to this recording and makes this resource quite valuable. Meissner sees digitization as a huge opportunity and advocates that it be done to an “adequate” level in line with the general MPLP approach. People want the content much more than they want the metadata and practices must be aligned to user needs. He runs through many examples where the MPLP approach is applied to digital scans, collections of images, and born-digital material and frequently uses the words “adequate” and “sufficient” to describe this work. By far my favorite moment of this, and perhaps any library related webinar is when he says (around 41:45)

This PDF based solution is, from a more tradition digitization point of view, crude as hell.

But, he continues, this “crude as hell” approach works perfectly in some contexts and facilitates large scan digitization at a very low cost. According to MPLP, this is not cutting corners, just an appropriate treatment of an archival collection.

What’s Your Product? Assessing the suitability of a More Product, Less Process methodology for processing audiovisual collections. By Joshua Ranger, senior consultant for audiovisual preservation solutions.

This short articles tries to apply the principles of MPLP to audiovisual collections but mainly argues its shortcomings by pointing out the differences between manuscript and audiovisual collections. One key contribution is that he redefines the “product” in terms of findability, access/usability, and sustainability. These concerns looks radically different for audiovisual collections and his points are well taken. Another point, not directly related to the MPLP model, was striking:
Without the ability to playback an original format or to move that content to a new format that is not at risk of poor condition and/or obsolescence issues, an audiovisual collection is effectively meaningless. (page 3)
Many other points – like that traditional metrics like cubic feet can’t apply, that stake holders expect item level metadata, and that collection level descriptions simply aren’t adequate – make this a worthy and intriguing read.
More Product, Less Process: A Flexible by Sasha Griffin
This short, 10 page article details the way different archives have implemented the general MPLP approach and how they have responded and it is a very interesting resource and invites furhter discovery. In short, Griffin covers articles published by the following institutions that in some way respond to the principles of MPLP
  • Yale University’s Christine Weideman published an article about their attempt to address a backlog and the MPLP approach played in challenging current practices.
  • Donna McCrea, at the University of Montana at Missoula, used MPLP to challenge convention and improve efficiency for their collection
  • The Penn State Special Collections found that item level description was necessary for the Kenneth Burke papers and therefore challenged a precept of the MPLP approach (more on this later).
  • A few other voices that questioned whether the MPLP approach could be applied to personal papers and/or whether this was the end of “traditional” archival practices.

In response to these responses, Griffin summarizes by pointing out again that the MPLP approach is intentionally flexible and meant to allow the needs of users guide the process. Item level description isn’t ruled out by the MPLP (nor is pulling staples, it would seem) but that level of processing should only be done to meet the needs firstly of the users and secondly of the collection. The MPLP doesn’t claim to be a one-size-fits-all approach and therefore is hard to reject outright.