ATG v34#6 Dec., 2022/Jan., 2023 Full Issue

ISSN: 1043-2094

Wild Content, Grey Literature

Guest Edited by Stephen Rhind-Tutt (President, Coherent Digital, LLC)

Begins on Page 13

If Rumors Were Horses

If I’m being honest, we’re running a bit behind schedule in getting this issue out to you, our dear readers. Is it just me or does it seem like January has 45 days in the month? I guess that’s a good thing in some cases when you can sit by the fire and nap like Mole and Ratty, but not when you have deadlines to meet and miles to go before you sleep! So let’s get on with the show!

2022 Charleston Conference: Fond Remembrances

I really enjoyed this conference a lot! I know, I know, I always enjoy the conference. One of my favorite innovations this year was a drop-in at the Mark Clark Suite in the Francis Marion Hotel! This was an innovation dreamed up by the magnificent Leah Hinds, and catered by her team of husband Patrick, sister Caroline, conference registrar Sharna Williams, conference mentor Shirley Davidson, and many more. I just wish we could have more of these drop ins! I was unable to get to several of the in-person sessions but am still attending sessions virtually which will be online for the next year. So all of us have time to see even more!

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN THIS

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DISCOVER

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To renew or subscribe, contact subscriptions@optica.org or learn more by visiting opg.optica.org/library.

Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094) (USPS: 012-618), Copyright 2022 by the name Against the Grain, LLC is published six times a year in February, April, June, September, November, and December/ January by Against the Grain, LLC. Business and Editorial Offices: PO Box 799, 1712 Thompson Ave., Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. Accounting and Circulation Offices: same. Subscribe online at https://www.charleston-hub.com/membership-options/

Editor:

Katina Strauch (Retired, College of Charleston)

Associate Editors:

Cris Ferguson (Murray State)

Tom Gilson (Retired, College of Charleston)

Matthew Ismail (Charleston Hub)

Research Editors:

Judy Luther (Informed Strategies)

Assistants to the Editor:

Ileana Jacks

Toni Nix (Just Right Group, LLC)

International Editor:

Rossana Morriello (Politecnico di Torino)

Contributing Editors:

Glenda Alvin (Tennessee State University)

Deni Auclair (De Gruyter)

Rick Anderson (Brigham Young University)

Sever Bordeianu (U. of New Mexico)

Todd Carpenter (NISO)

Eleanor Cook (East Carolina University)

Will Cross (NC State University)

Anne Doherty (Choice)

Michelle Flinchbaugh (U. of MD Baltimore County)

Joyce Dixon-Fyle (DePauw University)

Michael Gruenberg (Gruenberg Consulting, LLC)

Chuck Hamaker (Retired, UNC, Charlotte)

Bob Holley (Retired, Wayne State University)

Donna Jacobs (MUSC)

Ramune Kubilius (Northwestern University)

Myer Kutz (Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.)

Tom Leonhardt (Retired)

Stacey Marien (American University)

Jack Montgomery (Georgia Southern University Libraries)

Alayne Mundt (American University)

Bob Nardini (ProQuest)

Jim O’Donnell (Arizona State University)

Ann Okerson (Center for Research Libraries)

Anthony Paganelli (Western Kentucky University)

Rita Ricketts (Blackwell’s)

Jared Seay (College of Charleston)

Corey Seeman (University of Michigan)

Lindsay Wertman (IGI Global)

ATG Proofreader: Caroline Goldsmith (Charleston Hub)

Graphics:

Bowles & Carver, Old English Cuts & Illustrations. Grafton, More Silhouettes. Ehmcke, Graphic Trade Symbols By German Designers. Grafton, Ready-to-Use Old-Fashioned Illustrations. The Chap Book Style.

Production & Ad Sales:

Toni Nix, Just Right Group, LLC., P.O. Box 412, Cottageville, SC 29435, phone: 843-835-8604 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Advertising Information: Toni Nix, phone: 843-835-8604 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Publisher:

A. Bruce Strauch Send correspondence, press releases, etc., to: Katina Strauch, Editor, Against the Grain, LLC Post Office Box 799 Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482 cell: 843-509-2848 <kstrauch@comcast.net>

Authors’ opinions are to be regarded as their own. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This issue was produced on an iMac using Microsoft Word, and Adobe CC software under Mac OS Monterey. Against the Grain is copyright ©2023 by Katina Strauch

55 years of social scientists asking “Why?” have produced more than 5,000,000 answers.

From Your (Cheerful!) Editor:

When I chose the theme for this issue’s “From Your Editor,” it was just before I got sick with a bad cold and now I can’t remember why I decided to be cheerful! Here’s to better (and less congested) days ahead!!!

2023 is a brand new year. We are experimenting with expanding ATG’s new virtual formats! There’s a lot going on in the library and publishing space. I was talking to Richard Gallagher (President and Editor in Chief, Annual Reviews) at the conference. There is a lot of debate just now around the future of publishing, open access equity, censorship, the role of the library, the future of academia, even extending to the nature of society. Could ATG reflect these issues in robust discussion? The switch to online only is a good time for robust debate and discussion. Please send us your comments and thoughts! <editors@charleston-hub.com>

We have another fantastic issue lined up here, thanks to guest editor Stephen Rhind-Tutt (President, Coherent Digital, LLC). Stephen has a bam-zowie group of featured articles on the topic of grey literature and wild content: “We define it, quantify its importance, identify challenges associated with it,

Letters to the Editor

and make suggestions as to how librarians and publishers might respond to this ‘call of the wild.’”

Toby Green tells us how to turn grey literature into an asset. Andrea Eastman-Mullins takes a look at OER’s and Learning Objects, while Jessica Lawrence-Hurt brings our attention to today’s streaming media landscape. Genevieve Croteau discusses “wild content under attack” and the efforts to save Ukrainian cultural heritage online. And last but not least, Gary Price and Curtis Michelson (the InfoDJ’s!) clue us in about tools for open web curation.

Emily Poznanski (Press Director, CEU Press) and Tom Grady (COPIM, Birkbeck, University of London) contributed an ATG Special Report on going Beyond the BPC. And we have a fascinating interview with Harry Kaplanian & Christopher Spalding, both Vice President Product Management, FOLIO Services at EBSCO Information Services, and Kate Zwaard, Associate Librarian for Discovery and Preservation at the Library of Congress, about the LOC’s plans to implement FOLIO.

Stay healthy, and see you next issue! Love, Yr.Ed.

Send letters to <kstrauch@comcast.net>, phone 843-509-2848, or snail mail: Against the Grain, Post Office Box 799, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. You can also send a letter to the editor from the Charleston Hub at http://www.charleston-hub.com/contact-us/.

Hi Leah and Toni:

On behalf of all of us at SPIE, I want to thank you for another great year. I’m sorry I missed the exhibition this year (Halloween with the kids), but really enjoyed the sessions I attended. Charleston remains a must-attend event and continues to stimulate. I can say without hesitation that it was the best librarian conference of 2022.

Please let Katina know that next year’s SPIE scarf is based on Virtual Reality. It’s going to be cool, and we’ll have a few with us like always.

VOLUME 35 — 2023-2024

Toni Nix <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Phone: 843-835-8604

Enjoy the upcoming holiday season. See you in a year.

Thanks, Pat Patrick Franzen (Director, Publications and Platform, SPIE – the International Society for Optics and Photonics) <patrickf@spie.org>

I completely agree with Pat here. Another great conference and as my first time as an exhibitor, I have to say I was quite impressed! It was also my pleasure to moderate one of the Innovation Session panels and to lead the PollA-Palooza again but this year in-person. I’ll make sure to work out the tech kinks ahead of time for next year.

Thanks again for all your hard work behind the scenes and we’ll see you next year with those SPIE VR scarves!

With kind regards, Sandy

Sandy Avila, MA, MLIS (Digital Library Sales Manager, SPIE – the International Society for Optics and Photonics) <sandya@spie.org>

Thanks, everyone! We appreciate your continued support and participation in Charleston. Looking forward to next year already!

Best wishes, Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Conference, Charleston Hub) <leah@charlestonlibraryconference.com>

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A New Type of Transformative Agreement for Research Publishing in Biology

“A sustainable path to open publication of biomedical research is a long-sought objective among the many science communication initiatives at Cold Spring Harbor. Our transformational offerings provide a model for any research-intensive institution whose scientists wish to make their articles openly available in these long-established, prestigious, not-for-profit journals.”

— Dr. John

Inglis, Publisher of CSHL Press, co-founder of bioR χiv and medR χiv

Turn your subscription license into an OA publishing license — Immediate benefits for your authors and no extra cost for most institutions

Subscribers to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (CSHLP) journals who renew for 2023 now have the option to adopt a Transformative License Agreement. This allows corresponding authors from your institution to publish unlimited OA articles (once accepted for publication), while giving your users access to the complete collection of CSHLP journals.

Transformative license agreements offer a fully OA publishing option for your researchers whose papers are accepted at Genes & Development, Genome Research, Learning & Memory, RNA, or Molecular Case Studies. For more information about a transformative license with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, please contact Doug LaFrenier at dlafrenier @cshjournals.org

Benefits include:

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Present your institution as an “end to end” open access advocate for the biological sciences.

For complete details, including specifics for your institution, visit https://bit.ly/cshlpressopen

Rumors continued from page 1

Meg White, conference director extraordinaire and Senior Advisor at Delta Think, wrote a blog post with reflections from the conference . Thank you, Meg, for your astute observations and for distilling the big ideas and themes from the week for us! The post also includes links to several other write-ups of the event. If you attended, we’d love to know what you thought!

Congratulations to the winners of the 2022 Charleston Premiers! Each year, the Premiers provides the Charleston Conference audience the opportunity to see a showcase of the newest companies, products, and innovations for publishing and scholarly communications. After seeing a 5 minute “pitch” presentation, there is time for audience Q&A followed by audience voting in the following categories: Best Design, Most Impactful, and Best New Product. Since the 2022 conference had both an in-person and a virtual audience, we offered voting options for both. The winners are:

Career Moves and Updates

Delta Think recently announced the addition of Zsolt Silberer to the Delta Think team, effective January 2023. Zsolt comes to Delta Think with twenty-five years of experience in scholarly publishing, working for influential service providers, leading commercial publishers, and trusted societies throughout his career before joining Delta Think as Senior Technology Consultant.

eLife has announced four new appointments to their Board of Directors. They are Federico (Fede) Pelisch, from the University of Dundee, Scotland, UK; Jane McKeating, from the University of Oxford, UK; Freddie Quek, from Times Higher Education; and Joanne Hackett, from IQVIA.

Alison Mitchell is taking a new position as Chief of Staff at Digital Science & Research Solutions. “It’s an opportunity to use everything I’ve learned to support this dynamic and growing business, with the fabulous goal of making open, collaborative and inclusive research possible.”

Brittany Hayes, who many of you will recognize as a former co-editor for the“Optimizing Library Services” column in ATG , has been promoted to Senior Director of e-Collections & Open Access Initiatives at IGI Global. Congrats Brittany!

Our friend Gayle Karolczyk recently celebrated her 16th work anniversary at the Francis Marion Hotel. Gayle and her staff always take such good care of us each year for the conference. Thanks Gayle for all you do and congratulations on 16 years!

“We heard from many librarians who recognize that Spanish and Latin American Studies professors have been underserved. They acknowledge that Platino Educa fills a much-needed gap with authentic content from across Iberian-America,” said PJ Kuyper, President of Platino Educa, winner of Best Product from both audiences. A recording of the session can be viewed on the Charleston Conference YouTube channel. Please join us in congratulating all the winners of this year’s Charleston Premiers!

We’re also excited to announce that this year’s Charleston Leadership Interviews videos are now available on our YouTube channel. These interviews between industry leaders and conference directors offer deeper insights beyond conference week. There is only so much time during the annual conference to delve into the thoughtful discussion many of these topics deserve. The interviews are a way to keep the conversations going.

“Don’t miss out on the Charleston Leadership Interviews this year,” said Erin Gallagher, Chair, Acquisitions & Collections Services, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida. “I was thrilled to chat with so many delightful and insightful folks and to hear about how they’re shaking things up in the library and information realm. It’s an honor to learn from both seasoned and early-career librarians. There’s something for everyone in these interviews and I’m grateful to have taken part.”

The Library of Congress announced the appointment of Hannah Sommers as the new Associate Librarian for Researcher and Collections Services in the Library Collections and Services Group. In this role, Sommers will lead the future of the Library’s collections and the services it delivers to researchers and users.

The University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill has named María R. Estorino vice provost for University Libraries and university librarian, effective January 30, 2023. She has held the role in an interim capacity since May 2022. Estorino joined the UNC University Libraries in 2017 as associate university librarian for Special Collections and director of the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library. In that role, she was a member of the University Libraries’ leadership team, with a focus on expanding and advancing the work of Carolina’s special collections. Read the full press release here

Other Conferences and Meetings

LIBER Europe just announced the keynote speaker for their 2023 annual meeting is Chris Bourg, Director of Libraries at MIT. The meeting will be held July 5-7 at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. https://liberconference. eu/ Chris Bourg

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María R. Estorino

Bring your courses to life with streaming video

Kanopy offers thought-provoking, exclusive content that promotes collection diversity. Our easy-to-use platform provides access to your campus at any time, on any device.

Learn more at lib.kanopy.com

Are you attending LibLearnX in New Orleans? Leah Hinds, our Executive Director, will be there. Say hello if you see her in the halls! “It’s been a few years since I’ve attended an ALA meeting, but I’m looking forward to see the new format, attending sessions, and catching up with colleagues in the exhibit hall,” says Leah.

Plans are underway for more Charleston In Between virtual mini conferences this year. Do you have thoughts or ideas on what hot topics need covering before the Charleston Conference rolls around in November? Or topics that need in-depth coverage that we don’t have the time to fully dive into due to the packed nature of the schedule that week? Let us know!

On the Blog

Have you been keeping up with the ATG Blog ? I know the onslaught of information prevents me from keeping

up with everything coming at me these days (makes me think of a column Eleanor Cook used to write for ATG called “Drinking from the Fire Hose!” Do you remember it?) but these are short, concise and easy-to-read! Plus they’re only posted weekly on Wednesdays rather than every day, so you have more time to digest. Take a look! Our latest post is from Andreas Degkwitz, Chief Librarian at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Well, that’s it for this go-round. Thanks to all our staff, authors, editors, and contributors for another wonderful issue. See you next time!

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Bet You Missed It — Press Clippings — In the News

Carefully Selected by Your Crack Staff of News Sleuths

Column Editor: Bruce Strauch (The Citadel, Emeritus) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com>

Action Agatha

Readers always pictured Agatha Christie like the elderly Miss Marple. In fact, she was a globe-trotting woman of adventure. She was wooed by a man on a motorbike who became a flyer in WWI. Afterwards, she followed him around the world with his job, learned to surf in South Africa and Hawaii.

After her divorce, she made a solo trip to Iraq where she met the archeologist Max Mallowan, the great love of her life. She went with him on annual excavation trips to Syria and Iraq, writing her novels to help defray the costs. She only gave it up when she felt too old to sleep in a tent.

See: Lucy Worsley, “Life on the Orient Express,” Air Mail, Aug. 27, 2022, Issue 163. Lucy Worsley’s new book is Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman.

Books and (high-end) Tote Bags

The legendary Strand Book Store in NYC is now in biz with high-end Italian designer Bottega Veneta to sell tote bags costing thousands. They, of course, have the Strand logo on the side with “18 miles of books.” The top price is $3,100.

Bella Hadid and other celebs were there snacking on lobster and halibut.

The Strand faced disaster during covid with a 70% revenue drop. Is this the come-back it needs?

See: www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11206555/NewYorks-Strand-Bookstore-partners-Bottega-Veneta-sell-3-100TOTE-BAG.html.

Mushroom Mania

Fungi frenzy is in. Designer Stella McCartney has a luxury bag made from the threadlike roots of mushrooms as an alternative to leather. Vogue magazine featured mushroom hats.

In the book world, the Boswell Book Company bookstore has an entire fungi table. A big seller is Keith Seifert’s The Hidden Kingdom of Fungi: Exploring the Microscopic World in Our Forests, Homes, and Bodies. Kirkus Reviews raves over it.

Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Future is another biggie. Coach Beard of the TV hit comedy “Ted Lasso” is shown reading it. Margaret Atwood is a fan of the book.

See: Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg, “Mushrooms Grow On Pop Culture,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 30, 2022, p.A1.

Watering Holes Around the World

In an article on international imbibing, the bar of the Randolph Hotel in Oxford gets a plug. Author Colin Dexter quite likes the wood paneling and atmosphere of history, so naturally he has Detective Inspector Morse enjoy the low-winged armchairs facing outward into the lobby.

The drink of note is the Coeur de Lion, made with pineapple, ginger, apricot, dry vermouth, and Sapling vodka.

See: Matthew Kronsberg , “An Imbiber’s Guide to Globetrotting, The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 27-28, 2022, p.D6.

Karin Slaughter

Karin is the award-winning author of 23 books among which is Pieces of Her which made it to Netflix and her latest Girl Forgotten (William Morrow).

She grew up in the Atlanta of a child strangler and learned to turn her fear back onto others. And she was, by her admission, a weird kid. She wrote “Dead” over the “Baby on Board” sign in the family car and got in trouble at school for doing other strange things.

Her ninth grade teacher Billie Ward was a big influence. She taught her a love of language and to not kill off everyone at the end of a story.

Karin dropped out of Georgia State when she learned she would have to take courses other than English Lit. Going at writing full time, she sold Blindsided and saw it published in 27 languages.

See: “Horrible News Made Her A Crime Writer,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 2, 2022, p.M6.

Highsmith Seeking Mother

Patricia Highsmith wrote 22 novels among which was Strangers on a Train and five Tom Ripleys. In her private life, she had a reputation as an anti-Semite, racist, miser, and misanthrope.

She was born into a Texas rodeo family. Growing up, her mother dragged her between Fort Worth and NYC, hated her, and told her she had tried to abort her. As an adult, Patricia spent her private life in a desperate attempt to find maternal love with numerous women. Her heavy drinking usually ended the affairs.

All the lurid details can be found in Eva Vitiga’s documentary Loving Highsmith. Or Andrew Wilson’s 2003 bio Beautiful Shadows.

See: Graham Fuller , “The Hidden Highsmith,” Airmail, Sept. 3, 2022.

Let’s Read About Breakdowns

(1) F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up (1945) (“In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning, day after day.”); (2) Evelyn Waugh, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957) (When Waugh thought he was demonically posessed but it was really bromide, chloral, and crème de menthe); (3) William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1603) (if Hamlet hadn’t failed to act, there would have been no gorgeous navel-gazing); (4) Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1902) (“Mistah Kurtz – he dead.”); (5) Frederick Exley, A Fan’s Notes (1968) (“an homeric level alcoholic”).

See: Christopher Buckley, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Sept. 3-4, 2022, p.C8. Buckley’s new novel is Has Anyone Seen My Toes?

Starving Authors

“In the Penguin Random House/S&S antitrust trial, it was revealed that out of 58,000 trade titles published per year, half of those titles sell fewer than one dozen books. LESS THAN ONE DOZEN.

“90 percent of titles sell fewer than 2,000 units.”

See: “The publishing industry is more fake than you ever imagined … one stat that needs to be read to be believed …” Revolver News, Sept.4, 2022.

Changing the Code

Allen Drury’s 1959 best seller Advise & Consent won a Pulitzer and spawned the modern Washington novel. Otto Preminger made it a movie. While Otto had no trouble depicting infidelity, treachery, drunkeness, and blackmail, the gay subplot would be the first to make it to the big screen.

Homosexuality was illegal in every state, and explicit representations were forbidden under the Motion Picture Production Code. Preminger had previously shown illicit sex and drug use in The Moon Is Blue and The Man with the Golden Arm. Now he actually persuaded the Association to change the code to allow the “homo part” as long as it was treated with “care, discretion, and restraint.”

Preminger employed prominent DC journalists, politicians, and society matrons as extras. Peter Lawford played a tomcatting senator in a sly reference to JFK. And the first gay bar went on the screen.

See: James Kirchick, “Love and War,” Airmail, Sept. 10, 2022. Kirchick is the author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Washington.

Obits of Note

Michael Malone (1942-2022) was a member of the Hillsborough, NC writer’s colony, author of Handling Sin, Time’s Witness, Painting the Roses Red.

Invited to write for the soap One Life to Live, he took on daring contemporary issues like homophobia, AIDS, and sexual assault. He loved having a greater audience then he did with the written page. “There was no way ever on God’s green earth that five million people a week would be reading my novels.”

See: “The novelist who gave soap operas a conscience,” The Week, Sept. 9-16, 2022, p.39.

Fred Franzia (1943-2022) was born into Franzia Brothers Winery, a highly successful wine producer. When Coca-Cola bought it in 1973, he launched Bronco Wine Co., selling an ocean of “super-value” wines costing less than $3 a bottle.

Yes, he became “Two-Buck Chuck” buying bankrupt wineries and selling through Trader Joe’s for a rock-bottom $1.99 a bottle. Over a billion bottles were sold.

Of course he had his little problems with fraud in mislabeling and had to step down as President of Bronco for five years. And he had long infuriated the industry by insisting no wine should cost more than $10. But he reveled in his bad boy status.

“If you can’t tell the difference,” he said, “then why spend the money?”

See: “Obituaries,” The Week, Sept. 30, 2022, p.39.

Legendary Bar Reborn

In the 1930s, refugees from the Spanish Civil War opened the Don Quixote Bar/Restaurant in Manhattan’s mythic Hotel Chelsea — a residential hotel and artists’ cooperative.

