The Future of the Library Publishing Directory: Looking Backward and Forward

Abstract

This presentation was delivered as an active session at the 2025 Library Publishing Forum.Current members of the Library Publishing Directory Committee will engage with the community to discuss the path the Directory has taken and possible directions for the future. We will present findings from the 2024 Directory survey analysis, including highlights from the retrospective data analysis of all 11 years of Directory data. We will focus on how the Directory has expanded over the past decade, the growing role open access and open source platforms have played in library publishing, and other trends within the library publishing space. We will also discuss planned changes to the 2026 Directory survey, from question and section changes, to the important transition to conducting the survey every other year rather than annually. We will then engage participants through collective brainstorming and annotation to provide feedback on survey design and the survey-taking experience, such as the process of filling out the survey, how organizations manage which staff members respond to the survey, question topics and response options that may be missing, and survey accessibility. Participants will be able to contribute feedback and ideas through several means, including open discussion, annotation of the current survey document, and written brainstorming. Participants’ insights will be used to improve the redesign of the Library Publishing Directory survey to more accurately reflect library publishers’ experiences and priorities in the Directory