Beyond The Publishing Social Contract: University Presses and the Institutional Repository

The last thirty years have been a period of marked crisis and promise in the world of scholarly publishing. On one hand the serial crisis has crushed the academic librarian budget to the point where cuts are more prevalent than new purchases, but on the other the promise of open access allows for new investigative playgrounds for scholars and students across the world that are often outside of these dwindling budgets. Citing these challenges Dan Cohen wonders about the “social contract” of scholarly publishing, or the larger agreement between authors and readers on quality and availability of academic work. In this he posits about a time where digital publishing and blogging will get over the barriers of “legitimacy” given to traditional brick and mortar academic publishing houses. Two publishing ventures stand at the precipice in this time; the institutional repository and the library based University Press. While University Presses struggle to survive in an economically difficult publishing environment, the Institutional Repository has significant backing in library communities and yet struggles to enlist interest and integration. Collaboration and connection between these two entities is a must for the future of the library\u27s role in the scholarly enterprise. This paper will explore the potential that exists in collaboration between institutional repositories and University Presses. Drawing from my own experiences, symbiosis is not only possible but increasingly central to the proliferation of both scholarly outputs. Depositing University Press books and journals into the Institutional Repository allows for greater access for these materials, fulfilling our goals on the public interest level, while, in turn, giving academic and scholarly weight to the institutional repository as a source for useful, and used, information. By promoting and depositing the University Press through open access repositories we breathe new life into important, and sometimes forgotten, pieces of the intellectual campus environment while in turn fostering the opportunity for further Open Educational Resource related access to high quality materials for classrooms. In the end, the open platform will allow for greater diversity of thought and audience for these works while maintaining the intellectual rigor ascribed to works published by University Presses

How to Rate a Book: Goodreads, Taste, and Reading in the 21st Century

“What shall the individual who still desires to read attempt to read this late in history?” asks Harold Bloom. Writing at the end of the 20th century, Bloom’s quote anticipates the information explosion that the age of the internet brought to the reader (even if his emphasis is on the unpopularity of reading rather than the explosion in options). Social media sites like Goodreads prove that reading is still popular, yet Bloom’s question of what does someone read is still salient. More than ever, reading is a social activity, to be shared, debated, and justified between millions of would be critics. If choice is tied to larger social constructions of taste, how does this influence contemporary reading values on the digital landscape? With almost 55 million registered users, Goodreads is a behemoth on the online reading scene. Perhaps co-opting the language of popular online dating sites, Goodreads encourages readers to “meet their next favorite book,” and encourages the building of online bookshelves that showcase the books that users have read, are reading, and want to read. Users stake claims online to knowledge about books and to their own ability to judge content and aesthetics, in a reversal of centuries long deference to the defined the educated palates of the elite. This paper explores what role, if any, taste or “good” taste play in the conversations about books online through Goodreads. Although what to read and why to read it has appeared often in literary criticism and discussions about the value of reading, the personal ramifications and social aspects of taste and what is read has been ignored. Goodreads provides a window into the inner workings of performed taste, on the online landscape; how this taste differs from taste performed in other venues remains to be determined

Where is Government Information? The complex Relationship Between Libraries & Federal Repositories

Through data analysis and a survey, this research identifies the location of government documents departments/units in academic libraries – including their institutional orientation, current practices, & future plans. This preliminary data analysis presents trends amongst the community of academic library participants in the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP), of which they comprise 55% of the total. We identify common practices and priorities that might foster collaboration

Ghosts in the IR: Integrating Student folklore into our online Collections

For decades, student folklorists have been collecting stories, jokes, and tall tales from their neighbors in our community. This is an integral part of research lives of students as well as an essential collection for those interested in American folklives. This poster explores the design of an online database and preservation process for this collection as well as ongoing digitization efforts to make this work available to larger scholarly communities