El Quijote had murals of the Don tilting at windmills, bullfighters, flamenco dancers. A restaurant served hearty Spanish fare to a raffish set of artists and writers. Arthur Miller and Dylan Thomas were frequent guests.

In the ’60s, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe drank sangria and tequila and lived off cheap appetizers. Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsburg, Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick were all there. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and the Jefferson Airplane got soused and then drove to Woodstock.

In 2018, new owners closed it for a desperately needed renovation.

And now it’s back with the murals and tchotchkes all intact and the paella cooked in a traditional Spanish pan rather than a pot.

See: Tony Perrottet, “Olé Ground,” The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 1-2, 2022, p.D5.

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The Call of the Wild: New Roles for Librarians and Publishers

By Stephen Rhind-Tutt (Coherent Digital, LLC, Alexandria, VA) <rhindtutt@coherentdigital.net>

Overview

The first website was created on August 6th, 1991.1 Since then, there’s been unbroken growth in the amount and types of web content, expanding the initial plain text to images, audio, video, social media posts, and ever more exotic types. Much of this new content is “wild” from a librarian or publisher standpoint: it lacks DOIs, ISBNs, ORCIDs, MARCs, PIDs, and other tools that are standard for journals and books. In many cases, websites and items on them are undated, have no identifiable author, and lack titles.

In this issue, we bring this wild content into focus. We define it, quantify its importance, identify challenges associated with it, and make suggestions as to how librarians and publishers might respond to this “call of the wild.” The need is urgent; critical information is hard or impossible to find and, in many cases, disappearing.

How Much Wild Content is There and How Much is it Used?

The amount of wild content in the world is hard to quantify but clearly astronomical. In 2016, Google identified over 130 trillion web pages,2 and it’s grown substantially since then. Today, the number of pages available in Google’s index averages 50 billion,3 suggesting that a fraction of 1% of sites they’ve identified are indexed. Furthermore, this is only the surface web. The deep web includes sites that require registrations, so they’re invisible to search engines. The deep web is estimated to be at least twenty-five times larger than the surface web, implying the existence of quadrillions of web pages.

Wild content on the surface web is heavily used — 62% of the world’s population uses it, averaging more than six hours a day.4 Ninety-five percent of American teenagers use YouTube.5 More than 50% of Internet users aged 16 to 24 use it weekly for learning.6

How does this compare to “tame content” in the library and publishing world? WorldCat has 540 million bibliographic items. 7 The Library of Congress has 173 million items, including 4.2 million recordings and 1.9 million moving-image items. 8 More than 3.2 million of these items are available online. One of the largest indexes of journal articles and books, the Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), has 315 million items.9 ResearchGate claims 135 million publication papers. 10 Even the highest of these estimates represents less than 1% of what’s out there. The rest is wild and untamed — uncataloged, undiscoverable, uncitable, prone to link rot, and likely to disappear.

The number of users and the amount of content will continue to grow. A third of humans have yet to become Internet users, and the population of the world is growing by almost a percent per year.13 New formats and types of media will be invented, and existing media will grow faster as technology makes their creation easier and faster to create. The cost of storage will decline, scanners will become cheaper and easier to use, and outputs of all kinds will grow.

Skeptics say that most of this content has little or no relevance to the academy, learning, or scholarship. My colleagues and I disagree and will make our case by focusing on four types of wild content. We’ll show how wild content is frequently used for research and learning, and we’ll explain why the traditional skills of publishers and librarians must urgently be applied to the tasks of improving the organization, discovery, curation, and preservation of this material.

We focus on grey literature, video, open educational resources, and primary sources.

Grey Literature

In this issue, Toby Green documents the world of grey literature. Historically, this material has been interesting but marginal. As Toby shows, that’s changed. He identifies over 9,000 reputable organizations publishing “some $33 billion of research a year,14 which is larger than the $25 billion STM publishing sector.”15 The reports, briefings, guides, conference papers, news reports, and other non-book and non-journal material are all of direct and vital importance, as indicated in this graphic from 2015.

Faculty ranking of the importance of various content types16

The same is true of usage. Similarweb reported that ProQuest had 17.1 million monthly users in September 2022; JSTOR had 26.8 million; ScienceDirect, 100 million; and ResearchGate, 128 million.11 These numbers are dwarfed by visits to wild content: YouTube alone claims 13 billion monthly visits.12

As much as 88% of this content has been through a form of peer review17 and is recognized as being “high informational content.” 18 Often the material is more current and more inclusive than what’s published in journals and books.19 Toby discusses efforts to tame this material by curating it, enriching it with metadata, and preserving it.

Open Educational Resources

Our second author is Andrea Eastman-Mullins, who documents another type of wild content: Open Educational

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Resources (OER). She points out that “even before COVID, 78% of all U.S. academic libraries supported course materials,20 and nearly half listed OER as a top priority.”21

Just as traditional journal formats are no longer sufficient to accommodate the needs of researchers, traditional textbooks serve students and teaching faculty less effectively than these new resources. Studies have shown this to be true across a wide range of courses, including medicine,22 anatomy,23 and physics.24 YouTube videos are praised as being “of high quality, reliability, and rich content.”25

Studies also point out the challenge of finding quality.26 In a study of patient advice videos, only 10% were found to be accurate.27 Pew found that 63% of YouTube users found material that seemed to be “obviously false or untrue.”28 There’s high quality material in the wild, but it demands the traditional librarianship skills of evaluation, selection, curation, and preservation if it’s to be useful.

The savings from taming this content and making it useful are substantial. SPARC estimates that adopting OER has already saved students an average of $160 per course, or over $1 billion worldwide so far.29

Video and Related Media

Jessica Lawrence-Hurt examines the increasing use of video in the academy in more depth and discusses continued barriers to its adoption. An idea of the potential impact of video can be found in a study by Mohamed Ahmed Mady and Said Baadel, which showed that YouTube and social networks in general significantly improved learning outcomes across a wide range of disciplines, with more than 95% of education majors using YouTube at least once a week, and 82% reporting a positive experience.30

Jessica points out how certain disciplines require video in order to explain concepts or demonstrate practices. At the same time, existing library and publishing systems often deprecate such work — for example, when a peer review submission system cannot accommodate video or alternative media. She presents yet another case for why librarianship and publishing are needed to make materials in this space useful.

Primary Sources

The fourth type of wild content is discussed by Genevieve Croteau, who documents the Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO) project and how librarians mobilized in a matter of days to rescue an extraordinary number of websites. This story serves to remind us that enormous challenges can be overcome by innovative thinking and collaboration.

Wikipedia defines a primary source as “an artifact, document, diary, manuscript, autobiography, recording, or any other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document written by such a person.”31 Primary sources don’t need peer review; they need only be verified for authenticity.

This category includes speeches, news reports, political pamphlets, social media

posts, and born-digital content. It’s been growing exponentially and promises to grow more. There are multiple instances of large-scale loss of archives in this space. In 2009, for example, Yahoo shut down Geocities, resulting in the loss of some seven million personal websites, and in 2019 they closed and removed materials from the Yahoo Groups platform.32 In 2022, the EPA announced the closure of its web archive.33

Personal websites are particularly at risk. Consider Threedecks.org , 34 an extraordinary collection of materials in maritime history, the Manuals Directory, 35 which has over 700,000 instructional manuals through time, or the William Blake Archive. 36 These are just a few of countless high-value, at-risk websites.

An analysis of a LibGuide from a major academic institution, with links to hundreds of carefully selected primary sources relevant to research and learning, revealed that fewer than 50% of the URLs still worked a year later.37 The remaining sites had disappeared, and many had not been captured by the Internet Archive or other initiatives. Gary Price and Curtis Michelson examine the challenge of link rot in depth.

This problem is particularly acute in the Global South, where sites have lower funding. And the problem is endemic; one study identified that 69% of librarians report broken links in their collections and they spend 1.3 hours a week fixing38 them. Sites as important as the African National Congress archive have largely disappeared — the outline of the site39 has been preserved by the Internet Archive, but the in-depth content is missing, much like an ancient ruin with only the pattern of the walls still visible.

Responding to the Challenges

Finally, Gary Price and Curtis Michelson provide more detail on how and where to find quality items in the wild. They provide an effective summary of how librarians can help make grey literature, OERs, video, and primary sources useful for teaching and research. Best of all, they provide tools that can be used immediately by librarians to improve existing efforts in this space.

Summary

The average academic library spends 59% of its materials budget directly on books and journals, along with another 35% on databases, most of which are aggregations of and indices to books and journals. Only 6% of the budget goes to “other resources.”40 This spend is hugely disproportionate to the size, usage, and importance of non-book/nonjournal content.

The need for librarians and publishers to help tame wild content is real. More than half of the citations in this article are from “wild” sources and have no DOIs. If you’re reading this issue, I suspect you regularly consult reports and recommendations from ARL, CNI, Ithaka, CLIR, and others. You use Ebsco’s price survey, and you subscribe to the ATG podcast or ARL’s Day in Review. We rely on these publications, but will we be able to find them tomorrow? Many appear on the web with no DOIs, no release dates, no author names… Will future researchers even know these items once existed? We need to make

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these items and other examples of important wild content part of the scholarly record — and the call is urgent.

Richard Ovenden, librarian at one of the oldest libraries in the world, reminds us of our collective responsibility to future generations: “Digital preservation is becoming one of the biggest problems we face. If we do not act now our successors in future generations will rue our inaction.”41

The Gutenberg Bible was the first substantial book printed from movable type in the West. Some 50 copies of this landmark work survive. 42 The web is similarly a vital step in human knowledge, but no one thought to capture a copy of the very first webpage. It wasn’t copied until the following year,43 so we can only assume what it looked like. Just as our ancestors developed systems to organize, preserve, and disseminate print materials, we must do the same for wild content.

Endnotes

1. Business Insider. This is what the first website ever looked like, Alyson Shontell Jun 29, 2011. https://www.businessinsider. com/flashback-this-is-what-the-first-website-ever-lookedlike-2011-6

2. The 2008 estimate was retrieved from the Google Blog. Posted by Jesse Alpert & Nissan Hajaj, Software Engineers, Web Search Infrastructure Team, July 25th, 2008. At this URL https:// googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big. html. The 2016 estimate is from https://www.kevin-indig.com/ Growth Memo Newsletter, posted July 29th, 2020 at https://www. kevin-indig.com/googles-index-is-smaller-than-we-think-andmight-not-grow-at-all/

3. https://www.worldwidewebsize.com/. This work was carried out as a Master thesis project at the Faculty of Arts of Tilburg University), within the ILK Research Group. It shows the actual size of the Google index fluctuating between 20 Bn and 50 Bn webpages. More information about the method can be found here (written in Dutch).

4. The Global State of Digital 2022, Hootsuite, https://www. hootsuite.com/resources/digital-trends, page 9.

5. Teens, Social Media and Technology, 2022. Report by Pew Research Center, August 10, 2022. https://www. pewresearch.org/internet/2022/08/10/teens-social-media-andtechnology-2022/

6. The Global State of Digital 2022, Hootsuite, https://www. hootsuite.com/resources/digital-trends, page 56.

7. Retrieved from Wikipedia, November 23rd, 2022. https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WorldCat

8. https://www.loc.gov/about/general-information/ , Retrieved November 23rd, 2021

9. Searches conducted on November 23rd, 2021 at https://www. base-search.net/

10. Retrieved from Researchgate on November 23rd, 2022, at https:// www.researchgate.net/

11. Statistics from Similarweb.com as of 11/13/22.

12. Most popular websites worldwide as of November 2021, by total visits (in billions), Statista. Retrieved Nov 13th, 2022 from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1201880/most-visitedwebsites-worldwide/

13. The Global State of Digital 2022, Hootsuite, https://www. hootsuite.com/resources/digital-trends, page 20.

14. Lawrence, A. Influence seekers: The production of grey literature for policy and practice. Information Services & Use, vol. 2017: 37, no. 4, pp. 389-403. https://doi.org/10.3233/ISU170857

15. Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. & Mabe, M. The STM Report, 5th edition: An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing, STM. Netherlands. 2018 Retrieved from https://policycommons.net/ artifacts/1575771/2018_10_04_stm_report_2018/2265545/ on 30 Sep 2022.

16. Lawrence, A. Influence seekers: The production of grey literature for policy and practice. Information Services & Use, vol. 2017: 37, no. 4, pp. 389-403. https://doi.org/10.3233/ISU170857

17. Amanda Lawrence, Julian Thomas, John Houghton & Paul Weldon (2015) Collecting the Evidence: Improving Access to Grey Literature and Data for Public Policy and Practice, Australian Academic & Research Libraries, 46:4, 229-249, DOI: https:// doi.org/10.1080/00048623.2015.1081712

18. Managing grey literature: technical services perspectives. Edited by Michelle Leonard and Susan E. Thomas in collaboration with Core Publishing, Chicago, ALA Editions, 2022, 136pp., ISBN 978-0-8389-4881-1 (soft cover), 978-0-8389-3821-8 (PDF).

19. As of 11/23/22 Policy Commons had materials from over 162 countries including over 850 African organizations. https:// policycommons.net/search/?i=organizations&region=Africa

20. Libraries Play a Key Role in Campus OER Adoption, Library Journal Website, Ex Libris, Feb 3rd, 2020. https://www. libraryjournal.com/story/libraries-play-a-key-role-in-campusoer-adoption

21. Ithaka S+R US Library Survey 2019, April 2, 2020, Jennifer K. Frederick, Christine Wolff-Eisenberg DOI: https://doi. org/10.18665/sr.312977 https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/ ithaka-sr-us-library-survey-2019

22. 2020-05-22. “Learning ENT” by YouTube videos: perceptions of third professional MBBS students. Ajeet Kumar Khilnani, Rekha Thaddanee, Gurudas Khilnani. https://www.ijorl.com/index. php/ijorl/article/view/2213 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.18203/ issn.2454-5929.ijohns20202211

23. Ayman G. Mustafa, Nour R. Taha, Othman A. Alshboul, Mohammad Alsalem, Mohammed I. Malki, “Using YouTube to Learn Anatomy: Perspectives of Jordanian Medical Students”, BioMed Research International, vol. 2020, Article ID 6861416, 8 pages, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/6861416

24. Integrating Physics in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) through YouTube Videos, Jhoanne Catindig, Maricar S. Prudente, Mark Joseph Orillo, IC4E 2020: Proceedings of the 2020 11th International Conference on E-Education, E-Business, E-Management, and E-Learning, January 2020 Pages 244–48 https://doi.org/10.1145/3377571.3377629

25. ONCOLOGY| VOLUME 145, P181-189, NOVEMBER 01, 2020, Can YouTube English Videos Be Recommended as an Accurate Source for Learning About Testicular Self-examination? Ismail Selvi, Numan Baydilli, Emre Can Akinsal. Published: August 10, 2020 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.urology.2020.06.082

26. Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, VOLUME 101, ISSUE 12, P2087-2092, DECEMBER 01, 2020 Suitability of YouTube Videos for Learning Knee Stability Tests: A Crosssectional Review, Myungeun Yoo, MD Juntaek Hong, MD, Chan Woong Jang, MD , Published:June 25, 2020. DOI: https://doi. org/10.1016/j.apmr.2020.05.024

27. Youtube as a Source of Patients’ and Specialists’ Information on Hemorrhoids and Hemorrhoid Surgery Authors: Sturiale, Alessandro; Dowais, Raad; Porzio, Felipe C.; Brusciano, Luigi; Gallo, Gaetano; Morganti, Riccardo; Naldini, Gabriele. Source: Reviews on Recent Clinical Trials, Volume 15, Number 3, 2020, pp. 219-226(8). Publisher: Bentham Science Publishers. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2174/1574887115666200525001619

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28. Many Turn to YouTube for Children’s Content, News, HowTo Lessons, Aaron Smith, Skye Toor, and Patrick Van Kessel, Pew Research Center, November 7th, 2018. https://tinyurl. com/4ctzc4dm

29. Hilton, J. Open educational resources, student efficacy, and user perceptions: a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018. Education Tech Research Dev 68, 853–876 (2020). https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09700-4

30. Mady, Mohamed Ahmed, and Said Baadel. “Technology-Enabled Learning (TEL): YouTube as a ubiquitous learning aid.” Journal of Information & Knowledge Management 19.01 (2020): 2040007.

31. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_source

32. Yahoo Groups Is Winding Down and All Content Will Be Permanently Removed, Jordan Pearson, October 16th, 2019. Motherboard: Tech by Vice. https://www.vice.com/en/ article/8xwe9p/yahoo-groups-is-winding-down-and-allcontent-will-be-permanently-removed

33. EPA Archive Retiring July 2023, retrieved from EPA Web Archives on November 23rd, 2022 at https://archive.epa. gov/#:~:text=EPA%20Archive%20Retiring%20July%20 2023&text=Ongoing%20efforts%20to%20share%20a,is%20 performed%20every%20four%20years.

34. https://threedecks.org/

35. https://www.manualsdir.com/

36. https://blakearchive.org/

37. Unpublished research conducted by Coherent Digital staff, November 2022.

38. Lawrence, A. (2017) Influence seekers: The production of grey literature for policy and practice, Information Services & Use, 37 (4) 389-403

39. https://web.archive.org/web/20040318070055/http://www. ufh.ac.za/collections/

40. Library & Information Spend Predictions for 2021, Ingenta, Results of Telephone Survey Research Study undertaken by Ipsos MORI and PCG. Retrieved from https://www.ingenta.com/ wp-content/uploads/Library-Info-Spend-Study-2021-FinalPublic-v3-002.pdf

41. Ovenden, Richard. “Burning the books,” John Murray, 2021. 308pp. P 229.

42. The Morgan Library & Museum website, retrieved on November 23rd, 2022. https://www.themorgan.org/collection/GutenbergBible?gclid=CjwKCAiApvebBhAvEiwAe7mHSImxZ40XBaaWf z7Db4rtPG27zU7zMa6sm7RFySAqv0HoCkDAhb6f8xoCiaMQA vD_BwE

43. Business Insider. This is what the first website ever looked like, Alyson Shontell Jun 29, 2011. https://www.businessinsider. com/flashback-this-is-what-the-first-website-ever-lookedlike-2011-6

Grey Literature is Booming. It’s Time to Turn it into an Asset.

By Toby Green (Co-Founder, Coherent Digital, Paris, France) ORCID: 0000-0002-9601-9130 <Toby.green@coherentdigital.net>

Ahead of COP27, five major climate reports have been released, one with new data showing that temperatures in Europe are rising faster than anywhere else. They generated headlines around the world. Citing one of them, UN Secretary-General, António Guterrez, tweeted “we are headed for economy-destroying levels of global heating.” Each was vetted by experts before release, yet none was published in a peer-review journal. Each is free to download, yet none is available through publication supply channels or specialist discovery services. Each needs to be preserved in the scholarly record, but how?

These are not edge cases, they are but the tip of a growing mountain of vital research that’s being posted to websites around the world as grey literature. Whilst the scholarly communications community, rooted in academia, has been wrestling with the challenges of pivoting books and journals to open access, quite quietly a growing community of researchers, based in non-academic organizations, has been posting their results and discoveries on open websites, like the five mentioned above.

Grey literature is “wild,” it lacks the metadata of “tame” formally-published works, making it hard to find and catalog. It’s open, but it’s at risk of link rot and lacks preservation protocols. As this article will show, grey literature is growing in volume and significance. Taming it for the scholarly record will take effort, time, and resources. Let’s step back to understand why.

To qualify for inclusion in the scholarly record, Dougherty proposed that an item must advance or summarise knowledge, have an identifiable author, be issued through an academic publisher, be cataloged by a university library, appear in curated research databases, and belong to a recognised discipline.1 OCLC defines the scholarly record as “published outcomes of scholarly enquiry” such as “journal articles and monographs,”2 even though others recognise that formats have, of late, become much more diverse, encompassing “protocols, code and data.”3 Let’s put these definitions to the test.

In 2019, just a year after Dougherty made his proposition, two London-based professors published a podcast which summarised two papers authored by economists from the Bank of England and four UK “Russell Group” universities. The papers had made headlines in the UK media, including the Financial Times, and were cited in a blog — which has a following larger than most journals — run by a professor from University of London’s Royal Holloway. Looking for any of these items in subject databases and library catalogs will be in vain because, as with the five climate reports, no journal or monograph publishers were involved in publishing this impactful research and commentary.4

According to Dougherty and OCLC, this content doesn’t qualify for the scholarly record — which suggests to me that their definitions need updating to take into account how digital tools are changing the ways knowledge is published, as the examples above illustrate.

Dougherty’s definition made sense before the digital era because the cost of self-publishing and dissemination in print was beyond the means of most. Organizations and authors had little choice but to find a publisher for their works. Equally, the

cost of organising and maintaining archives meant that only institutions could offer readers meaningful and useful libraries of published materials. So, it’s no surprise that publishers and libraries were central to the creation and maintenance of the analog scholarly record.

In fact, the scholarly record took a village to create. Besides authors creating, publishers selecting and librarians collecting, booksellers and agents developed an efficient, near-global, supply chain that carried publications to libraries around the world. To reduce administration costs and speed delivery, publishers, booksellers, agents, and librarians co-developed processes (e.g., ICEDIS) and metadata standards with unique identifiers (ISBNs in 1969, ISSNs in 1975). In parallel, secondary services and catalog systems emerged to ease the challenge of discoverability. A whole industry was born.

Since 2000, digitization has driven an end-to-end transformation of the industry. It enabled new features like persistent identifiers (PIDs) for content (DOIs), authors (ORCiDs), and their institutions (Ringgold). Standardized content capture opened the door to data and text mining. Dark archives have been established to guarantee preservation. Crucial to the efficient working of what is now a more technically complex scholarly record is detailed, standardized, machinereadable, metadata. This metadata not only drives discovery and simplifies cataloguing, it enables impact evaluation. A complex system was born.

Not all scholarly publications were captured in the analog scholarly record. Some institutions chose to self-publish because doing so had advantages, such as control over branding, timing, and pricing. Of these, some, like OECD and Brookings, established in-house “presses” that used the same metadata standards and supply chains as mainstream publishers to channel their publications to libraries. However, others, especially smaller organizations, didn’t. In eschewing publishing norms and supply chains, their content was hard to source and missing from secondary discovery services — frustrating for librarians and readers alike. It was this, informally published content, that gave rise to the term “grey literature.”

Grey Literature

In 1984, Wood coined the term to describe material “which is not available through normal bookselling channels ... leading to problems for the producers of secondary services, for librarians who wish to collect it and for end users.” Whilst noting that grey literature had “variable standards of editing and production, poor publicity, poor bibliographic control, and poor availability in libraries,” Wood rejected as “mistaken” the belief that grey literature was “essentially ephemeral and of local interest only” because “it contains information likely to be of use to a considerable number of people.”5

It is often thought that grey literature hasn’t been peerreviewed. This is a big misunderstanding because, as the climate examples illustrate, more than 60% is reviewed by experts prior to release.6 So, no wonder Wood reckoned grey literature “a costly public asset going largely to waste.” How costly? A recent estimate put it at $33BN a year,6 which is larger than the $25BN STM publishing sector.7

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In 2010, the Prague definition8 attempted to build on Wood — but the additions, for me, add nothing to the essential and defining characteristic of grey literature: that it is hard to find, capture and use.

The essential problem identified by Wood in 1984 is unchanged today: poor bibliographic control. However, Wood would probably be shocked by the scale of the today’s “public asset going to waste” because there has been a significant increase in the supply of grey literature. Let’s look at these two issues — bibliographic control and supply — starting with supply.

Supply

More researchers lead to more content, 9 and since the 1980s, the number of researchers in OECD countries tripled as higher education expanded.10

Yet the number of jobs in academia barely changed. Using data from the UK as being representative for the OECD group of countries: in the 1980s, around 15% of freshly-minted PhDs could expect to work in academia. By the 2000s, this had fallen to around 3%. 11 So, if not into academia, where did this growing number of highly trained, research-capable people go? And did they undertake research when they got there?

Some went into industry and government, but the third sector (comprising NGOs and think tanks) was booming. Since the end of WWII, there has been strong growth in the number of new third sector organizations (see chart) and these organizations must have been hiring researchers because they have been busy releasing research content. Policy Commons, which indexes grey literature from 9,000 IGOs, NGOs, think tanks, and research centres drawn from around the world, shows 55% more grey literature was released in 2020 compared with 2010 (287,545 items and 184,514 respectively).

Unlike their cousins in academia, researchers in government, industry, and third sectors don’t have to publish in books and journals to further their careers. They are free to work with their employers to self-publish their research as reports, papers, and other digital-first formats — their careers will not perish otherwise. In the field of policy alone, I estimate that each year sees around 400,000 newly published items of grey literature — equivalent to ~10% of the world’s entire journal output. If it remains outside the scholarly record, this is a lot of knowledge going to waste.

The Incredible Complexity of Bibliographic Control

Today, desktop publishing, web 2.0 tools and websites make it easy for anyone to self-publish. As Clay Shirky, an early internet “guru” and professor at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU said in a 2012 interview: “ Publishing is not evolving. Publishing is going away. Because the word “publishing” means a cadre of professionals who are taking on the incredible difficulty and complexity and expense of making something public. That’s not a job anymore. That’s a button. There’s a button that says “publish,” and when you press it, it’s done.”12

Shirky was half right. It is indeed easy to press a button and publish something online. The problem is that most people

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Figure 1: Number of NGOs and think tanks founded per year 1946-2015. Source: Policy Commons

who press that button are not from that cadre of professionals who understand the incredible complexity of preparing content so that it’s discoverable and useful for its readers. They don’t know how to ensure it is included in supply chains that lead to specialist discovery services and a place in the scholarly record. Nor do they understand, any more than Shirky’s interviewer did, that it isn’t “done” until the work has been safely preserved for the long run. It’s beyond ironic that links to Shirky’s interview, published in the blog, Findings, returned a “404 — page not found” within months of its publication when the blog closed and went offline.

Like Findings’ publisher, most organizations that produce grey literature have no access to the cadre of professionals who understand the incredible complexity of the bibliographic control that’s required if the content is to be easily found, cited, and not suffer link rot.6 So, it’s hardly a surprise that 75% of links to grey literature cited in scholarly journals lead to broken links or the wrong content.13

What makes this problem worse is that the ease of using Shirky’s “button” has tempted some organizations to switch from working with professional publishers to self-publishing on their websites. One of the five climate reports mentioned above is an example of this. Published annually since 1998, and now posted for free on their website, the IEA’s World Energy Outlook abandoned ISBNs and ISSNs in 2021. The IPCC used to publish with CUP but transitioned to “grey” after 2014. What was formally published is now grey literature, what previously took its place in the scholarly record is now missing.

Now, you might imagine that grey literature can be quickly found via public search engines that scan open websites. The trouble with public search engines is that they deprecate content with poor metadata on low-traffic websites — so grey literature is usually crowded out by content from “optimized” websites run by digital marketers.14 Besides, public search engines tailor results to each user’s “bubble” of preferences, attitudes, and even location. Results can change from day-to-day as algorithms evolve.15, 16 This is why most scholars and students still turn to specialist search engines where, of course, grey literature is absent.17 It’s no wonder that researchers at Concordia undertaking a literature review recently used Twitter to appeal to “the crowd” for grey literature recommendations.18

Persuading thousands of grey literature-producing organizations to employ a cadre of professionals to take on the incredibly difficult and complex and expensive work of publishing their content to the standards needed for the scholarly record is unlikely to work. My conversations with major IGOs and NGOs tell me that they are, if anything, less likely to employ staff with publishing skills, preferring instead to employ communications and social media experts. As the examples of the IEA and IPCC illustrate, non-academic organizations are moving away from scholarly publishing norms not towards them. So, what’s to be done to stop this valuable content going to waste?

If they can’t be persuaded to tame their own content, we’ll have to tame it on their behalf — and this is what we’re doing with Policy Commons. Taking a leaf out of DOAJ’s book, we start by selecting organizations that produce trustworthy content. Once accepted and entered into Policy Commons’ organizational directory, we begin the “taming” process by harvesting content

from their websites. The central challenge is to find elements on their websites and in the content itself to construct a standardized metadata record for each item harvested. We look for author names and publication dates. We look for a summary to serve as an abstract and, if we can’t find one, we “calculate” one. We look for tags and keywords and use AI to sort the content into pre-defined topics. Thumbnail cover images are generated and items that pass successfully through our filters is associated with its producing organization (rather as articles are associated with journals). The full text is poured into our search engine, which, now that it has ingested over 3.5 million items, is incredibly powerful — some users report their expectations are exceeded every time they look for content. Finally, we deposit a copy of every item in a dark archive, accessible should the link to the original version break.

The metadata we’re generating is “good enough” but still far from perfect. Sometimes file names appear as the item’s title. Author names and dates can be hard to find and extract. Summaries can be jumbled nonsense. We continue to refine our “taming” tools and welcome feedback and suggestions on how we can improve. To date, we’ve tamed just over 3.5 million items from 8,500 IGOs, NGOs and think tanks and nearly 100,000 items from the websites of the 600 largest municipal authorities across northern America. As a first step towards including this content in the scholarly record, every item is now discoverable by Google Scholar.

Over the past two decades, publishers and librarians have been focussed on capturing research findings from the academy — mainly in books and journals — to create a digital scholarly record that’s overlaid with sophisticated discovery systems for use by the academy. At the same time, they are attempting to pivot a $25BN industry to open access so the scholarly record becomes an asset not just for the academy but also for society at large.19

In parallel, and largely ignored, a growing number of researchers at non-academic institutions and organizations have been using digital publishing tools to post their research findings — as reports and papers — openly, via their websites. This is also a “$25BN” information industry, but, as I’ve shown, this grey literature is missing both from specialist discovery systems and library collections. As Wood saw, capturing grey literature for the scholarly record is incredibly complex and difficult. With Policy Commons, we are attempting to take on the challenge so grey literature will no longer be a wasted asset.

Endnotes

1. Dougherty, MV. Defining the Scholarly Record. In: Correcting the Scholarly Record for Research Integrity. Research Ethics Forum, vol 6. Springer, Cham; 2018. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-3-319-99435-2_2

2. Lavoie, B et al., The Evolving Scholarly Record. OCLC Research. Dublin, Ohio. 2014. https://doi.org/10.25333/C3763V

3. Tay, A. http://musingsaboutlibrarianship.blogspot. com/2022/06/diversity-of-scholarly-record-push-to.html

4. Links to all the items mentioned in this paragraph can be found in this List https://policycommons.net/lists/228/wait-whattheres-lots-of-vital-stuff-missing-from-the-scholarly-recorduksg-lightning-presentation/

5. Wood, DN. Management of Grey Literature. K.G. Saur. 1990 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111514598.61

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6. Lawrence, A. Influence seekers: The production of grey literature for policy and practice. Information Services & Use, vol. 2017: 37, no. 4, pp. 389-403 https://doi.org/10.3233/ISU170857

7. Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. & Mabe, M. The STM Report, 5th edition: An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing, STM. Netherlands. 2018 Retrieved from https://policycommons.net/ artifacts/1575771/2018_10_04_stm_report_2018/2265545/ on 30 Sep 2022.

8. Schöpfel, J., Towards a Prague Definition of Grey Literature. Retrieved from https://policycommons.net/artifacts/3344384/ gl12_s1p_sch_pfel/ on 22 Dec 2022.

9. Mabe, M., Amin, M. Growth dynamics of scholarly and scientific journals. Scientometrics 2001; 51:147–162 (2001). https://doi. org/10.1023/A:1010520913124

10. OECD https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiaryeducation.htm

11. Bolton, P., Education in United Kingdom: Historical statistics 1900-2010. United Kingdom. (2012) Retrieved from https:// policycommons.net/artifacts/2459320/untitled/3481117/ on 30 Sep 2022.

12. Findings Interview. How We Will Read: Clay Shirky. 2012. Retrieved from https://policycommons.net/artifacts/2676517/ how-we-will-read_-clay-shirky/3699667/ on 30 Sep 2022.

14. Bala, M., Verma, D. A Critical Review of Digital Marketing. International Journal of Management, IT & Engineering, 2018:8(10), 321–339. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/ abstract=3545505

15. Ćurković, M., Košec, A. Bubble effect: including Internet search engines in systematic reviews introduces selection bias and impedes scientific reproducibility. BMC Med Res Methodol 2018:18, 130. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-018-0599-2

16. Urman, A., Makhortykh, M., & Ulloa, R. The Matter of Chance: Auditing Web Search Results Related to the 2020 U.S. Presidential Primary Elections Across Six Search Engines. Social Science Computer Review, 2002:40(5), 1323–1339. https://doi. org/10.1177/08944393211006863

17. Gusenbauer, M. Google Scholar to overshadow them all? Comparing the sizes of 12 academic search engines and bibliographic databases. Scientometrics 2019:118, 177–214. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2958-5

18. Ziter, C. Tweet @carlyziter 5:08pm October 18, 2022 https:// twitter.com/carlyziter/status/1582403379007193088

19. Johnson, R., Watkinson, A. & Mabe, M. The STM Report, 5th edition: An overview of scientific and scholarly publishing, STM. Netherlands. 2018 Retrieved from https://policycommons.net/ artifacts/1575771/2018_10_04_stm_report_2018/2265545/ on 30 Sep 2022.

13. Jones SM, Van de Sompel H, Shankar H, Klein M, Tobin R, Grover

The Future of Teaching is Outside the Textbook: OER and Learning Objects

By Andrea Eastman-Mullins (Founder / CEO, West End Learning) <andrea@westendlearning.com>

Affordable learning has captured libraries’ attention over the past ten years. Even before COVID, 78% of all U.S. academic libraries supported course materials1 and nearly half listed Open Educational Resources (OER) as a top priority.2

Learning content found openly or through the library can save students significant cost over commercial curriculum. SPARC estimates that adopting OER has saved students an average of $160 per course and over $1 billion worldwide so far. There are pedagogical benefits too. The ability to revise and remix digital content licensed for reuse encourages more effective teaching over static copyright-restrictive textbooks. Faculty can customize content to make classes more inclusive, learner-centered, and social. Aggregate studies show OERs to be equally or more effective than commercial curriculum in achieving learning outcomes.3

Most libraries support affordable learning through the lens of books — offering textbooks on reserve, ordering eBooks for courses, and advocating for OER textbooks. Yet faculty are teaching with learning content beyond the book. Digital learning objects like videos, podcasts, interactive quizzes, case studies, etc. can have the same impact on student outcomes, are less expensive to create, and are growing in use. Since this content doesn’t follow traditional models, faculty are designing their own materials and sharing ideas in ways that are often temporal and siloed. Lacking a reliable way to find relevant learning resources, faculty often become frustrated and revert to commercial curriculum, placing the costs back on students who need support the most.

At West End Learning we see a future where learning materials are free for students, modular, and easily shared. We consult with like-minded faculty, libraries, and organizations trying innovative approaches to get there. We see firsthand the challenges faculty face evaluating these learning materials and the opportunities libraries have to support this shift. Learning content other than textbooks has enormous potential to improve teaching and student affordability, but it needs discovery, trust, and recognition. By reallocating some of the attention spent on books to modular or microlearning content, libraries can empower faculty to move much more quickly.

Energy Spent on Textbooks

Nationally the most federal and private OER funding goes to open textbook initiatives. The U.S. Department of Education issues grants for $6-7 million annually for OER textbook adoption programs4 and has funded $17M on OER textbooks so far. OpenStax out of Rice University has raised millions over the past 10 years from federal grants and private donations to produce over 40 OER textbooks, now used in over 60% of U.S. higher education institutions. The Open Education Network (previously the Open Textbook Network), an index of OER textbooks, now catalogs over 1,000 open textbooks in its library.

But OERs aren’t just textbooks. UNESCO defines OER as “learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-

cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others.”5

Textbooks are a natural first step into affordable learning as most digital transformations initially replicate the print experience. Books provide a precedent for peer-review, publication, and context for instructors to apply concepts in the classroom. But they are also the most time-intensive and expensive learning materials to produce. On average a textbook costs $18,000 to create over a two- to three-year period. The time to develop a textbook dates content, and faculty must make a sustained time commitment to the project. Updates are either community-driven or require additional grant funding to resources.

What’s more, faculty are evolving their way of teaching. Working with hundreds of educators over the past few years, we have found 100% are teaching with online content that replaces or supplements a textbook. Faculty surveys by Bay View Analytics show close to 70% of faculty already skip or reorder textbook chapters and more than 40% replace textbook material with other content.6 The COVID era only accelerated this shift with a growing emphasis on video and multimedia. In medical education and other applied fields, for example, video and emerging VR plays an increasingly vital role. In fact, the top resource consulted the night before a surgery is YouTube.7 A faculty-created nonprofit, the Neurosurgical Atlas, captures over 600 operative video cases used by 70,000 members globally.8 In the latest ITHAKA faculty survey, more than twice as many faculty report creating open video lectures than open textbooks.9

In addition to tracking OER textbook listings in syllabi, the Open Syllabus Project has begun to identify assigned nontraditional learning materials like podcasts, news articles, and television episodes. It found episodes of the podcasts This American Life and Radiolab in over 800 syllabi.10 Podcasts are used increasingly in teaching with some faculty helping others discover episodes for use in the classroom. Dr. Rebecca White, Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Tampa, for example, hosts her own podcast and categorizes the episodes for teaching, using the term “podagogy” for her work.11 Faculty rated freely available online resources as equally important as library materials in the latest ITHAKA faculty survey, which also reports a decline in the interest in monographs.12

So why are most resources allocated to the content that is the most expensive to produce, the most dated, and trending down in use? If our objective is student success in terms of affordability and pedagogy, we need to look beyond the OER textbook.

The Need for Library Support

Faculty are forging their own paths outside traditional channels. The COVID years have created an urgency to redesign courses using not only digital content, but content that engages students who are “mentally, emotionally, and financially drained.”13 Faculty are reporting what the Chronicle of Higher Education calls “a stunning level of student disconnection,”14 which often manifests in low attendance, incomplete homework, and not reading the textbook. Faculty are taking immediate

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action and supporting each other, using YouTube, Twitter, email, Zoom chats, and colleagues for resources and ideas. Countless Google spreadsheets have been created to “capture the ideas shared in this thread,” linking to open articles, syllabi, video, podcasts, and class activities. They are stored on nonprofit websites, Google Drives, association websites, learning management systems, and personal blogs. In March 2020, Pandemic Pedagogy emerged as one of hundreds of Facebook and social channels where faculty can exchange ideas. It now has 31.7k members. This is the desired path faculty are creating — quick and low-stakes ways to share microlearning content and recommendations between colleagues.

While this rapid growth can be positive for students, it is problematic for discovery and equitable access to these valued materials long-term. In the courses West End Learning has helped redesign, we’ve seen faculty struggle to find something as simple as a short video giving an overview of speech pathology to non-majors or a class activity for undergraduates that focuses on women in management. The content is there, but finding the right material for a specific teaching need is a time-consuming project, overly reliant on serendipity.

Discovery

With over 70 OER sites to search and thousands of disciplinespecific micro collections, faculty lack an efficient way to discover learning objects and OER. The underlying metadata is weak and inconsistent with over 200 fields of unstructured metadata. Despite past attempts, there is no prevailing platform that includes both OER and materials licensed by academic libraries, which can also save student cost. Many studies show time as the most significant barrier to adoption of OER with some reporting it takes over 160 extra hours to develop a course using these materials.

Many think that Google would be a sufficient discovery tool, but finding teaching materials requires much more than just a search. While looking for topics, faculty are also assessing quality, fit for course level, reputation of source, length, overlap with existing material, how current and engaging it is, and how to teach with it. It’s not just timeconsuming, it’s “mind-consuming,” as several OER advocates have described. Despite efforts of MERLOT, Open Education Network, and many others, there is no accepted quality standard equivalent to textbook peer review. The original materials can be out of date, use old technologies, lack high-quality scientific artwork, or contain errors. The only way to vet this material is to fully view it, which is time prohibitive for most educators. Faculty who are teaching a topic for the first time or librarians supporting faculty outside their subject expertise need an established vetting process to trust the material. Despite all the content, OER repositories, and LibGuides developed, most educators just want referrals. Even librarians--expert in the available tools — ask sometimes more than ten times a week on the OER listserv for recommendations on behalf of faculty. Teaching requires less content with more trust; Google has more content with less trust.

Inequities

Due to the time investment needed to adopt, the best content is missed by those who may need it most. An adjunct instructor at a community college, for example, is unlikely to spend the time to find an open case study or assignment that best reflects the students in the class. With even less campus support in the form of staff and course release grants, almost all the work is put on overworked and underpaid faculty. Since most referrals for content are shared with those in the know of the right listserv, conference, or social media feed, very little is discoverable by those new to the field. As a result it becomes much easier to assign a commercial curriculum that provides teaching guidance. Yet, that often pushes the cost back to the students who are least able to cover it. On the occasion that faculty are able to put in the work, they have even less time to ensure it is shared with others. Author perspectives can therefore be limited to faculty with the privilege of time and institutional funding to support their work.

Evolving Support Beyond Textbooks

Requiring a considerable time commitment with little return in royalties or tenure, OER is the open movement with the most headwind against faculty. Yet faculty are vital to its adoption. How can libraries innovate to support faculty best?

Solutions will require us to think differently. Moving from an $8 billion student-funded textbook industry to an affordable learning model is a complex challenge with many overlapping systems in play including industry, bookstores, libraries, teaching and learning centers, administration, funders, students, and faculty. Solving a complex problem is an unknown path. It requires creative thinking and small experiments that break from what has worked before. What are some experiments we can learn from?

To help with discovery, librarians are working to unify repositories through federated search via the George Mason OER Metafinder 15 or metadata standards such as the OER Rosetta Stone16 developed in 2021 by the SPARC-facilitated OER Discovery Working Group. Although useful to strengthen the OER infrastructure, faculty still need more context to determine what to use when they find teaching materials. Many libraries have dedicated OER staff and/or are allocating increasing time to OER programs and LibGuides. A Google search of .edu sites mentioning LibGuide and OER found 39,000 pages, showing considerable work supporting OER discovery. LibGuides have been a natural start, but now we are learning that faculty need help at the discipline and item level. A listing of databases works well for comprehensive research but less so for teaching which needs curation and pedagogical context. At OpenEd 2022, Grand Valley State University library shared their work developing a custom curation service for faculty. Evolving it to scale to support many courses led them to clarify the process and involve student workers. The revised approach reduced the workload from an average of up to seven hours to up to three hours per curation.17

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Most libraries would struggle to allocate enough resource and subject-specific expertise to curate open content at that level. And faculty typically turn to teaching colleagues in their own field rather than to the library. The need for recommendations within the discipline has led scholarly associations and societies to curate teaching materials. In response to COVID, the American Historical Association launched a collection of vetted Remote Teaching Resources18 organized by geography, theme, and time period with the support of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) CARES Grant. Many associations, including our client, USASBE, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, feature teaching sections at their annual conference and share learning assets for reuse between members. Associations are a trusted discipline-specific home for recommendations and often can provide context of how to teach with the material.