Bohemian Rhapository: Developing a music program archive in the IR

The Caine College of the Arts (CCA) Music Program Archives preserves artifacts of student, faculty, and guest artist musical contributions to scholarly and creative activity at Utah State University. This collection recognizes the value of campus musical history and community through collaboration between the Music Department, its liaison librarian, and the digital scholarship librarian. Founded in 2008, DigitalCommons@USU is the University\u27s institutional repository (IR). It is currently the 3rd largest Digital Commons instance in the nation, containing over 63,000 items. CCA and the Music Department are extremely underrepresented in the IR. This project - started March 2017 - is a first step in addressing this gap

Altruism or Self-Interest? Exploring the Motivations of Open Access Authors

More than 250 authors at Utah State University published an Open Access (OA) article in 2016. Analysis of survey results and publication data from Scopus suggests that the following factors led authors to choose OA venues: ability to pay publishing charges, disciplinary colleagues’ positive attitudes toward OA, and personal feelings such as altruism and desire to reach a wide audience. Tenure status was not an apparent factor. This article adds to the body of literature on author motivations and can inform library outreach and marketing efforts, the creation of new publishing models, and the conversation about the larger scholarly publishing landscape

Where the Sagebrush Grows: Capturing University History in Institutional Repositories

In the Spring of 2017, Utah State University\u27s library went through a reorganization that placed its digital initiatives department under an umbrella with special collections and archives. Through this change librarians within Digital Initiatives saw new connections between their work and the work of archivists. The institutional repository (IR), once an island in the library, is becoming a showcase not just for research created on campus but for university history through collaboration with university archives. Propelled by this organizational realignment, librarians began large scale digitization projects to provide access to University commencement programs, alumni and departmental magazines, yearbooks, and student newspapers. This presentation explores the shift in IR policies towards a holistic approach to University content. While the original purpose of the IR was, and still is, to capture the research output of the University, the collaboration with university archives opens historical materials to alumni, friends, faculty, and students around the world. Just as the IR provides an accessible and stable record of research achievement, its role as the digitized front of the university archives fulfills the promises of open access to historical records. In this way, the IR is a confluence of past and present; preserving and promoting the mission of the university far beyond the boundaries of campus and the paper archives

More than a Mausoleum: The Library at the Forefront of Digital Pedagogy

Some of the more nostalgic set have opined about the “death” of the traditional library and how universities need to “Save the stacks.” Are we losing the traditional library to chase digital trends? This paper will argue that the incorporation of Digital Humanities into the library is leading to an explosion of new collections adventures. If we take one definition of Digital Humanities as the presentation of humanities research through digital means as Josh Honn suggests ( Never Neutral: Critical Approaches to Digital Tools & Culture in the Humanities [2013], 6), a shift in focus toward the Digital is providing new access and curation drawing directly from classroom instruction. Not only do the demands of DH scholars lead to more digitization and digital archival materials, but the use of digital tools is allowing, for the first time, the wide reading and promotion of scholarship done by students and faculty on campus. Drawing from my experience as a Digital Scholarship Librarian and publishing specialist I am interested in the ways in which the spirit of DH is being captured in ongoing digital publishing programs offered by the library. Through platforms like online journals and conferences, librarians provide platforms for students across disciplines to write and publish on well-read and well-viewed online publications. Exhibit platforms like Omeka and Scalar provide experience to students in learning to be curators of our online collections, while, in turn, showcasing distinctive, and often hidden, collections. In this way, much like all of DH, we are approaching traditional library modes, in this case collections, from a new perspective, the digital, which allows for greater input, flexibility, and outreach from our students and faculty

"All I did was get this golden ticket:" Negative Emotions, Cruel Optimisms, and the Library Job Search

Drawing from survey results and interviews with recent job seekers, this article investigates the effect behind defeatist attitudes, anxieties, resiliency narratives, and intimacies that are central to librarian successes and failures. Connecting these narratives with Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism, we explore the dangerous attachment LIS job seekers have with the field. While library schools and library associations promise a good life with financial stability and the possibility of upward mobility, it is often out of reach for nearly a third of LIS graduates. To explore job seekers’ emotional experiences during the LIS job search, the authors looked specifically at the first job search from the perspective of graduate students as well as from those already in positions. Our survey yielded over 900 participants and we conducted 18 in-depth interviews. The results provide both confirmation for themes already discussed in librarianship, as well as new insights for work to be done to support new colleagues entering the field