Recognizing the need to further curate modular learning objects and the silos of local curations, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management (ISKME) received an IMLS grant to pilot new tools to enable libraries to share local OER evaluation and course alignment data. They are now piloting the project with OER Commons partners, LOUIS, VIVA and OhioLINK and three external consortia, PALNI, PALCI, and DigiTex. We can follow results of this pilot through 2023.19

Aligning OER to learning objectives will become easier as technology and metadata standards evolve. Experiments have already succeeded using natural language processing to align structured data in Wikipedia and textbooks to course objectives.20 The Open Syllabus Project is working to automatically extract learning objectives from syllabi on a large scale.21 As OER metadata and infrastructure matures, the data will be there to automatically align affordable learning content to more than just topic and format.

How much faster could we go if we repurposed a percentage of the resources allocated to books to these ideas? Through our clients at West End Learning, we see how libraries can be a key participant in affordable curriculum design. Sustainable solutions will be cooperations between libraries, industry, faculty development, publishers, and discipline-specific organizations. Sharing the results from all our innovations will advance our work. Conferences like OpenEd, Educause, OLC Accelerate, and library meetings are facilitating communication between these voices. How can we think beyond the textbook in our next OER projects?

Endnotes

1. https://www.libraryjournal.com/story/libraries-play-a-keyrole-in-campus-oer-adoption

2. https://sr.ithaka.org/publications/ithaka-sr-us-librarysurvey-2019

3. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-019-09700-4

4. https://www2.ed.gov/programs/otp/awards.html

5. https://www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources

6. Bay View Analytics, Freeing the Textbook, 2018. https://www. bayviewanalytics.com/reports/freeingthetextbook2018.pdf

7. Allison K. Rapp, Michael G. Healy, Mary E. Charlton, Jerrod N. Keith, Marcy E. Rosenbaum, Muneera R. Kapadia, YouTube is the Most Frequently Used Educational Video Source for Surgical Preparation. Journal of Surgical Education, Volume 73, Issue 6, 2016, p. 1072-1076. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsurg.2016.04.024

8. https://www.neurosurgicalatlas.com/

9. ITHAKA U.S. Faculty Survey, 2021. https://sr.ithaka.org/ publications/ithaka-sr-us-faculty-survey-2021/#teaching-andlearning

10. https://blog.opensyllabus.org/your-favorite-episode/

11. https://drrebeccawhite.com/

12. ITHAKA U.S. Faculty Survey, 2021. https://sr.ithaka.org/ publications/ithaka-sr-us-faculty-survey-2021/#teaching-andlearning

13. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/04/19/surveycollege-students-reflect-mental-health-and-campus-help

14. https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-stunning-level-ofstudent-disconnection Beth McMurtrie APRIL 5, 2022.

15. https://mom.gmu.edu

16. OER Rosetta Stone, OER Working Group, https://docs.google. com/document/d/14tYwNEzr1EKMJAEDHVx2BXeyXFCCSCLG ea1lCuySkZE/edit#heading=h.xbfhehpfr3vt

17. Matt Ruen, Chealsye Bowley, and Erica Schiller, Launching an OER Curation Service and Framework, OpenEd2022, https://opened22. sched.com/event/977fd928716bd84f49f17e030853e7ea

18. https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/remoteteaching-resources

19. https://www.imls.gov/grants/awarded/lg-246327-ols-20

20. A. Siren and V. Tzerpos, “Automatic Learning Path Creation Using OER: A Systematic Literature Mapping,” in IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 493-507, 1 Aug. 2022, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2022.3193751

21. https://blog.opensyllabus.org/a-national-learning-outcomemap/

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Today’s Streaming Media Landscape: Opportunities and Possibilities

By Jessica Lawrence-Hurt (Chief Marketing Officer, Cadmore Media) <jessica@cadmore.media>

“Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.” — Goethe

Media content has long had a home, if a somewhat niche one, in the libraries of higher learning. Media librarians carefully curated a collection of VHS and DVD tapes, hunting down special requests from faculty, keeping track of course reserves, and helping students include video in their projects. The boom in educational streaming media really started about ten years ago, and companies like Alexander Street, Films on Demand, Kanopy, and Sage all offered curated subject collections of primary resources, complete with MARC records, COUNTER-compliant stats, and transcriptions. I remember telling streaming skeptics (in a previous role as marketing director at Alexander Street), that YouTube was the second largest search engine in the world. They have retained that spot, and two and half years from the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the demand for streaming media among students, faculty, and researchers alike has never been higher. This article seeks to outline some of the opportunities available to libraries and publishers and invite collaboration in proactively determining streaming’s role in higher education and research.

Note: This isn’t to say there are many valuable resources that are either not yet available for educational licensing or are only available on physical formats — that is outside the scope of this article, yet good work is being done on multiple fronts to collect, archive, convert, and make available these resources, while there is still time.

The Current Landscape of Streaming Media

While acquiring multimedia content used to be the purview of dedicated media librarians, now almost anyone in collection development or electronic acquisitions is expected to take into consideration all types of media in their collection strategy and be comfortable procuring such resources.

The number of players in the market has increased, too, to keep up with the surge in demand (and content digitization). Today, in addition to the companies noted above, libraries can license media content directly from a number of scholarly associations, including SPIE , AAOS , APA , and NEJM , and publishers such as Springer Nature and JoVE. Many published conference proceedings now include the relevant video recording alongside the papers, such as IEEE. Meeting content curated across a range of subjects can be acquired from Underline. Some associations are partnering with other organizations in a similar space and curating their own libraries of media content, such as Bone & Joint’s Orthomedia. [My current company, Cadmore Media, provides the underlying technology for some of these products, but does not license content directly.]

Library media budgets have increased very modestly over the years, even as the volume of content has dramatically increased. The Streaming Media Licensing and Purchasing Practices at Academic Libraries Survey conducted by Ithaka earlier in 2022 revealed that “Streaming media is a growing segment of the library materials budget, with its footprint projected to double over the next five years.”

Even with that increase, though, 90%+ of library acquisitions budgets are still anticipated to go to books and journals (with an overwhelming majority going to journals). Does that allotment still make sense in light of current needs and goals? Does 90%+ of library resource usage come from text-based materials? What impact will Open Access and big deal cancellations have on this allocation?

I invite you to consider these questions in light of how streaming resources are currently being discovered and used by students; faculty needs and the impact of tightening budgets on their professional development; the types of streaming content available and what it can be used for; and how the scholarly ecosystem supports (or fails to support) non-book and journal resources.

Students currently enrolled in higher education have an expectation that learning resources will be offered in a variety of formats to match their learning preferences and cognitive styles. Many used Khan Academy videos in high school to learn material in a different way than was presented in class, or to brush up on concepts prior to an exam. Video can provide insight into how science works and how research actually gets done, communicated, and refined. Students know that a vast quantity of video demonstrations, lab processes, lectures, and problem-solving techniques are all available on their phones, whether they know to try the library catalog to access these tools or not.

Unfortunately, YouTube, TikTok, and other mass communication social tools lack adequate metadata models to surface specifically relevant, scholarly content. Users are directed to the most-watched content and content that fits with previously used search terms, meaning that much of the accurate, carefully vetted content that is available goes unfound, creating whatever is the opposite of a virtuous circle. This is why when I hear “we put some videos on YouTube and no one watched them,” as a reason not to adopt a video strategy, I have to go lie down.

Many professors will identify with the example I heard recently from a lecturer who was wondering why several students provided the same odd — and incorrect — response on an exam, and was ultimately able to trace it back to a popular video on YouTube that provided incorrect information. You have to admire the students seeking out new ways to understanding a confusing concept, and yet I cringe thinking of all the high quality, vetted content that was certainly available through their library or relevant professional association. The point being: students are already using streaming content to a significant degree. Let’s make sure it’s both easily accessible and reliable.

In a similar vein, while most library media budgets prioritize resources for teaching and learning for undergraduates, researchers and early career scholars find value in streaming media as well. In a separate research report from Ithaka, the U.S. Faculty Survey 2021, faculty identified conferences and workshops as their preferred way of staying on top of research in their field by a wide margin. Of course, not all faculty can

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attend all of the relevant research conferences (with the opportunities even more limited for those just starting out), so the potential acquisition of content from the leading scientific meetings may well be a way to support researchers.

Of course, this varies quite a bit by subject area (my brother is a mathematician; good luck getting him or his colleagues to create a video explaining his equations); but where video does work, it’s very effective: music, theatre, and dance performance; oral history interviews and speeches; anthropological field research; surgical techniques, and more.

Elsewhere in this issue of Against the Grain are more articles delving into the abundance of “alternative” content types that present significant value in education and research and yet have historically been more challenging to locate, cite, and share. As are white papers, data sets, interviews, case studies, and so forth, some types of streaming content have intrinsic value to scholars, whether or not they have been peer reviewed. (Our recent president’s use of Twitter, as an obvious example.) There is a vast world of podcasts, webinars, interviews, and panel discussions from think tanks, professional associations, scholarly societies, working groups, and public commissions that can be used for teaching today and will be of research interest in the future. Yet because these raw, primary materials are generated from sources outside the traditional scholarly ecosystem, they are unlikely to be indexed, cataloged, discovered, cited, or preserved.

In the cases of many types of media, the way the current scholarly ecosystem is functioning is not working. By and large, it is designed to support only certain types of content. Peer review submission systems are often unable to accommodate multimedia files. Leading indexers and abstracters (cough, PubMed, cough) do not accept video journals. An entire industry where the overwhelming majority of content is generated by Western scholars. What is left out? Who is left out?

On the other hand, there are elements of the ecosystem that do work just fine for “alternative” types of content: DOIs can be assigned, creating permanent links that reduce the link rot that occurs regularly on syllabi filled with YouTube links. MARC records can be created and cataloged. COUNTER-compliant stats can be generated. Streaming media can be embedded on most learning management systems. Options exist to preserve and archive these types of materials via dark archives.

The Opportunity to Shape the Future

Thinking about the next twenty or so years in our industry, it seems clear that the overwhelming majority of scholarly content will be “open.” It will also most likely be accompanied by more than one media type, and be highly interactive, accessible, and embeddable. The line between what is considered scholarly and what is not will become further blurred. The risks are not insignificant, and the continued erosion of information literacy and distrust of authoritative sources and scientific process will certainly have a detrimental effect.

Taking a wide view of this community’s past shows that, if nothing else, despite the migration of content types to one form or another, curriculum trends, and leadership whims, the skills that librarians and publishers occasionally take for granted are more applicable than ever in this scenario. The ability to bring order to chaos through thoughtful application of a workflow. The high value placed on preserving knowledge for future generations. The discernment to tell facts from “alternative facts” and teach such skills. A genuine love for metadata management and search functionality. Passion for accessibility and equity. Information parsing. Analytical ability. Curation skills!

The future is being shaped now, with or without us. The need for our skills has never been in more demand by learners and researchers alike. Let’s not be limited by what we’ve done, or not done, in the past or wait for the system or the budget to direct us.

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Wild Content Under Attack: The story of Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online (SUCHO)

By Genevieve Croteau (Chief Operating Officer, Coherent Digital, LLC) <gcroteau@coherentdigital.net>

On February 24, 2022, Russian missiles struck Ukraine. Screens around the world lit up with news of a new war.

Thousands of miles away at Tufts University in Boston, music librarian Anna Kijas couldn’t look away. Like many, she was searching for a way to help. “I knew there were precious cultural materials in Ukrainian institutions that were in immediate danger. Handwritten scores and one-of-a-kind manuscripts that could be lost forever.”

There was nothing she could do from Boston to protect physical artifacts from being bombed, but she had been involved in data rescue efforts in the past. She understood that sometimes there’s only one digital copy of a cultural artifact and that the digital copy is also at risk. That was a problem she could help solve.

Two days after the invasion, Anna tweeted that she would be organizing a data rescue workshop focused on music collections at cultural heritage institutions in Ukraine. Her tweet caught the attention of Quinn Dombroski of Stanford University and Sebastian Majstorovic at the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage.

“Anna’s tweet broke through my paralysis with the war,” Quinn recalls with feeling. “As a historian, I thought, OK, what else should be saved?” Sebastian adds.

The three have impressive professional backgrounds. Anna works as Head of Lilly Music Library at Tufts University and is a musician herself. Quinn is an Academic Technology Specialist at Stanford, where she “supports scholars doing computational analysis of literature in Slavic and other languages.” Sebastian is a freelance IT consultant in Vienna with a degree in film, a PhD in history, and a professional background in software development.

They met online and quickly expanded Anna’s data rescue project to include all digitized Ukrainian cultural heritage objects that they could find on various websites, including those of archives, museums, galleries, schools, local libraries, and even personal collections.

They also knew that time was short, as the war endangered all aspects of life in Ukraine. Within days, they had co-founded Saving Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Online, or SUCHO. In record time, the team had spun up a website and organized the tools they would need to empower a growing army of volunteers — Slack, Google Sheets, the Internet Archive, an open-source capture tool called Web Recorder.

Word spread, and their project went viral. By the end of the first week, over a thousand volunteers joined the effort, including librarians, humanities scholars, technologists, and students.

Starting from a modest wish to help, Anna, Quinn, and Sebastian had stepped into a virtual war zone and launched the world’s first large-scale wartime web archiving project.

how and why digital artifacts disappear. The co-founders quickly realized that part of their job was to explain the problem to journalists and the general public.

“We need to make people more aware of how fragile the Internet actually is,” explains Sebastian. “Sometimes there’s only one copy. There’s no digital twin.” He further explains that the threats come in two flavors: physical and virtual.

So how is a digital artifact threatened by a fire, flood, bombing, or looting? Digital objects exist on servers — physical machines that are often housed locally on site. If a server is destroyed and there’s no backup, the digital copy is lost.

One night in March, Sebastian experienced this first-hand. He was scanning SUCHO’s enormous, shared Google Sheet for the next website to archive and chose the State Archive of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city. Its website contains valuable primary-source history dating from the 1800s, including documents about Holodomor and Stalin’s purges in the 1930s.

Within hours of preserving 100GB of data, Sebastian learned that the building had been shelled and the website was offline.

Virtual threats include cyber attacks, traffic rerouting, Internet outages, or more mundane circumstances like loss of funding or unpaid bills. “Maybe the person that was supposed to renew the subscription had to flee. In a war, there are scenarios beyond our ability to imagine.”

Sebastian believes that the cloud has introduced magical thinking about the Internet’s permanence. He works to correct these ideas by explaining, “The Internet is really made up of people: webmasters, system administrators, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and registrars — there are many custodians along this chain that actively maintain the infrastructure. If one link in the chain is damaged, valuable data can be permanently lost.”

For librarians and digital preservationists, the stakes are only growing. Over the last twenty years, millions of cultural artifacts and hundreds of thousands of collections have been digitized. Born digital content — material that originates in digital form — is also valuable. Properly backing up data takes resources, and often there’s simply not enough time and money.

“These are the records of our past and the records of our time. We need to preserve them for future generations,” Sebastian urges.

In a war zone, the clock is ticking.

With over 1,000 volunteers archiving websites around the clock, Phase One of the SUCHO project was well underway. It was time for the co-founders to start refining their goals and planning for the future.

Outside of the scholarly community, most people think that digital content lasts forever. They don’t understand

The team met with 300 Ukrainian cultural heritage professionals in a Zoom meeting to gather feedback and align priorities. Approaching SUCHO with a conscientiousness

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characteristic of the profession, their intention has always been to work alongside the Ukrainian cultural heritage community and to offer restitution when that community is ready.

“We don’t know when the war will end, but when the Ukrainian cultural heritage workers are in a position to rebuild, we’ll have what they need to be able to do that.”

In the meeting, they received important guidance and the following priorities:

1. Raise awareness of Ukrainian cultural heritage.

2. Get digitization equipment to sites in the Ukraine.

3. Train people in digitization, metadata, and curation best practices.

4. Provide platforms for digital preservation.

Phase 2 will focus on getting digitization equipment to cultural heritage workers on the ground. The team has established an equipment fund and collected requests from twenty-nine Ukrainian institutions. Amazon Web Services is a major donor of both equipment and cash. Already, SUCHO has raised 200,000 euros and is searching for a Ukrainian institution to help administer the funds and a Ukrainian logistics partner on the ground.

“There are many delicate decisions. We can’t do this from afar. People on the ground always know better,” emphasizes Sebastian.

The cultural value of the newly digitized materials will be stunning. One regional library in Cherkasy plans to digitize 1,000 rare books, some of them unique regional histories. They have also established a contest for children to create artwork depicting their experiences of the war.

SUCHO’s spectacular rise and accomplishments deserve to be mined for their lessons.

“I would really like to translate this into other civil society efforts,” says Sebastian. “To synthesize the lessons of SUCHO for other people to organize in a similar fashion.”

A journalist recently told Sebastaian that SUCHO reminded him of the internet of the 90s. Instead of owning or controlling every aspect of the project they had launched, the co-founders took a grassroots approach, continually democratizing processes and mobilizing and empowering others. They relied on selftraining, self-organized workflows, and a motto: “If something is important to you, go for it.”

With this ethos, SUCHO evolved at an otherwise impossible pace and delivered outcomes that Anna, Quinn, and Sebastian could never have predicted. One example is the creation of a meme wall preserving Ukrainian war memes, which now drives the majority of traffic to SUCHO’s site.

Their grassroots, community approach also allowed the threesome to continually reconfigure their own roles and to focus on long-term sustainability and partnerships. They’ve been invited to meetings with UNESCO, IFLA, and the Ukrainian Library Association. Last month, Sebastian was invited to speak at Europeana’s annual conference and to present a call to action: let us work together to help Ukraine establish a National Digital Library.

As the team at SUCHO acknowledges, it is not only Ukrainian cultural heritage that is urgently at risk. Around the world, “wild content” is under attack in wars, culture wars, climate change, and more. There is room for many organizations, with many different models, to make a difference.

Sebastian explains. “It’s clear that this war is an attempt at memorycide and cultural genocide. We need to protect the very things that are the target of this war.” Quinn agrees, “This is a war about who gets to have a country, who gets to have a language, who gets to have a culture.”

What started as a humble tweet has become an act of defiance against a war of aggression. To date, SUCHO’s 1,500 volunteers have archived more than 5,000 websites, totaling 50 terabytes.

“When librarians get together, amazing things can happen,” smiles Sebastian.

The SUCHO story is ongoing. For a companion interview with the founders or to get involved visit https://www.sucho.org/

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This work, “Rodzik SUCHO Poster” by Rodzik, Olga is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Against the Grain.

Open Web Curation

By Gary Price (Co-Founder, infoDJ; Co-Founder, Editor, infoDOCKET; Editor, ARL Day in Review) <gprice@gmail.com> and Curtis Michelson (CEO, infoDJ) <curtis@infodj.io>

More than ever, citizens and especially students need ready access to authoritative, trustworthy information. It’s out there, but given the sheer volume of material and the frenetic pace of information sharing, markers of credibility are eroding. Twitter, TikTok and the like dominate students’ news gathering, and nefarious actors truck in conspiracy theories on those platforms. Meanwhile, high quality born-digital initiatives and resources struggle to be discovered and shared. We call this lesser explored universe of trustworthy information the “credible web.” It is large and growing.

We hope that libraries and allied organizations can find more ways to uncover, index and share this dynamic and growing region of the open Internet with their patrons and wider world. This article aims to provide a bit of backstory and context for the mission of mining the credible web and some practical ways to begin. We humbly propose an updated mission for libraries and librarians, beyond collection management and towards active curation and publishing.

What is The Credible Web?

So what kind of artifacts comprise the credible web? We’re talking about things like reports coming out of think tanks, NGOs and research institutes. Government reports along with the figures, tables and graphics embedded therein. These high quality (often peer-reviewed) sources of information can bring rich context to student’s social media fed news diets and classroom discussions. We also include the various speciality datasets and interactive visualizations from institutions like the Smithsonian, NOAA, the International Energy Agency and the like. For a more representative list of this latter category, see the searchable database we have compiled at Open Web Tools.

The question that comes up is, if this material is open and available and of such high quality, why is it not more widely discovered and shared? Put simply, the good stuff is hiding in plain sight, or rather on the Nth page of Google search results. One definition of the “invisible web” is simply the Google results below the first scroll. And, complicating the situation is the fact that once discovered, reports take time to read and digest. These are not headlines that easily roll over a tik-tok or feed. A 250-page PDF needs a wider screen and a bit of time to review.

Libraries and librarians are and always will be ideally suited for this task. They gather selections of materials from a variety of sources, make enough sense of them to mark them up with some metadata and then share them in a variety of ways with users. In the age of digitization, our users can be both near and far, an IP address somewhere in the world. The process of gathering, organizing and exposing these materials to our global users is perhaps a new facet of collection development and perhaps one day a part of library science degree programs.

How Did We Get Here?

In the early days of the web, there were any number of libraryled projects working to help organize the web. A few years later most of these projects disappeared. Here are just three noteworthy examples from the “scholarly graveyard.”

InfoMine From UC Riverside

Librarians’ Index to the Internet

Resource Discovery Network (UK)

These were well intentioned, but now many years on, we see that the information world has exploded and it has split into niche channels and niche search experiences and interfaces. Some of those niche channels are extremely high quality and relevant, or what we call credible. Look at The Global Jukebox, ReliefWeb or Jurist. Again, see Open Web Tools for more.

Call To Action

Perhaps it’s time for library communities to think anew. Much of this content is what libraries have long aspired to track; namely, being able to discover and share relevant credible sources with their patrons. Now they can. The challenges presented by this opportunity do not come from negotiating big deals or monitoring subscription license charges (95%+ of this information is free to the end user). Rather, now that this trove of authoritative content is right before us, the issue is more of an internal resource allocation challenge in which management and library leadership need to develop strategies for advancing discovery and use of the credible web in a timely manner for their various end users.

As we will demonstrate in our attached video (see below), there are relatively low costs ways to begin wading into this wild wiggly web. With simple tools, we can begin to collect and share wild content and do so rigorously by applying “classic” library concepts of collection development (e.g., reputation of publisher, update frequency, etc.) Will we need to make modifications or adaptations? Absolutely. To take one example, there is a real phenomenon of links or sub-pages on sites (so called “deep links”) disappearing or changing (see sidebar “Measuring the Ephemeral Web”). So that is a challenge — open web pages may change in small or even large ways over time. But, perhaps that’s part of the new library mission too, to keep a digital breadcrumb trail to versions of these documents over time which can also provide fascinating timelines and context. We will demonstrate some ways to do this in our video.

Librarian as Curator, Library as Publisher

We might be suggesting a “flipping the script” for libraries. Rather than just acquiring big collections and opening the gates to them via generic OPAC interfaces, we are envisioning a future supplemental stream of library activity that curates

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companion open web content to supplement and enhance the use of journals, books and course materials. With new tools in our hands, is it time to try again? And, if libraries are curating, perhaps when they share these just-in-time goodies with their patrons, they are really publishing. Imagine a subset of library staff which publish topic-specific news feeds to classes or professors. This is a higher level of service, and certainly has costs attached. But what might the conversation sound like at the next annual budget meeting if one was to propose reallocating some funds toward curatorial publishing?

There are as many reasons as there are materials and users. Here are just a few key reasons:

• Currency: providing our users with the latest data on a topic.

• Provenance: Getting material directly from the source. These are primary and secondary sources that can and will likely be cited in the formal scholarly record later.

• Credibility: With globally maintained library authority files virtually every source of information whether it’s a person, an institution/corporation or even a body hidden behind the pseudonym could be easily identified on-fly.

• Context: This material adds the backstory and trend lines to stories in the news. See Project Info Literacy report, especially recommendation #4.

• Open Access: end users don’t hit paywalls.

The Google Paradox

Inevitably, we hear, “it’s in Google, why do we need to do this ourselves?” While it’s technically the case that most all the content we are speaking about is somewhere in Google, it certainly doesn’t mean the end user will ever find it, either because Google’s relevance algorithm buries it, or due to people’s casual search habits. If there is too much to fit on a single page of results, users miss it. What we’re describing is not the recreation of Google but more like what was once called SDI or selective dissemination of information. Getting better control of this material (both text and audiovisual) helps librarians and others in the selection of materials for LibGuides, webliographies, and other tools.

Where To Begin

As a start, let’s establish some working principles. To share the credible web in a robust scalable way, it would be ideal if each library’s effort was:

• Cooperative. How might staff and even student teams organize and work together?

• Made up of a diverse mix of both generalists and subject experts

• Included experts from the digital preservation web archiving, machine learning and multimedia production communities

• Later, partnered with vendors and publishers to assist with technology, metadata, and distribution

Consider asking a colleague or two to join you in the following process of initial source gathering:

• Select a few topics to begin, something of relevance to your institution or to a campus department

• Consider inviting a faculty member from that department to advise you

• Investigate who are the key providers of credible materials on this topic? (Go beyond books & journals, consider reports from think tanks and topic-specific news outlets and trade organizations.

• Consider including multimedia content such as podcasts and even video feeds (YouTube, etc.)

• Identify key voices in these topics. Do they offer newsletters or feeds that can alert you to new materials when they become available? Capture their Twitter or other social handles.

• Leverage your subscription databases to alert you to new materials, reports as well.

• See if trade/business press publications cover the same topics. Can they be used to help identify people, organizations, reports, etc?

Once these sources are named and captured, and you begin surfacing documents they make available, read them back to front to mine the reference lists for more sources to monitor. Rinse, repeat. The same goes for captions on charts and tables which often point to additional credible sources for underlying data and datasets.

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ATG Special Report — Beyond the BPC: Making Open Access Book Publishing Fair, Sustainable and Equitable

By Emily Poznanski (Press Director, CEU Press) <PoznanskiE@press.ceu.edu>

and Tom Grady (COPIM, Birkbeck, University of London) <t.grady@bbk.ac.uk>

In today’s world, access to scholarship through subscriptions and print purchases is no longer doing justice to the academic research we publish. As the pandemic hit, many publishers temporarily pulled down their paywalls, acknowledging that the current system was not serving the needs of their researcher demographic. Seeing the impact of open access (OA) on usage, publishers and librarians now have a clear view of the future. Yet, how free digital access is financed and sustained remains a challenge and is bringing innovation in academic publishing.

At the Charleston 2022 conference, we saw books catching up with journals with a showcase of new business models designed to transition long-form publishing to OA. Now, with an increasing number of OA mandates for monographs and book chapters, the goal is to find a model, or several models, that encourage bibliodiversity, increased visibility and sustainability of long-form publishing, affordable funding and equal opportunities to publish OA.

BPC models are at various stages of trial, these include TOME, designed to support researchers through central administration university funding; UCL Press, a bespoke press funded by a wealthy university that allows free publishing for their own scholars, and charging when publishing others; Cambridge UP Flip it Open, that turns monographs into OA once a threshold has been reached through conventional sales; and Springer OA who piloted a model akin to journal read and publish deals with UC Berkeley

The other approach focuses on non-BPC models. Many presses employ a mix of revenue streams, sometimes combining library subscription/membership schemes with print sales and other income streams, including one-off BPCs when authors can access them. The library subscription models are predicated on principles not dissimilar to Subscribe to Open ( S2O ), used by some journals, that rely on multi-year membership commitments. Take for example, the Path to Open (referred to initially as Third Way) that offers a collection of eBooks via JSTOR to subscribing libraries and which embargoes content for three years, after which the eBooks are converted to OA; MIT Press’ Direct to Open , which seeks to open approximately 90 titles per year; Michigan UP’s Fund to Mission, which aims to publish 75% of the frontlist OA with the help of library community funding; and the Luminos program at the University of California Press which, in a similar way to Michigan UP, employs a cost-sharing mix of contributions. In the case of Luminos, they fund OA monographs with contributions from the author’s institution combined with a library membership scheme plus subsidies from the Press itself. Another emerging program is Opening the Future (OtF), a model developed in partnership with COPIM for smaller presses and which is being piloted by the Central European University Press and Liverpool University Press. OtF leverages backlist package sales to

open frontlist titles. At CEU Press, the aim is to convert 25 titles per year into open access, financed by backlist package subscriptions.

In a sense, the non-BPC programmes like OtF are offering an alternative to institutions that are paying to publish their own authors in OA through read and publish-type deals or through BPCs alone. So-called “diamond funding” models like OtF are perhaps better thought of as an attempt to build an open, global “collection” that is shared by libraries in common, around the world. The cost of producing OA books is paid for by the collected library subscription fees: the more libraries sign up, the more OA books can be published.

BPC-centric models still run the danger of excluding authors who do not have access to additional publication funding — a concern especially for authors in the social sciences and humanities, as well as from the global south, or from less well endowed universities unable to support BPC payments. Without a variety of alternative models, academics without access to BPCs will be unable to extend the reach of their publications beyond gated access, and studies have shown that OA leads to greater usage and citation

In order to make OA fair, the link between publication and author payment needs to be broken — that way, publishing can be truly free and accessible to everyone, no matter their affiliation.

Models like MIT Press’ Direct to Open, Michigan UP’s Fund to Mission and our own Opening the Future model rely on library funding coming either from ScholCom budgets or redirecting library acquisitions. Author-facing charges for BPCs are eliminated, and library commitments are made for multiple years, providing a known recurrent expenditure line for the library and security of cash flow to the publisher. They are all designed for long term financial sustainability for both publishers and library budgets.

Through library participation, funding for frontlist OA monographs is collected via annual payments varying between publishers and with tiered pricing to allow all types of institutions to participate. The benefit for the library is two-fold: backfile access to heavily reduced eBook packages to continue collection development, and the reduced need to spend budget on purchasing front list titles — these can be made available open access for global consumption.

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“In order to make OA fair, the link between publication and author payment needs to be broken — that way, publishing is truly free and accessible to everyone, no matter their affiliation.”

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At CEU Press, OtF offers an annual subscription to a curated eBook backlist package and an incremental opening of frontlist content: once the funding threshold for a title has been reached via library backlist subscriptions, the next monograph in the publication list can be published open access. And so on. The production cost per title is about $8,500 USD, which is financed on average through about ten package subscriptions.

Upon publication, we distribute all OA titles to all major aggregators and OA platforms. By committing to opening content ahead of publication, we avoid any accidental double-dipping: titles to be published OA are chosen three months before publication to avoid pre-publication eBook sales, and to allow the altered metadata to be disseminated and integrated into all relevant third-party systems.

But in the OA monograph world, there are still areas that can be improved:

• Spreading the understanding of open access in the academic research community. Perceptions on the quality of open access research need to reflect reality.

The workflows for peer review, the editing process and production values all remain the same whether a publication is closed or open.

• Greater participation in models that are scalable and that suit the institutional mission. For a publisher, this requires more foresight, experimentation and willingness to engage with change. For libraries, this means participating in more than one model, sharing feedback and supporting the creation and use of OA research.

Most important is a willingness to participate. Open access is the future of academic publications. We need many library participants to join one or more models — not just to finance alternatives, but also to provide feedback on the accessibility, sustainability and suitability for their academics and institutions.

To find out more about CEU Press contact Emily Poznanski, Press Director at <PoznanskiE@press.ceu.edu>, and for more information on Opening the Future in general and at Liverpool University Press contact Tom Grady, COPIM, Birkbeck, University of London at <t.grady@bbk.ac.uk> or see openingthefuture.net

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“So-called ‘diamond funding’ models are perhaps better thought of as an attempt to build an open, global collection that is shared by libraries in common, around the world.”

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Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews

Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan) <cseeman@umich.edu> Twitter @cseeman

Column Editor’s Note: Happy New Year from Michigan. As we start 2023, many of us have set up a series of resolutions for the new year. These might include things we wish to do better in the new year. These might include things we wish to do at all in the new year. These also might include stopping things that we regret doing year in year out. Whatever your resolutions are for the new year, be they written out or fluid, may you find happiness and success wherever you go.

To that end, I will share one of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2023. It is directed to my faithful and generous editor who often waits days, if not weeks, for my columns to arrive. Toni Nix is a fantastic collaborator who has helped with this column in ways that I likely cannot fully capture. So, it is to her that I set out my resolution to be a better column editor in 2023. I will get reviews back to my reviewers in a timely manner. I will get my columns in on time. I will get reviews out to the publishers when they are available. And while I will likely be distracted this year, I will keep this site up to date with all the information on this column — https://www.squirreldude.com/atg-readersroundup. While I am starting out a bit late, I do want to have some room to improve, right?

I have a brief column of works that provides both libraryfocused works and reference works that overlap a variety of areas where libraries make the world a better place. These works showcase the way that libraries support both writers and new immigrants into our communities. The reference works focus on two important areas of mental health awareness and immigration. Libraries have so many roles in our communities. Maybe the most critical role is the sharing of valuable and trustworthy information. And who couldn’t use more of that this year.

I very much appreciate the work of the reviewers who really dig into the work and provide context that may be missing elsewhere. Thank you to my reviewers for this issue: Carolyn Filippelli (University of Arkansas – Fort Smith), Steve Sowards (Michigan State University) and my colleague Sally Ziph (University of Michigan’s Kresge Library Services). As always, thank you very much for your work in bringing this column together.

If you would like to be a reviewer for Against the Grain, please write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you are a publisher and have a book you would like to see reviewed in a future column, please also write me directly. You can also find out more about the Reader’s Roundup here (new site name) — https://www. squirreldude.com/atg-readers-roundup

Happy reading and be nutty! — Corey

Hanick, Riley, Bateman, Micah, and Pierce, Jennifer Burek. Mapping the Imaginary: Supporting Creative Writers through Programming, Prompts, and Research. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2019. 201 pp. Paper, 978-0-8389-1841-8. $60.99

(ALA Member $54.89)

Reviewed by Sally Ziph (Instruction/Reference Services

Librarian, Kresge Library Services, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) <sweston@umich.edu>

Libraries are a natural destination and haven for writers of all stripes, from budding students to professionals. Many writers remember specific librarians with fondness, since they may have introduced them to the joy of reading as children through summer reading programs, and/or helped them with research for school projects and later, books and other publications. Writers inevitably start out as readers, and libraries nourish an early delight in books as well as later writing ambitions. Libraries foster this connection by events such as hosting readings for local authors, and provide a home for writing groups as well as workshops. Poetry has regained popularity in the last few years with the explosion of interesting and diverse young writers. Among the most notable example of this is Amanda Gorman, who famously read her stirring poem at President Biden’s inauguration.

This book provides an in-depth look at ways to support creative writing in the library’s community, whether that be public or academic. The three authors have expertise with both writing and library work. Hanick and Bateman have both directed creative writing programs at the undergraduate and master’s levels, and Pierce is a library school professor at the University of Iowa (home to the famous Iowa Writers Workshop.) There is also a foreword by novelist/ librarian Elizabeth McCracken.

The book is a treasure trove of ideas for any librarian interested in writing-related programming, and the book’s chapters often combine concepts in interesting ways that are designed to inspire. For example, the chapter on “Making and Manners” posits the notion that “we are what we make, but we are also how we treat one another.” Other chapters address topics such as ekphrastic writing (writing about visual art), “occupations,” and the role of “place” in writing. An appendix on poetic rhyme and meter provides a helpful overview, and the section on research strategies is perfect for librarians interested in instructing writers in the art of research. Each chapter also includes programming ideas, prompts, and suggested resources for the various genres. I found the prompts

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Runyon on New Year’s Eve looking deep in thought. Taken at Rolling Hills County Park, Ypsilanti, MI.

and suggested activities to be fresh and engaging (though of course there are also some old favorites), and the resources and suggested reading lists are extensive and inclusive. This book belongs in the collection of any public or academic librarian serious about creating inspiring and engaging creative writing programming.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Ndumu, Ana (ed.). Borders & Belonging: Critical Examinations of Library Approaches Toward Immigrants. Sacramento, CA: Library Juice Press, 2021. 978-1-63400-082-6. vi + 311 pages. $35.00. https://litwinbooks.com/

Shally-Jensen, Michael (ed.). Encyclopedia of American Immigration. 2nd ed. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press. 978-1-64265-688-6, 3 vols., xxvi + 1239 pages. $395.00.

Reviewed by Steven W. Sowards (Associate Dean for Collection Strategies and Preservation, Michigan State University Libraries, East Lansing MI) <sowards@msu.edu>

Here are two library books about immigration and the United States, a staple of both student assignments and public policy debates for centuries (and likely more centuries to come). The multi-volume Encyclopedia of American Immigration is a reminder of the capacity of formally edited reference publications to compete with the free-for-all of unverified internet content, for those who still believe in authority as an element in accurate learning. The edited volume of essays (Borders & Belonging) is a reminder that libraries (and librarians) are part of the society described in our reference collections, that we therefore are engaged with the same issues, and that we have a responsibility to think about what we do, why we do it, and how we can do it better.

Ana Ndumu’s book about how immigrants fare in libraries is the fourth title in a series on “Critical Race Studies and Multiculturalism in LIS.” In 2022, Critical Race Studies has been a hot-button issue for libraries, and already have been the basis of book challenges, so it pays us to be aware of concepts, purposes and vocabulary. When any of us in the library read about “interrogating the neoliberal superstructures in which library workers are implicated and embedded” (p. 64) it is safe to say that some will want to read more, while others will want to walk away. That negative reaction is unfortunate, because there is affirming as well as challenging content in this book that should resonate with most of us.

Two dozen authors from the United States and Canada have contributed to more than a dozen essays about diverse interactions between libraries (and librarians) and immigrants. Included are historical studies of the ambiguous role of American librarians during episodes that include the anti-immigrant era of the 1920s, and community activism in the South Bronx in the 1960s: situations in which the welcoming posture of libraries flirted with assimilation. There is a memoir about professional reinvention by an immigrant librarian. There is a revealing report about the contested effort to remove the term “illegal aliens” from the Library of Congress Subject Headings (a longrunning dispute that seems to have ended as of November 2021).

Guide to the ATG Reviewer Ratings

The ATG Reviewer Rating is being included for each book reviewed. Corey came up with this rating to reflect our collaborative collections and resource sharing means and thinks it will help to classify the importance of these books.

• I need this book on my nightstand. (This book is so good, that I want a copy close at hand when I am in bed.)

• I need this on my desk. (This book is so valuable, that I want my own copy at my desk that I will share with no one.)

• I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

• I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

• I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this is a useful book for my library or my network.)

In a critique of the critique, Eungjung Choi notes that critical theory itself is prone to functioning inside the academic ivory tower. This caution is a sign of how difficult it can be for us to see and reflect on our own activities. There are stories in this volume that should educate and resonate with each of us.

There can be multiple approaches to thinking about American immigration: the Encyclopedia of Immigration concerns the role of “newcomers” in American history, that is, in the United States and in earlier colonial entities. To tell that complicated story, entries focus on key historical events and trends, legal matters including both case law and treaties, the experience of specific ethnic and national groups (including Native Americans as early newcomers), the impact and experience of immigrants in different parts of the United States (the contrast between say Boston and Texas can be instructive), and information about a selection of notable (although perhaps not representative) immigrants, with others noted in passing such as Andrew Carnegie.

It is not always obvious whether we need a new edition of a reference work, but the case for publishing is clear in this situation. Much has happened in American immigration affairs since the first edition of the encyclopedia appeared in 2010. This second edition is advertised as including 57 more articles (out of nearly 600). These additions include topics such as “Armenian immigrants,” “Amnesty” and “Asylum,” an updating segment for the “History of Immigration since 2008,” and coverage of more high-profile immigrants including Zbigniew Brzezinski and Elon Musk. Many articles have been updated, including that about the U. S. Supreme Court which notes relevant major decisions of the last decade, as well as offering a color photograph that includes the three recent Trump-era appointees … without noting the interesting immigrant-family origins of several of the nine justices. A good deal of post-2010 content has been folded into the several appendices: the Filmography, the list of Literary

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Works (which includes Young Adult titles), the Chronology, and the list of Supreme Court Cases. There is a substantial new article on the “Trump Administration” — also much expansion of topics like the “Border Fence,” and a new article about “Border Vigilantes.” The new edition is current enough to make passing references to the early days of the Biden administration, and the impact of COVID-19 on world migration. Of course, any work on such a dynamic topic falls behind as soon as it is published: so one already can anticipate some potential content in a future third edition that might appear in the year 2032: entries about the Biden presidency and what follows, the evacuation of pro-American affiliates from Afghanistan, and the full story of COVID-19 restrictions on global migration. The numerous contributors come from a wide range of American academic institutions: browsing their names is itself a reminder of the immigrant origins of Americans. Both the encyclopedia and the anthology are available in eBook formats.

Both are welcome additions to the library. While they share the common theme of immigration, they serve the library and the library communities in valuable and different ways.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need these in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab these books off the shelf, if not checked out.)

Mental Health Awareness. Reference Shelf. NY: H.W. Wilson, 2022. 9781637002926, 192 pages. $75.

Reviewed by Carolyn Filippelli (Reference Librarian, Boreham Library, University of Arkansas – Fort Smith) <Carolyn.Filippelli@uafs.edu>

Mental Health Awareness is an excellent introduction to social and legal barriers affecting mental health and to promising research on new mental health treatments. Conveniently organized into topical sections, the book is a source for credible and recent information on this timely topic.

Section 1, “Barriers to Access” focuses on tangible barriers to mental health services, such as the lack of parity between mental health and physical health services. Many insurance companies do not currently provide treatment options for mental health services at levels comparable to those available for physical health. Legislation to require parity of coverage is now in process. Reforms in Medicaid reimbursement and coverage have also been proposed. To combat geographic and staffing obstacles to availability, telehealth services have been used successfully.

Section 2, “Behavioral Health in a Time of Crisis” provides a look at how the COVID pandemic exacerbated existing mental health issues while also fostering a climate in which people began open discussions of issues such as depression, anxiety, and suicide. Mental health issues were no longer a stigma, hidden in the dark. National organizations such as the National Alliance for Mental Health, the Centers for Disease Control, SAMHSA, and the APA were also instrumental in promoting mental health awareness and literacy.

Section 3, “The Ultimate Consequence,” explores suicide through examination of statistics, fact sheets, surveys, and other documents. The effects of suicide on various groups such as adolescents, veterans, ethnic groups, health care workers, first responders, and incarcerated populations is discussed. Strategies suggested for suicide prevention are improved awareness, screening, and reduction in the means of suicide such as access to firearms. Detrimental effects of substance abuse, especially for adolescents, is identified as a contributing factor in suicide attempts.

Section 4, “The Politics of Behavioral Health,” begins with the historical treatment of mental illnesses, which usually resulted in imprisonment or in admission to psychiatric hospitals. Creation of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resulted in gradual improvements in mental health services. In addition, progressive legislation such as the Mental Health Justice Act recommended the use of trained mental health professionals for some 911 mental health crises as well as police training in de-escalation skills and crisis intervention. Some communities are currently experimenting with these options.

Research using psychedelics to treat mental health issues is one of the most compelling sections of the book. This topic is so important that it could easily have been expanded as a separate section to include other the use of other new treatments such as Virtual Reality. Psychedelics or sacred plant medicines have a long history of use by some indigenous groups. MDMA, psilocybin, and LSD are now being used to treat anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress (PTS). Research results using these psychedelic medicines have shown promising results for conditions for which traditional medicines and standard therapies have not proven effective.

Section 5, “Young People’s Problems,” details the responses of many school districts to mental issues brought about by the COVID pandemic. Current initiatives include approval of mental health days as excusable absences, providing greater availability of school counselors and psychologists, collaborating with social workers on mental health screening, and expanding suicide awareness programs.

Mental Health Awareness provides an excellent overview of this important topic. Its content is appropriate for the general public as well as for college students majoring in social work, psychology, and education. The bibliography is excellent, and the inclusion of websites of mental health organizations such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health America is useful for additional information.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

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Booklover — A New Nobel Laureate in Literature

Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

In acknowledgement “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory,” the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Annie Ernaux.

Fall is a season when the air cools; the leaves display vibrant colors; apples and pumpkins are everywhere; and the Nobel Committee announces the new laureates. A bit of something for everyone. Now the fun starts. Finding a piece of the new Laureate’s work to read is always an adventure. Fortunately for me the Internet provides a rich source of background, book purchasing sites, and reviews. I’m always intrigued with the “reason” for the award featured on the Nobel Prize website. Will I see that reason when I read one of the author’s works?

First — check the local library to see if any of Ernaux’s books are in the collection. One. And it is “On Order.” I place a hold for Getting Lost. I’m 15th in the queue. I can’t wait to dive into this book because of the description provided on the Goodreads website – (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60246617getting-lost). “Getting Lost is the diary kept by Annie Ernaux during the year and a half she had a secret love affair with a younger, married man, an attaché to the Soviet embassy in Paris. Her novel, Simple Passion, was based on this affair, but here her writing is immediate and unfiltered. In these diaries it is 1989 and Annie is divorced with two grown sons, living in the suburbs of Paris and nearing fifty.” It appears from this short review that one will trip over the reason for the award described by the Nobel Committee while reading this book.

Next — a search through Abe Books, Alibris, Amazon. After a bit of deliberation, I decide to download the Kindle edition of The Years while I wait to advance in the library queue. As it turns out, an excellent choice as it sets things up nicely for when Getting Lost becomes available. Les Années ( The Years ) published in 2008 is viewed by many as her greatest work. The accolades are lengthy (2008 Prix François-Mauriac de la région Aquitaine, the 2008 Marguerite Duras Prize, the 2008 Prix de la langue française, 2009 Télégramme Readers Prize, 2016 Strega European Prize, and 2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation) for this intriguing piece

written in the third person, all in one string of conscientiousness, and beautifully, sensitively translated by Alison L. Strayer. The reader is provided an evolving raw retrospective from post World War II to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Ernaux’s description of a relevant photograph sets the stage for each story in its time and place. The photograph provides a window; her words pull back the curtain and the reader becomes the voyeur in her life.

Now — a bit about Annie Ernaux.

Born in Lillebonne Normandy in 1940 of working-class parents, Ernaux decided to travel to work as an au pair before pursuing studies to qualify as a teacher. Her initiation into the literary world was her autobiographic approach to her own illegal abortion in Cleaned Out in 1974. The literary prizes began pouring in by 1984, culminating in the Nobel award this fall. It goes without saying that the best discovery is to seek out one of her books as she provides an award winning autobiographical experience.

As I read The Years on my Kindle app, it was easy to highlight each passage as it resonated with me. There are so many to share. I leave you with two:

“The distance that separates past from present can be measured, perhaps, by the light that spills across the ground between shadows, slips over faces, outlines the folds of a dress — by the twilight clarity of a black-andwhite photo, no matter what time it is.”

“There was no ineffable world that leapt out from inspired words, as if by magic, and she would never write except from inside her language, which is everyone’s language, the only tool she’s ever intended on using to act upon the things that outraged her.”

At the end of The Years we are offered a “Translator’s Note” from Strayer, a bit of a guide. I’m glad it came at the end. The “Note” reinforced the experience instead of influencing it.

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“Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing, in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.”

— Annie Ernaux

Section Editors: Bruce

Strauch (Retired, The Citadel) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com>

Jack Montgomery (Georgia Southern University) <jmontgomery@georgiasouthern.edu>

Legally Speaking — Time to Get Loud About Data Brokers

Column Editor: Ashley Krenelka Chase (Assistant Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law) <akrenelk@law.stetson.edu>

People have grown comfortable with the sharing, storage, and dissemination of their data. Whether out of choice or necessity, we know that Google, Amazon, Twitter, Meta, Apple, and many more gather our personal information, store it, and use it for many different purposes, purposes we agree to with our freewheeling consent in click-through contracts that appear at the point of purchase.

Data aggregation and distribution is not new, though it is something that many librarians have chosen to ignore because it is inconvenient or difficult to work around. And libraries, themselves, aggregate all kinds of data before distributing it to stakeholders who may need that information: vendors, boards of directors, provosts, and presidents. There is no denying the use of data; many of us spend hours at the Charleston Conference learning about ways to gather, anonymize, visualize, and disseminate valuable information that helps our institutions run more effectively and efficiently. The gathering of data is not inherently bad — in many ways data-gathering should be encouraged — but ethical use of that data is paramount, particularly in the 21st century.

While most libraries strive to strip the data we gather of all identifying information before providing it to those who oversee our operations, many (if not most) of our vendors make no such promises before they sell research and patron data to the highest bidder, which sometimes includes government agencies actively seeking to deport people from the United States (more on that in a minute). In an effort to curtail some of this data gathering, in June of 2022 members of the House of Representatives introduced the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, which established “requirements for how companies, including nonprofits and common carriers, handle personal data, which includes information that identifies or is reasonably linkable to an individual.”1

“Specifically, the bill requires most companies to limit the collection, processing, and transfer of personal data to that which is reasonably necessary to provide a requested product or service and to other specified circumstances. It also generally prohibits companies from transferring individuals personal data without their affirmative express consent.”

The bill added additional protections for children, and required enforcement of these requirements by the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. The bill was bipartisan — a rarity in the best of times — and represented a milestone in the way Congress thinks about data and privacy for millions of Americans. Notably, after the release of the discussion draft by members of the House, data brokers increased their lobbying spending by hundreds of thousands of dollars.2 And, as with many bills aimed to help Americans, the bill is likely to die in committee.

Why, then, should librarians and publishers be paying attention to the movement in privacy laws? Because one of our biggest vendors, RELX, increased lobbying spending to fight the American Data Privacy and Protection Act by $130,000.00 in quarter two of 2022.3 We’re all familiar with RELX (Reed Elsevier LexisNexis) and the impact they have on our libraries. We read their journals, utilize SSRN for our faculty, and, perhaps most importantly we, as individuals, are part of their massive data storage and brokerage business.

RELX is, perhaps above all else, a creator of “risk” products designed to help employers, landlords, insurance companies, cops, and the federal government determine whether or not you should “get hired for a job, have custody of your children, have access to certain types of medication, and even whether you should be detailed or arrested.”4 In her new book, law professor Sarah Lamdan details the ins and outs of these “Data Cartels” and the ways companies like RELX are using our personal data to make billions of dollars, all while providing purchases of this aggregated information with deeply flawed data that makes predictions on for everything from healthcare access to whether or not they can afford to rent or purchase homes.5

This puts libraries in a particularly difficult quandary. RELX (and their ilk) provide resources that many libraries need to provide for their patrons, and most libraries have very little room to bargain with a massive corporation, particularly when it comes to licensing a small (or relatively small) bundle of content within a larger subscription structure. So, libraries sign away some “privacy” so Elsevier (in this case) can gather its data:

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associations of authors, who is accessing articles, what they’re doing with those articles, which institutions access articles the most, and so on.6 This data, aggregated and disseminated by RELX, can then find its way to other large corporations, governments, universities, or grant funders who can then use that data to determine which projects — or people — have the most “impact” and are the most worthy of investment.

On its face, this may not seem like a bad thing, but what if you work with people who are researching controversial topics? Or you find yourself helping an undocumented patron who is searching for information to fight a case against their landlord or employer? Suddenly they can’t find information they need or are afraid to run the searches they need for fear of being watched. In addition, RELX’s ownership of Lexis Nexis (and, similarly, Thomson Reuters ownership of Westlaw) has allowed these large corporations to paywall government information like state statutes, meaning that library users often can’t access the laws they need to perform research that can change their lives. It’s all very problematic.

Yet again, we are coming to the end of a column where I complain about problems in libraries and with library vendors and I have no practical solutions. The reality is, we are all in situations where we are contracting with providers of goods or services and signing licenses containing terms we don’t love. We are all trying to do what’s best for our patrons, employees, and institutions. But the only way we can work to curb the data brokers from taking — for good or for bad — all of our information and disseminating it to the highest bidder is to come together and start talking about these issues in a much more collective way. We need to acknowledge that RELX, Thomson Reuters, Clarivate,7 and more are gathering and selling our data to the highest bidder. We need to get loud in response to hearing that our vendors are partnering with predictive policing companies

like Palantir and selling data to ICE that is being used to deport people in the United States. 8 We need to continue to ask organizations and events like the Charleston Conference to support advocacy work around these issues and to allow them to be discussed at conferences and in periodicals like this one. We need to fight back, to protect our data and the data of our patrons, and to set our institutions up for success in the future that is independent of the data brokers who seek to provide us with information but take away so much more.

Endnotes

1. H.R. 8152, 117th Congress, https://www.congress.gov/ bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8152

2. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/28/privacy-billtriggers-lobbying-surge-by-data-brokers-00052958

3. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/08/28/privacy-billtriggers-lobbying-surge-by-data-brokers-00052958

4. https://www.wired.com/story/big-information-relxprivacy-surveillance-data/?s=09

5. Sarah Lamdan, Data Cartels: The Companies that Control and Monopolize Our Information , Stanford University Press, 2022.

6. https://www.wired.com/story/big-information-relxprivacy-surveillance-data/?s=09

7. Oh don’t worry, Clarivate sells data, too. But I suspect you knew that: https://clarivate.com/products/real-worlddata/

8. https://www.justfutureslaw.org/legal-filings/palantirfoia

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Questions & Answers — Copyright Column

Column Editor: Will Cross (Director of the Open Knowledge Center and Head of Information Policy, NC State University Libraries) <wmcross@ncsu.edu> ORCID: 0000-0003-1287-1156

QUESTION: A librarian asks, “What new works are passing into the public domain this year?”

ANSWER: In what has become a wonderful tradition in this column, beginning a new year once again gives us an opportunity to celebrate a new class of works passing out of copyright and graduating into the public domain. After two decades of lost works due to the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), books, music, and films first copyrighted in 1927 will enter the public domain in the United States on January 1, 2023. This year’s class is highlighted by another amazing set of works including Virginia Wolff’s To the Lighthouse, Al Jolson’s influential but also controversial silent film The Jazz Singer and, poetically, the song The Best Things In Life Are Free

There are some works with particularly interesting copyright wrinkles included in this class such as the groundbreaking film Metropolis, which is actually about to make its second trip into the public domain. Because the rightsholder failed to renew copyright in 1953, Metropolis had been in the public domain for many years. But in 1996, the Uruguay Rounds Agreements Act (embodied in U.S. law under 17 U.S. Code § 104A) restored protection for Metropolis and other foreign works that were still protected by copyright in their source countries, but which had passed into the U.S. public domain for failure to comply with the various formalities — including renewal — formerly imposed under U.S. law. With the CTEA’s twenty-year extension added on, Metropolis spent several additional decades under copyright before finally rejoining its peers in the public domain in 2023.

Another newly freed work with some significant copyright nuances worth exploring is The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes, which features the final set of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories. As discussed in an excellent blog post from attorney Aaron Moss, the passage of works featuring Holmes raises one of the most interesting issues involving older content: characters that first appear in a public domain work but which then evolve or change over the course of later works that are still under copyright. Moss notes that in these cases popular characters such as Sherlock Holmes may not always enter the public domain in a single moment. Instead, “a copyrighted character begins to fall into the public domain when the first published story featuring that character enters the public domain” but “those aspects of the character’s evolution that don’t appear until later works may still be eligible for copyright protection.”

Comparing Holmes to Mickey Mouse, who first appeared in the original Steamboat Willie short (which enters the public domain next year in 2024), but continued to evolve in subsequent works, Moss notes that later versions of both Mickey and Holmes will still be protected by copyright even after the character’s original iteration enters the public domain.

This principle was established in a case considering Holmes himself. In the 2014 Klinger v. Conan Doyle Estate, Ltd. 755 F.3d 496 opinion the Seventh Circuit held that Holmes (and his partner John Watson) had entered the public domain but the unique expressions used in subsequent in-copyright may still require permission from the rightsholder. In his blog post Moss notes that the Holms estate and the Walt Disney Corporation have continued to take the position that nearly anyone who wants to create a work featuring these characters needs to get a license for (at best) marginally creative elements such as Holmes “showing emotion” and demanding significant fees in a high-profile dispute such as the Netflix show Enola Holmes

Despite this overreach by some purported rightsholders, the law clearly recognizes the distinction between character elements that originate in works in the public domain and those that were introduced in works that remain in copyright. As we celebrate newly-freed works, we should also be on the lookout for overly broad assertions of rights in these characters, especially as they fully enter the public domain as Holmes does this year. You can read all of Moss’s analysis on his blog at: https:// copyrightlately.com/public-domain-day-2023/

As in past years, Jennifer Jenkins, Director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, also has an excellent overview of the new class available at: https://web.law.duke.edu/ cspd/publicdomainday/2023/. And if you’re reading this early in the year, you are also welcome at many events celebrating the public domain including the Internet Archive’s event being held on January 19: https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/30/the-bestthings-in-life-are-free-two-ways-to-celebrate-public-domainday-in-2023/. However you choose to celebrate, this is another banner year for the public domain.

QUESTION: A Canadian librarian asks, “So, are all of those works passing into the public domain in our country as well?”

ANSWER : Unfortunately, just as the United States is celebrating our newest class of public domain works, the Canadian government is moving in the opposite direction. Under the new Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA), Canada has chosen to extend copyright for an additional twenty years, from life of the author plus fifty years to life +70 ostensibly in order to “reinforce Canada’s strong economic ties with the United States and Mexico.”

The result of this new law is to pause passage of works into the public domain for the next two decades, similar to what the U.S. did under the CTEA in 1998. Under Canada’s old regime, works by authors who died in 1972 would have entered the public domain on January 1, 2023, 50 years after the year of their death. With this 20-year extension, those works will now enter the public domain on January 1, 2043. Unlike

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the American CTEA, however, under this law works that have already entered the public domain in Canada will remain in the public domain.

This change in the law will have a significant impact on Canadian libraries and on access to older works for everyone.

Adrian Sheppard, the Director of the Copyright Office and Vice-Provost of Library and Museums at the University of Alberta, shared a recent blog post addressing some of these issues titled Reconsidering the Copyright Bargain: the impacts of the CUSMA term extension. Discussing the challenges that come from archiving and making available works that are long out of commerce, Sheppard writes that “preserving and maintaining public access to published works has never been the responsibility of the rights-holder...” Indeed, author Cory Doctrow describes copyright extension as akin to a “slow moving act of arson” where “vast swathes of culture became off-limits, pseudo-property with absentee landlords, with much of it crumbling into dust.”

(https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/20/freefor-2023/#oy-canada)

In addition to raising these concerns, Sheppard offers a solution, writing “[preservation] is a responsibility libraries and archives have undertaken.” In order to assure that libraries and archives are able to meet their mission, Sheppard argues that Canada’s copyright law must “acknowledge this responsibility” and “provide libraries and museums with the means to ensure that broad public access to out-of-commerce published works is maintained throughout the duration of their copyright term — however long it lasts — and beyond.” This challenge appears particularly keen to Sheppard in cases involving licensed, digital works and he argues that “some intervention by the federal legislature to support digital ownership or to allow libraries and archives to make archival copies of licensed digital works might help address this difficulty and protect the broader public interest in maintaining access to works.” Sheppard also explores several other changes to the law in order to restore copyright’s balance, including both user-focused and creator-focused proposals. You can read the entire blog post at: https://www. ualberta.ca/the-quad/2022/12/reconsidering-the-copyrightbargain-the-impacts-of-the-cusma-term-extension.html.

QUESTION: An archivist asks, “What can we do to protect and preserve old video games that are in our collections?”

ANSWER: Of all the preservation work described by scholars and curators like Sheppard, preserving software such as video games can be the most challenging. For technical, cultural, and

legal reasons, software can be more difficult to locate, access, and archive, leaving many old computer programs, video games, and apps in jeopardy of being lost forever. Fortunately, a group called the Software Preservation Network (SPN) is developing resources to help make sure software is preserved for use, study, and research, “because it is both a dependency to access existing digital data and because it has intrinsic cultural value due to its mediating role in our lives.”

SPN brings together experts and activists in a variety of fields from scholars and librarians to software developers and data journalists. In order to address copyright and related legal and policies issues, SPN’s Law and Policy Working Group “supports SPN’s goal to explore and document fair use, licensing and information policy specifics pertaining to the lawful preservation, sharing and reuse of software in cultural heritage and research contexts.”

These experts have developed several resources that can help anyone interested in software preservation understand and assert their rights. The Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Software Preservation ( https://www.arl.org/resources/ code-of-best-practices-in-fair-use-for-software-preservation/) provides librarians, archivists, curators, and others who work to preserve software with a tool to guide their reasoning about when and how to employ fair use. Their resource Section 108 and Software Collections: A User’s Guide explains Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act in the context of software collections in libraries and archives. In 2022 they also released a second edition of their Preservationist’s Guide to the DMCA Exemption for Software Preservation. SPN also offers regular webinars as well as monthly copyright chats to discuss legal issues around software preservation and access. You can learn more about SPN, the resources they offer, and ways to connect with the program at their website: www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/

Against the Grain would like to thank Will Cross for his contributions to the Questions and Answers column. Will has a wonderful depth and breadth of copyright and legal knowledge that he’s shared with our readers for the past three years, but this will be his last column with us. He’s stepping away due to a variety of other commitments, including being out of the country for much of the next year! Best wishes on your new endeavors, Will, and we hope to hear updates from you in the future!

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Let’s Get Technical — Enriching your Special Collections with Philately

By Susan J. Martin (Chair, Collection Development and Management, Associate Professor, Middle Tennessee State University) <Susan.Martin@mtsu.edu>

Column Editors: Kyle Banerjee (Sr. Implementation Consultant, FOLIO Services) <kbanerjee@ebsco.com> www.ebsco.com www.folio.org

and Susan J. Martin (Chair, Collection Development and Management, Associate Professor, Middle Tennessee State University) <Susan.Martin@mtsu.edu>

Introduction

When you think of stamp collecting, you might think of an old gentleman in a spare room filled with binders and boxes of loose stamps. You may not think of postal stamps enhancing a special or research collection. However, philatelic materials (postage stamps, covers, revenues) can enhance your special collections in a myriad of visual and contextual ways. In Special Collections at Middle Tennessee State’s James E. Walker Library, we have incorporated a broad spectrum of philatelic materials into our Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Collection. In what follows, we introduce the acquisition, management, and discovery of philatelic materials for a library audience.

Background

The library at MTSU was established with the university’s founding in 1911. The James E. Walker Library services a diverse community with over 500,000 print volumes and over 38,000 e-journals and databases. Founded in 1999, the library’s Special Collections department is relatively new and has modest collections focusing on early Tennessee imprints, Eudora Welty, pop-up and moveable books, and the Margaret Lindsley Warden Collection for Equine Studies. Its newest collection, the Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Collection, supports research and interest in the university’s Fermentation Science program, as well as supports sociocultural, economic, and historical research in a variety of subjects, such as the temperance movement, Prohibition, moonshining, and smuggling. To make our distilling collection unique and truly reflect the subject, we delved into philately by collecting revenue stamps. We quickly expanded to collect worldwide postage stamps, covers, and postcards that depicted alcohol and its related topics

Why add Philatelic Materials?

Postal and revenue stamps, covers, and postcards have their own unique histories, as well as illuminate the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of the topic. For example, revenue stamps are a physical representation of the amount of taxes levied and paid for an alcoholic product. The products and events depicted on commemorative postage stamps provide insight into their importance. Philatelic materials provide wonderful examples of visual design and have their own style, set of artists, and techniques. Each postal stamp is its own work of art and craftsmanship. Collecting philatelic materials is flexible and relatively affordable. You do not have to invest a lot of funds to start collecting. You will want to provide some structure to your collecting. Philatelists tend to collect by time-period, or by country, or topically.

Since our collection aims to cover all aspects of alcohol and liquor, agriculturally, historically, socially, and economically,

revenue stamps were a natural match, and we began there. Revenue stamps illustrate and document an important economic aspect of liquor, beer, and wine — the control and taxation of the products. The revenue stamps are nice companions to our textual resources, such as business ledgers and federal documents.

We expanded to add in postage stamps. We collect any depiction of alcohol which includes ingredients, production, transportation, advertising, history, temperance, and negative effects, such as drunk driving and alcoholism. We then added in postcards. Our postcard collection is also broad in scope. Some of the more interesting cards are ones depicting the agricultural aspects, such as hop harvesting or production, such as brewing and distilling equipment.

Figure 1: Tennessee Liquor Tax Revenue Stamps. Part of the Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Collection. James E. Walker Library. Middle Tennessee State University.

Figure 2: Nellie J. Banks and crate of bottles. 1988. Saint Pierre and Miquelon. Part of the Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Collection. James E. Walker Library. Middle Tennessee State University

Figure 3: “Does It Pay to Drink” A.T. Cook, illustrator. Lithograph c.1915. Part of the Distilling, Fermenting, and Brewing Collection. James E. Walker Library. Middle Tennessee State University.

Stamps and postcards are accessible and understandable materials. Everyone has seen and used them. Incorporating them into a special collection encourages researchers to think differently about these items. It also provides additional opportunities for donations.

Ordering

There are several main methods for acquiring philatelic materials.

• Firm

• Approval

• Auction

• Gift

You can firm order through specialized stamp companies, post offices, and dealers. Approval plans are available through many of the larger vendors, as well as through some small dealers. As a library, where and how you purchase will depend on your institution’s procurement requirement and regulations. It is important to purchase from reputable dealers to avoid forgeries and fakes. The American Philatelic Society (APS) maintains an extensive, searchable database of recommended dealers. Local philatelic clubs would also be able to provide information about reliable local vendors. Like the second-hand book trade, the philatelic trade has its own aggregator selling platforms with Hipstamp and Delcampe being the most prominent. If you can purchase from an internet dealer, you should check to see if they are a member of the Internet Philatelic Dealers Association (IPDA).

At JEWL, we tend to use the services of a large commercial vendor, Mystic Stamp Company, and a few specialized dealers, Eric Jackson Revenue Stamps, Oldpostcards.com, and Refried Jeans Postcards. We also purchase through the APS Stamp Store and on Hipstamp. You do not have to spend a lot of money to obtain a nice collection. While some stamps do fetch a high price, many are available under $1.00 per item.

Reference

As with other types of materials, philately has its own tools of the trade. You will need to obtain some basic reference sources, as well as the proper storage containers and handling tools to protect and preserve your collection

Dealers and collectors use stamp catalogues to identify, verify, and value stamps. Depending on what your collection contains, you may need more than one catalogue. The major worldwide catalogues are Amos Media’s Scott’s, Stanley Gibbons, Michel, and Yvert et Tellier. While these four provide worldwide coverage, each has its own coverage emphasis and strength. Scott’s Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue is commonly used in the United States and includes a U.S. Specialized volume. Stanley Gibbons is more commonly used for the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth countries. Michel’s strength is covering Germany, and Yvert et Tellier focuses on France, her current and former colonies and territories.

Each catalogue has its own publication schedule, arrangement, and coverage. For example, the Scott’s Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue is 13 volumes arranged alphabetically by country with the United States located first in volume 1a. Scott’s also puts out a Specialized volume covering United States revenues, covers, hunting permit (duck) stamps, as well as stamps issued by the Confederate States of America and the United Nations.

Within each volume, stamps are arranged by issue date. Each stamp is assigned a unique number “Scott’s #” which you will see referred to by collectors and dealers. Other information available includes color, type, postage value, and current market value at the catalogue publication date.

At JEWL, we have invested in the Scott’s U.S. Specialized Catalogue and are slowly purchasing the other volumes so we can have worldwide coverage. One of our areas of collecting is revenue stamps; so we opted to invest in a copy of The State Revenue Stamps Catalog, Revenue Stamps and Related Materials of the States of the United States of America, edited by Dave Wrisley and published by the State Revenue Society.

Stamp catalogues are expensive. To save money, you may opt to purchase an older, second-hand edition of a catalogue or even forgo them. If you decide to forgo purchasing a catalogue, there are some ways to obtain the information you will want for the identification, description, and discovery of your materials.

You could utilize a commercial dealer, such as Mystic Stamp Company or Kenmore Stamp Company. They maintain their own purchasing platforms that provides photographs of the stamps, as well as year and Scott number. Of the two, Mystic provides the most robust amount of information. For most of its stamp inventory, Mystic provides the Scott number, issue date and city, quantity printed, printed by, printing method, number of perforations, and color. You could also utilize Colnect, a website designed for managing personal collections. Colnect provides specialized information on worldwide stamps, including major catalogue numbers.

Care, Handling, and Storage

Stamps and related materials are made from paper and need proper care and storage. While there are many options for storage, there are some basic tools that you should have in your philatelic toolkit.

• Stamp tongs: Used to safely handle stamps

• Perforation Gauge: Assists with counting perforations (ridges on the edge of the stamp)

• Magnifiers: Used to see the small details on a stamp

• Watermark Detector: Used to identify watermarks on stamps to aid in identification

• White gloves: Used to safely handle covers and postal stationary

At a minimum you should have a pair of stamp tongs and a magnifier.

There are many options for storing stamps: albums, stock books, stock pages in a binder, glassine envelopes, and dealer

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Figure 4: Showguard Round Tip 4 1/2” Tongs. Owned by the author.

Figure 5: Magnifier and stamps. Owned by the author.

cards. You will need to consider what is right for your collection and budget. We store our stamps in dealer cards and in a box. Our postcards are kept in protective sleeves and in an archival quality box purchased from Gaylord. Covers and larger stamps are stored in stock sheets in binders.

Inventory Control and Discovery

There are various ways to arrange and make philatelic materials discoverable for researchers. How you opt to do it depends on your library’s set up and preferences. You can catalog in MARC and add your holdings into OCLC and your library management system. Stamps make a wonderful digital collection on your platform of choice with a metadata scheme. Other options include creating a finding aid, spreadsheet, or LibGuide. Which method you opt to use depends on your library’s expertise, staffing levels, and patron needs.

Currently, we are discussing the best way to move forward in making our philatelic collection accessible. Acquisitions tracks the orders in the orders app in FOLIO, our library services platform, but does not create inventory. We assign an accession number to each stamp, postcard, or cover and record it along with detailed information about the item along with locally created subject headings in an Excel spreadsheet. We have two options with the spreadsheet; we could create MARC records and load directly into our discovery layer or create a basic searchable database and locate it on the Special Collections page of our website.

Philatelic Literature and the Community

There is a robust selection of philatelic literature native to the philatelic community. Many of the journals and trade magazines are published either by the various philatelic societies or by commercial entities. These journals and magazines are available in print and online, but libraries should be aware that online access is geared toward the individual and not to an institution. If a library wishes to pick up one or two basic journals, we recommend the American Philatelic Society’s American Philatelist and Linn’s Stamp News

The philatelic community is worldwide and very active. There are many places to seek out information on the field, learn about best practices, and connect with fellow philatelists. We recommend that you check out the Digital Philatelist who maintains an extensive list of the online and social media world of philately.

Selected Recommended Resources and Websites to Get Started

• A Guide to Stamp Basics. The American Philatelist. v. 136 no. 3 March 2022.

• Beck, Graham. “Storing Stamp Collections: What you need to know.” Exploring Stamps. https://youtu.be/ ZXKqOlStP1o

• Colnect. https://colnect.com/en

• Digital Philatelist. https://thedigitalphilatelist.com/

• Myers, Charles F. “I inherited a stamp collection, now what?” 4th edition. http://www. inheritedstampcollection.com/index.htm

• Stanley Gibbons. “Stamp collecting for beginners: Mounting stamps.” YouTube. https://youtu.be/ befDKbqQD54

• Stanley Gibbons. “Stamp collecting for beginners: How to read an SG Stamp Catalogue.” YouTube. https:// youtu.be/q82K_hgX0ug

• Tyska, Ted. “Stamp Albums: Cheap, Free, and Do-ItYourself Part 1 and Part 2.” Ted Talks Stamps. Episode 28. YouTube. https://youtu.be/RTdzvvLBjYM and Episode 29. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Ju69HR9HNR4

Conclusion

We will continue to expand our philatelic holdings for our distilling, fermenting, and brewing collection, and we hope to add selected postal materials to enhance our other special collections as well. We hope to see others explore this area of ephemera in their collections.

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Learning Belongs in the Library — Two Years in the Making: The Lived Places Publishing Library Collection

Course Readings Centered on the Experience of Identity and Location, Place, and Situation

Column Editor: David Parker (Publisher and Founder, Lived Places Publishing; Phone: 201-673-8784) <david@livedplacespublishing.com>

In the middle of the summer of 2020, as the pandemic raged and the death of George Floyd became both a catalyst and an awakening, I awoke one early morning to an all-consuming question: where are the books that explore social identity in the context of place, location, or situation? Where might publishing professionals bring in diverse, inclusive topics? For example, the experience of a person with sensory disability undergoing a surgical procedure; or the experience of a graduate student from Africa newly landed in a teaching position in a university in New Zealand; or an elderly queer person faced with moving into a retirement home; or the experience of a black feminist doing explicitly womanist research; or the reflections of a MexicanAmerican scholar on growing up in the southern United States? Thus, was born the idea for Lived Places Publishing (LPP).

The very next day I called my dear friend of 25 years Chris McAuley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara, and shared my idea for LPP with him. Chris and I quickly arrived at a framework for the publishing effort. We would recruit experienced academics to lead interdisciplinary and disciplinary collections as editors charged with securing promising titles and overseeing the peer review process. We would launch collections such as Black Studies, Disability Studies, Education Studies, Gender Studies, Queer and LGBT+ Studies, Forced Migration Studies, Latinx Studies, and more. And within these collections we would publish course readings that examined the intersection of social identity and situation/location.

My career in academic publishing and library database development juxtaposed nicely with Chris’s career as a professor and researcher. Together we defined our publishing focus, our author recruiting strategy and, importantly, how we would address access, distribution, affordability, and support for both author compensation and open access, based on author choice.

Fast forward to today, at the end of 2022, and Lived Places Publishing has 12 active collections, more than 50 books under contract, five books published, and a production schedule that looks to produce between 40 and 45 titles in 2023. We receive several new book proposals each week, outreach from prospective new collection editors with wonderfully creative ideas for new collections, and inquiries from faculty who want to integrate LPP titles into their syllabus.

Expanding Lived Places Publishing’s Library Collaboration

In the nine years I have been writing this column in Against the Grain, I have not presented my work, but rather uplifted the work of librarians, publishers, and organizations committed to enhancing the role of librarians in supporting teaching and learning and curriculum development. Today I break from this precedent and seek deeper collaborations and partnerships which expand Lived Places Publishing into academic and research libraries.

Not very long after Chris and I developed the outline of what LPP would be as a publishing company, I reached out to Jon Cawthorne, past ACRL President and Wayne State Librarian, to see if the concept resonated with a librarian. That first discussion with Jon led to him becoming the founding member of our advisory board. Jon has patiently and sagely advised our fledgling enterprise since inception and has been pivotal in defining our commercial and open access model with libraries in mind.

LPP books are available in print and eBook formats, and distributed through known library workflow solutions (ProQuest and Ebsco), and lesser-known products like Perlego, as well as directly from our website, Amazon, and many other digital book vendors. But our focus is with the collection as an institutional solution delivered directly by Lived Places to academic libraries. To this end, we offer the following attributes of our product:

• DRM-free, unlimited user access and unrestricted PDF download of titles

• Whole eBook interlibrary loan to one partner institution at a time

• 5% of all sales set aside to fund author-choice open access publishing at our average production cost (which we will publish on our website and update every six months)

• Affordable, perpetual access pricing with regionappropriate discounts to ensure every university across the globe can own the LPP collection

The First 40 Lived Places Publishing Titles

Our 2023 collection of 40 titles bears the mark of our distinctive approach to publishing course reading titles that examine the intersection of identity and situation/location. Here are just five examples:

1. Music and Black Community in Segregated North Carolina — Greg Freeland, California Lutheran University

2. Improving the Experience of Healthcare for People Living with Sensory Disability — Annmaree Watharow, The University of Sydney

continued on page 47

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“We are looking for subject librarians, collection development leaders and those librarians who work in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion movements in higher education.”

Opinions and Editorials

Op Ed — Can Changing the Law Lead to Sustainable Universal Open Access?

By John Willinsky (Stanford) <willinsk@stanford.edu>

On November 7, 2019, Kumsal Bayazit, the newly appointed CEO at Elsevier, stated at the Charleston Conference: “I want to be very clear: Elsevier fully supports open access.” She needed to be very clear, given the company’s activities over the previous two decades. What Ms. Bayazit also clarified, along with the other big publishers’ CEOs, who have made similar statements in recent years, is that we have entered a new phase of open access. We have a consensus among scholarly publishing stakeholders — including researchers, librarians, publishers, big and small, and funders — that open access is best for science. Or as Ms. Bayazit elegantly put it “no one can dispute the beauty of the vision of freely-accessible, immediately-available research content.”

That consensus has been tragically reinforced by the pandemic’s natural experiment in establishing how open access and open science can benefit humankind. Yet who among us believes we have a clear, sustainable path toward the timely delivery of universal open access? The lack of such a path is our pressing open access problem. We owe it to the world, in this age of misinformation, pandemics and climate catastrophe, to provide universal open access now and not over the next few decades, as the current growth of open access suggests.

If you find the publishers dragging their heels on the road to open access, like Shakespeare’s “whining schoolboy … creeping like snail / unwillingly to school,” while asking for more and more money to get there, consider how they are leaving behind the long standing security of copyright-secured subscriptions for a legal netherworld in which copyright has little to offer the digital-era promise of open access to science. This for a law that began its life as “An Act for the Encouragement of Learning,” as the Statue of Anne 1710 had it, before gaining constitutional backing in the United States, “to promote the Progress of Science.”

Nothing speaks more to the law’s current failure to serve its original purpose than how diligently we work around copyright to achieve open access, whether through funder-contracts, green final drafts (with or without embargoes), and read-and-publish agreements. These increasingly elaborate epicycles resemble nothing so much as late Ptolemaic mechanical models of the solar system that misconstrued its true center. Copyright is not the sun in this system, by any means. That would be the human intellect. Yet copyright acts as a gravitational field of our own making. There is too much at stake with science to continue counting on legal workarounds, while other fields of human endeavor meet the times by amending this law.

I am particularly struck by how the United States Congress unanimously (!) passed the Music Modernization Act of 2018 . It updated statutory licensing, dating back to the Copyright Act of 1909 ,

for streaming services, while retaining the judicial setting of fair market prices and keeping music open to new interpretations without exclusion. Why not, I wondered, use statutory licensing to require the institutional users and funders of research publications to fairly compensate scholarly publishers for immediate open access. Then and there we’d have copyright doing its job once more.

Now to be sure, introducing statutory licensing into the field of scholarly publishing is not to be taken lightly. As the 67-page music Act makes clear, it involves a regulatory apparatus of Copernican dimensions. Yet compared to what the current market offers by way of an open access future, it could provide all parties with a far more certain and sustainable path forward. This includes not only fair pricing for libraries and funders, but competitive growth opportunities for publishers, while freeing up researchers to submit their work where they think best, without fussing over open access options, requirements, and costs.

While I delve into the details with the recently published (and open access) Copyright’s Broken Promise: How to Restore the Law’s Ability to Promote the Progress of Science (MIT Press 2023), let me address four further points here.

The law would, first of all, have to recognize a new category of works I’m calling, for the moment, “research publications’’ (much as the law is currently tailored to address “dramatic works,” “choreography,” “pantomime,” “architectural works,” etc.). This would involve establishing a research publications registry, with input from librarians, publishers, and others, based on scholarly standards, while remaining open to appeal and innovation. This would not limit publishers and scholars from taking their broader historical or popularizing works (think A Brief History of I’m in Time) to the trade publishing market.

Second, statutory licensing typically entails establishing a collective management organization among holders of first-publication rights, in this case, publishers. The collective participates in the fair price setting and distribution of fees among big and small publishers. It also generates funds to support new publishers and journals that provide the innovation and growth vital to research (while avoiding antitrust litigation).

Third, statutory licensing has global implications, no less with research than with music. At its simplest level, introducing statutory licensing for open access

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“This proposal to amend copyright has only two goals: universal open access at a sustainable price.”

into one or two of scholarly publishing’s key jurisdictions (including, perhaps, the EU, as more than one legal scholar has posed to me) will invoke international reciprocal arrangements, likely involving an expansion of the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WTO’s TRIPPS Agreement. Following music’s example, this fosters similar laws elsewhere that involve local scholarly publishing in this greater global access.

Finally, like Ms. Bayazit, I, too, want to be very clear. This proposal to amend copyright has only two goals: universal open access at a sustainable price. It generously leaves to others a vast array of scholarly publishing challenges that are often raised when I discuss what statutory licensing might offer, be it research integrity, researcher assessment, publisher value (size, profits, etc.), peer review, or the future of the journal.

As for what’s next, it has been encouraging to find a network of copyright scholars willing to advance the proposal’s legal framing and strategies. It will be the focus of an OpenAIRE Legal Series, with webinars and an Athens event in February. A number of librarians and publishers have expressed to me an interest in how this approach can address the uncertainties they face in the move to open access.

The larger question I’m asking, at this point, is whether something with this big of a lift warrants further consideration, given the proliferation of piecemeal and partial open access strategies competing for our attention today. I invite you to reach out to me on this very point, or to identify what I’ve overlooked, or, by all means, to set out a more efficient and effective path to this common goal that we now share for research and for our future on this planet. It’s about time for open access.

5.

Each LPP book includes learning objectives, recommended assignments and discussion guides, and is written at a length to be completed in two to three weeks of a course. Lived Places Publishing books are written to bring theory and concept to life and to illustrate the theories and concepts that underpin the curriculum in each discipline we publish to.

Early Adopters, Open Trials and Library Champions

We have just launched our library collection with our first five books: https://livedplacespublishing.com/page/librarians We will publish eight more titles in the first months of 2023, and our pace of publishing will accelerate into the spring, summer, and fall. We are looking for subject librarians, collection development leaders and those librarians who work in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion movements in higher education. As a champion of our growing collection, we are looking for examples of how our collection resonates with

faculty, departments and courses. Towards this end, we are offering open-ended trials for winter, summer and fall 2023 to fit academic course planning cycles. We look forward to feedback and guidance from the library community.

Please let us know if your library will join us in an extended, open trial, the length of which to be defined by your institutional needs. We understand the importance of not interrupting student or faculty access mid-semester. We have a set of guided questions for which we seek feedback that will be made available for review on request.

If we have sparked your interest in our publishing mission, and if you want to help us connect with curriculum and course changemakers at your school, then we ask that you join us as an early adopter or early trial partner of our 2023 collection of 40 course reading titles by connecting with our founder and publisher David Parker at <david@ livedplacespublishing.com >.

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3. Social Spaces for Older Queer Adults — David Betts, University of Newcastle

4. How Taiwan Awakens the Imagination of Young Africans — Charles Akwen, University of Lagos

Reconstructing Memory, Place, and Identity in Twentieth Century Houston: Sangre Mexicano, Corazon Chicano — Louis Mendoza, Arizona State University

Learning Belongs in the Library continued from page 45

Biz of Digital — Collaborating to Create an Open Textbook

By Simon Ringsmuth (Teaching and Learning Librarian, Edmon Low Library, 306 Library, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078; Phone: 405 744-8060) <Simon.ringsmuth@okstate.edu>

By Dr. Kathy Essmiller (OpenOKState Coordinator, OER Librarian, Edmon Low Library, 306 Library, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK 74078; Phone: 405

744-9772)

<kathy.essmiller@okstate.edu>

(Digital Scholarship Services Librarian, Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, University of Maryland Baltimore County, 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250; Phone: 410-455-3544) <flinchba@umbc.edu>

Column Editor: Michelle Flinchbaugh

The impact of open educational resources (OER) goes well beyond simple cost-saving measures. While closing the affordability gap in higher education is certainly an important goal of OER creation and adoption, OER bring many other benefits to students, faculty, and universities in general. Colvard et al. (2018) found that OER addresses “all three of the great challenges facing higher education today: affordability, retention and completion, and quality of student learning.”1 OER also has the ability to showcase a degree of representation and diversity not typically seen in traditional texts, which can have a transformative impact on students.2 (Lapum et al., 2022) As such, an increasing number of universities are pushing for the adoption of open textbooks and other OER materials, and many have formal programs in place to assist with OER creation, build awareness of the impact of open textbooks and other OER on student outcomes, and contribute to scholarly research regarding the impact of open pedagogy and its effects on student learning.

The OpenOKState program was developed in response to student, faculty and administrative concern about the high cost of textbooks. In 2013, the Oklahoma State University Libraries included supporting a culture of open as part of a strategic plan, with the goal of every freshman having at least one class they could take which did not require purchase of a textbook. In 2018, the Libraries hired a full-time OER Librarian to help transition the work from a series of projects to a sustainable program. 3 To support faculty and instructors interacting with open resources, the OpenOKState team follows a customized workflow which mixes elements of publishing workflows shared out by other institutions and organizations active in open publishing.4 The process is intended to be a collaborative process through which the OpenOKState team offers tools and processes to help bring the scholarly vision of our researchers to life5 (Ippoliti et al.). One of the platforms through which OpenOKState collaborators share their work is Pressbooks. Our growing public catalog can be viewed online at: https://open.library.okstate.edu

As a Teaching and Learning Librarian, Simon Ringsmuth works with the OpenOKState program, as well as other areas of our Library’s Research and Learning Services division, to help bring projects to fruition as well as design and implement training programs, tutorial videos, and information literacy classes for students and faculty. The development of an open textbook called Successful Aging serves as a teaching case study example of how OpenOKState’s collaborative publishing workflow can produce desirable outcomes for all parties involved

— faculty, Librarians, and students. Simon partnered with Dr. Alex Bishop, a professor of gerontology at Oklahoma State University, over a period of several months to plan, develop, revise, and refine Successful Aging which has already had a significant impact on his students in just one semester.

When working on any collaborative resource, one of the most important elements to establish at the early stages is that of stakeholder expectations. All parties involved need to know basic information such as who is responsible for doing the work, what work will be done, when it will be delivered, and so on. 6 The OpenOKState OER Production Workflow utilizes a Memorandum of Understanding 7 (Iakovakis et al.) which helps not only set expectations but manage the entire OER creation process. In January 2022, Dr. Bishop signed the MOU which served to guide the creation of Successful Aging by establishing the purpose and scope of the project, identifying key stakeholders, and specifying the responsibilities of Dr. Bishop as well as myself and other key members of the OpenOKState program. This MOU also specified accessibility guidelines for Successful Aging such as proper organization, ALT-text for images, and even font and color contrast. In essence, the MOU served as the foundation for the entire project and helped establish the ground rules from which everything proceeded. Dr. Bishop also filled out an Author Guide, 8 which explained in greater detail his plans for structuring the content of Successful Aging , his timeline for completing individual sections and chapters, and the meeting schedule he and Simon would use throughout the creation of the book.

This Author Guide was another key element in setting the stage for successful collaboration throughout the project. In it, Dr. Bishop explained his plans for a core element of the Successful Aging book which would set it apart from most other textbooks published by OpenOKState: audio recordings with researchers who helped build the very foundations of modern gerontological science. In addition to traditional textbook chapters, Dr. Bishop planned to record interviews with individuals such as Dr. Jay Olshansky, Dr. Kate de Medeiros, Dr. Rosemary Blieszner, and others who laid the foundation for what we now know as the field of gerontology. This information about Dr. Bishop’s plan to make extensive use of multimedia throughout the book helped me get a much better understanding of his goals for the use of audio recordings, and also make a plan for how Simon could use his technical knowledge and skills to help bring this project to fruition.

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This collaborative experience is not unlike that of other similar projects at institutions around the world. Their goal was to use their own unique talents and areas of expertise to produce an Open textbook that was far beyond anything either of us could have done on their own. Dr. Bishop is a well-respected researcher in the field of gerontology and, like many of his peers and colleagues, has authored many papers on the subject. However, he did not possess the technical skills necessary to edit and produce the multimedia elements that were central to the main focus of his book. Simon’s background is in teaching, technology, and instructional design. Simon also has a great deal of experience with Pressbooks, the online publishing platform used by OpenOKState and many other institutions. The result of this partnership, which incorporated each of their strengths, is a textbook that delivers original content in a unique manner and allows students to not only read but hear firsthand accounts of the material they are studying in class from primary sources.

Even though digital technology served a critical role in the creation of Successful Aging , much of the project’s success ultimately came down to simple principles of good communication. Dr. Bishop and I decided to meet on Zoom every three weeks to discuss the project, make goals for what we both wanted to accomplish by the next meeting, and talk about their progress towards meeting those goals. We also spent time just getting to know each other: families, hobbies, professional and personal interests, and other information that might not be seen as mission-critical, but serves as the glue that holds together a successful partnership. The importance of building this type of rapport, and having a schedule for regular communication, cannot be overstated.

At their first meeting, Dr. Bishop and Simon laid out a simple, straightforward, scalable process we would use to create Successful Aging based on the information he specified in his MOU. Instead of exploring new software and hardware for recording and editing interviews, we decided to use off-the-shelf software like Zoom and Camtasia, which meant that neither of us would need to spend time familiarizing ourselves with new technologies and could instead just build on what we already knew. In essence, we sought to work according to the principle espoused by psychology author Gretchen Rubin: “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.” We knew we had a workable solution, so we went with it.

All of Dr. Bishop’s interviews were conducted via Zoom, which reduced as many potential points of friction for himself and the interviewees since Zoom is already used and understood by so many individuals especially in higher education. He recorded those meetings and sent Simon a link to view them, who then used the Downie browser plugin9 to download each recording as a Quicktime MP4 file to his iMac. Simon then imported each of the recordings into Camtasia where he used its editing tools to remove audio imperfections, trim down when possible by removing long pauses in the conversation, and add captions. While Zoom does have automatic video transcribing, it is not perfect and requires a great deal of editing and cleaning up before the text matches the audio. Typing captions by hand added time to the production workflow, but produced a transcription that was nearly 100% accurate.

After the editing was complete, Simon exported each interview as an .M4A audio file and also exported the captions to a standard .SRT text file. The size of each audio file was around 10 megabytes, which means they are easy to download even for individuals without fast or reliable internet. This in turn helps increase the overall accessibility and availability of Successful Aging. Simon also edited the SRT file by removing timestamps and adding paragraph-style formatting, and then copied the resulting text into Pressbooks to accompany each audio file.

Turnaround time for each interview, from when Dr. Bishop recorded it to the time it was edited, transcribed, and uploaded to Pressbooks, was generally about one week but it varied depending on their other professional obligations. Throughout the entire process, Simon and Dr. Bishop kept in constant communication through regular meetings and emails, which helped ensure that they were both on the same page and understood not only the progress being made but the expectations each of them had for the project as well.

Initial feedback from students has been very positive. On a recent mid-semester survey, Dr. Bishop’s student made comments about the book such as:

• “I like that I am able to listen to the conversations just like a podcast. I like that it has the feature to see what they are saying not just hear it, too.”

• “The interviews are easier to learn from rather than a traditional textbook. This has been easier to learn the material.”

• “I love how user-friendly the textbook is! The information given is clear and easy to follow. The interviews with the transcripts included are also a great touch and are helpful for those who may not be able to hear the interview.”

The collaborative process that Dr. Alex Bishop and Simon used to create his Successful Aging open textbook has been quite successful, and can serve as a model for others who are undergoing similar projects. By starting with a foundation of solid, regular communication and building on it by managing expectations, setting goals, checking on progress, and soliciting student feedback, they have created a book that has helped engage students while reducing their college expenses.

Successful Aging is a work in progress. It can be viewed at the following URL, but will continue to be changed and revised throughout 2023. https://open.library.okstate.edu/ successfulaging/

The Pressbooks authoring tools make it easy for faculty to write content and upload media, which means Simon’s role in helping manage those projects is more about holding regular meetings, helping with content formatting, and proofreading for errors. The OpenOKState program hopes that Successful Aging can serve as example for other faculty members and Librarians interested in publishing open textbooks, and we look forward to other potential collaborations to help bring OER tools from inception to fruition.

endnotes on page 50

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Endnotes — Biz of Digital from page 49

1. Colvard, N., Watson, C., & Park, H. (2018). The Impact of open educational resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. (30) 262-276

2. Lapum, J., Bailey, A., St-Amant, O., Garmaise-Yee, J., Hughes, M., & Mistry, St. (2020). Equity, diversity, and inclusion in open educational resources: An interpretive description of students’ perspectives. Nurse Education Today. (116) doi.org/10.1016/j. nedt.2022.105459

3. Essmiller, K., Thompson, P., & Alvarado-Albertorio, F. (2020). Performance improvement technology for building a sustainable OER initiative in an academic library. TechTrends, 64(2), 265-274.

4. https://open.library.okstate.edu/exploringopen/part/project-management-for-textbook-creation/

5. Ippoliti, C., Essmiller, K., & Upson, M. (2021). Project management template for OER projects. In The Scholarly Communications Cookbook. Association of College and Research Libraries.

6. VanEpps, D. (2020). “Setting Expectations: Initiating the project managers/client relationship. https://www.pmi.org/learning/ library/setting-expectations-client-relationship-4667

7. Iakovakis, C., Essmiller, K., & Upson, M. (2021). Unspoiled broth: A memorandum of understanding for chefs cooking up OER. In The Scholarly Communications Cookbook. Association of College and Research Libraries.

8. https://open.library.okstate.edu/exploringopen/chapter/getting-started-design/

9. https://software.charliemonroe.net/downie/

Obituary — N. Bernard “Buzzy” Basch

Buzzy Basch died on January 3, 2023 from injuries suffered in a fall at his home in Concord, NH. A native of Winthrop, MA, Buzzy earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Washington University in St Louis and served in the United States Navy. He worked in computer operations in several companies before joining F. W. Faxon a library subscription management service company in Westwood, MA. As VP of Operations, Buzzy worked closely with colleges and universities, public libraries, and corporations and held elected positions in the major US library professional organizations. He also served as President of Turner Subscriptions in Manhattan and as Vice President & General Manager for EBSCO Subscription Service’s mid-west operations in Barrington IL.

In 1994, at age 60, Buzzy founded Basch Subscriptions in the living room of his home. The company grew to more than thirty employees and provided service to clients throughout the United States and internationally. Basch Subscriptions was acquired by a Swedish firm in 2007 and Buzzy continued as President and CEO until he retired in 2014. In retirement Buzzy continued his involvement with libraries and publishers, providing workshops at professional conferences and consulting services. He also traveled internationally and indulged in his stamp collecting hobby. Buzzy is survived by his wife Judy McQueen; his children Sharon Basch and Marc Basch both of Somerville, MA and their mother, Sandra Basch; his grandson Cameron Linehan; his sister Anne Christianson and brother Henry Basch; and a loving family of Basch, Lappin and Andler relatives and Skeels in-laws. He is pre-deceased by his parents Florence (Lappin) Basch and Bernard J. Basch and his brother Peter Basch. Read Full Obituary

In lieu of flowers and in honor of the exceptional service and support provided by the staff of Concord Hospital, contributions in Buzzy’s memory may be made to the Grateful Heart Program, Concord Hospital, 250 Pleasant Street, Concord NH 03301, https://giveto.concordhospital.org/grateful-heart-program.

In Memoriam: N. Bernard “Buzzy” Basch — All of us at the Charleston Hub were saddened to hear the news that our dear friend Buzzy Basch passed. Buzzy was a fixture for many years at the Charleston Conference — a true giant in the industry. We’ve included his obituary above and we’ve created a page on the Charleston Hub for memories from friends and colleagues. Please visit the website to comment with your favorite memory or memories of Buzzy! https://www.charleston-hub.com/2023/01/inmemoriam-n-bernard-buzzy-basch/

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The Digital Toolbox — 2022’s Top-Watched Films in Colleges and Universities Demonstrate the Valuable Role of Video for Curriculum

By Jason Tyrrell (General Manager, Kanopy, San Francisco, CA 94109) <jason.tyrrell@kanopy.com>

Column Editor: Steve Rosato (Director and Business Development Executive, OverDrive Academic, Cleveland, OH 44125) <srosato@overdrive.com>

As academic institutions seek to inspire thoughtful and meaningful conversations among students and educators, film functions as a powerful tool to provoke both reflection and understanding. Academia mirrors video trends in general, with streaming services seeing sustained growth in a post-COVID world and being increasingly used to effectively enhance core academic works.

For the first time ever, Kanopy has released its most-viewed films for academic curriculum and the subjects most watched by students and faculty using the service. This eye-opening list reinforces the unique and valuable role of educational video content within academic curriculum. Kanopy is the leading streaming video provider for two- and four-year colleges and universities, delivering films that matter to thousands of campuses across the globe.

The top 10 films demonstrate that the focus on race, class, gender and individual identity remains strong in the classroom, reflecting curriculum needs and trends in society as a whole. Together with the top 10 subjects, the lists show how educators and students consistently turn to streaming video as a resource to gain a deeper understanding of matters that stem from both within and outside us.

Top films viewed for academic curriculum in 2022 (North America, Kanopy):

Top academic subjects using streaming video in 2022 (North America, Kanopy):

1. Film Studies

2. Race & Class Studies

3. Gender Studies

4. Media Studies

5. Global Studies

6. Education

7. History

8. Sociology

9. Psychology

10. Anthropology

The streaming video medium has grown consistently in popularity in colleges and universities for the past several years. As such, educators are increasingly using the visual nature of streaming video to reinforce or complete the picture for the foundation established by core written works for the curriculum.

“These most utilized curricular categories are particularly well suited for institutions who wish to leverage streaming to more deeply explore scholarship around the human experience,” said Kanopy General Manager Jason Tyrrell. “The top films in the list are just a small example of the strength of the Kanopy catalog, hand curated to empower students and educators to pursue a more thorough, even visceral understanding of the topics being studied.”

Additionally, the top 10 title list illustrates that while educators continue using familiar documentaries to shape their courses, new titles are emerging. Documentaries known to many humanities undergraduates, like Race–The Power of an Illusion and Miss Representation , are starting to give way to newer, more diversely created films. Now, highly acclaimed narrative films like Moonlight and Parasite—which present diverse casts and crew and focus on race, class or LGBTQ studies—may point to an emerging trend in cinema as instruction. This trend sees well-conceived stories serving as vivid, lasting illustrations of points covered in the classroom.

Tyrrell added, “We expect this trend to continue, as our collection development team continues to scour the world for the best new features, documentaries and instructional videos that delve into the mind, behavior and social stratification to address diversity, equity and inclusion. Educators and students alike can benefit from these films by learning more about themselves and their peers, while expanding their perspectives and challenging accepted beliefs.”

To learn more about Kanopy for colleges and universities, visit kanopy.com.

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“These most utilized curricular categories are well suited for institutions to leverage streaming to more deeply explore scholarship around the human experience.”

ATG Interviews Library of Congress and EBSCO Information Services about FOLIO

Harry Kaplanian & Christopher Spalding, both Vice President Product Management, FOLIO Services at EBSCO Information Services, and Kate Zwaard, Associate Librarian for Discovery and Preservation at the Library of Congress

By Leah Hinds (Executive Director, Charleston Hub)

and Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu>

and Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain) <kstrauch@comcast.net>

The ATG team was thrilled to conduct an interview with Harry Kaplanian and Christopher Spalding, both Vice President Product Management, FOLIO Services at EBSCO Information Services (EBSCO), and Kate Zwaard, Associate Librarian for Discovery and Preservation at the Library of Congress, about the recent press release regarding the LOC’s plans to implement FOLIO. Our thanks to Leah Knobel, Public Affairs Specialist at the Library of Congress, and Kathleen McEvoy, Vice President of Communications at EBSCO, for their help in facilitating this interview.

ATG: What features and functionalities did the LOC prioritize most when searching for a new platform?

Kate Zwaard: Generally speaking, the Library prioritized ability to provide a wide range of modern and efficient solutions that would be useful for building a robust platform for the nation’s largest library collection. The Library sought the ability to assimilate with the Library’s processes as well as the ability to self-correct and ensure that the thresholds of quality could be met throughout the project.

Some of the specific features that we prioritized were:

• Support for multiple metadata formats, such as BIBFRAME and MODS as well as MARC

• Reduce redundancy by consolidating metadata management systems (ILS, ERMS, etc.)

• Efficiency

• Sustainability

• Modern technology

• Ability to conform to our information security practices

• Integration and alignment with the many internal systems that rely on data from our library services platform

• Flexibility

• SaaS implementation

• Unified access to the Library’s collections for our users

We recommend that interested readers view our full set of requirements in the Request For Proposal: (RFP): https://sam. gov/opp/f4d19b7236f24d46acb2e111d7075d3d/view

ATG: How will FOLIO be customized to meet the specific needs of the LOC?

KZ:

• The vendor will be required to build out a system that meets the requirements in our RFP.

• The code developed for the Library Collections Access Platform (LCAP) will be made available to the community.

• We are currently exploring ways that we can make our development and implementation plans available to the public at regular intervals as the project progresses, as we know this is a topic of great interest to libraries both within the FOLIO community and beyond.

ATG: Why was it important for the LOC to use an opensource product that supports linked open data?

KZ: While being open source was not a requirement for this contract, FOLIO’s open source, community-oriented philosophy is very much in line with the Library’s Digital Strategy as a whole, and specifically our commitment to drive momentum in our communities: “We will continue to lead and participate in communities developing open formats and standards. We will make our in-house-developed or commissioned software applications open source, and when choosing software, we will heavily weigh the beneficial community effects of using open source.”

Support for linked open data in general and the BIBFRAME standard in particular is an institutional priority. We are eager to exploit the functionality of linked open data to improve the discoverability of our collections for our users.

ATG: Carla Hayden was quoted in the press release as saying, “We are grateful for Congress’ generous investment in this next-generation system that is essential to the Library’s digital-forward strategy, which harnesses technology to bridge geographical divides, expand our reach and enhance our services.” Kate, can you tell us about your digital-forward strategy and how FOLIO fits in?

KZ: This is part of the Library’s overall focus on improving services to users and making the collections available to users where they are. Our analysis of the Library catalog search logs shows that more than 60% of the searches come from outside the Library. Fun fact: The Library catalog is the most searched service on the Library’s presence on the web. As part of our next-generation digital strategy, we are also investing in user research to better understand our users and what they need. We will be looking for ways to leverage our investments to surprise and delight our users, reducing barriers to access and connecting

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the American people to the Library of Congress in new ways, whether they are on site or online.

ATG: Harry and Christopher, can you tell us about the FOLIO Library Services Platform and how it differs from traditional ILS’s?

Harry Kaplanian : FOLIO differs from the traditional ILS in many ways, but first and foremost it’s a community driven collaboration between libraries, developers, and vendors. FOLIO allows anyone to build on its core functionality or extend the platform through the development of applications that deliver new services making it adaptable and customizable for libraries and consortia of all sizes.

ATG: How do you think the Library of Congress’s adoption of FOLIO will impact the market for library services platforms? Do you expect your market share to grow given LOC’s influence? If so, by how much?

HK: The Library of Congress’ adoption of FOLIO via EBSCO FOLIO Services will undoubtably serve as an example for libraries to move towards the open-source platform to allow for both flexibility and agency in how an organization delivers services to its patrons. FOLIO has been primarily concentrated in the academic market with more than 60 institutions live to date. The Library of Congress adopting FOLIO underlines that the open source LSP is a sustainable option for national and research libraries everywhere.

ATG: EBSCO’s Executive Vice President of Library Services and Research Databases, Gar Sydnor is quoted as saying “the work we do for the Library of Congress, …, will indeed have a revolutionary impact worldwide on libraries and their patrons.” What worldwide revolutionary impacts is Mr. Sydnor expecting?

Christopher Spalding : I believe Gar is pointing out that the work to streamline and support current processes that the Library of Congress delivers to the world, along with delivering a supported Linked Data infrastructure, will lay out an approach for the future of resource description that aligns with and supports the Library’s work on BIBFRAME.

The FOLIO Project since its inception has been a community collaboration, and as libraries continue to adopt, their input and ideas are welcomed and worked on by our developers. With a wide range of libraries contributing to the project today, we can continue to offer new technologies for all types of libraries. An open-source project of this size in our market, with the support of the Library of Congress, has never been seen before. The overall impact to influence library automation and metadata scaffolding is truly amazing — it’s a profound substantiation of the project.

ATG: EBSCO claims that its work with FOLIO and large systems such as the Library of Congress and consortia such as MOBIUS, exemplify the next generation’s “next gen” — the future gen. What does that mean exactly?

CS: The next generation of libraries are operating on opensource solutions. FOLIO is an acronym for the “Future Of Libraries Is Open.” With the Library of Congress and MOBIUS’s moving to FOLIO, they serve as an example to libraries globally of what that future looks like. A future of open infrastructure, open-source code, and open dialogue between libraries and vendors delivering to common goals of a global community to better serve the needs of said community, is beyond just the next generation.

ATG: In their press release, the Library of Congress noted that FOLIO “will offer researchers a streamlined discovery experience and new ways to access high quality metadata.” Can you tell us more about that aspect of the platform?

KZ: The Library currently has two separate systems: a traditional integrated library system that generally represents the collections owned by the Library, and an electronic resource management system that contains metadata for the e-resources licensed by the Library. Users have to search in the two separate systems in order to access our materials. Our users expect to search across the depth and breadth of the collections without having to anticipate the source or format of the information they need. We know that librarians and others working at cultural heritage organizations want access to the Library’s high-quality metadata in a way that is easy for them to use and repurpose. We expect LCAP to enable improved access for users everywhere.

ATG: For anyone unfamiliar with BIBFRAME, can you tell us a little about what it is and how the bibliographic framework will integrate with the FOLIO system to benefit the Library and its users?

KZ: BIBFRAME is the newly conceived metadata format being developed by the Library in collaboration with research library partners across the U.S. As a linked data model, BIBFRAME uses identifiers and links between local and distributed resources, not strings that need to be normalized and matched within a single isolated system. This opens up new exciting possibilities for maintaining, sharing and exploring connections within data sets that are not feasible when working with static MARC records. While many expect BIBFRAME to eventually replace MARC, the Library plans to support both for the foreseeable future, as many of our internal processes and external partners rely on MARC records. Because FOLIO is format-agnostic and its architecture allows for the coexistence of multiple bibliographic data stores, it is well-positioned to integrate BIBFRAME in a way that will not only facilitate the Library’s transition away from MARC but establish a foundation on which to grow our offerings.

ATG: What is the time frame for the rollout? When will users be able to access the new platform?

KZ: While we are currently working with EBSCO on a final conceptual solution design, we know it will be in production by July 2025. It is possible that some components may be available to users as soon as December 2024.

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ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Genevieve Croteau Chief Operating Officer

Coherent Digital, LLC

Kensington, Maryland

Phone: (860) 304-1762

<gcroteau@coherentdigital.net>

https://coherentdigital.net/teams

BORN AND LIVED: New Hampshire, Arizona, Connecticut, Montreal, New York City, Florida, Washington, DC.

EARLY LIFE: It was the ’80s. I watched way too much MTV against my parents’ wishes.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: I have always been involved in helping small, creative companies grow, first in media and now in the information industry. Over the last 20 years, I’ve held creative roles developing new products, sales, marketing, HR, and operations. The challenge for me now is linking these parts into a coherent whole and helping to build a company that’s beloved by both customers and the team. I believe relationships are at the heart of every business. I care a great deal about workplace culture, equity, and good decision-making.

FAMILY: Shout out to my 10-year-old daughter Pearl and 5-year-old son Grant.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Always reading something self-improvement, whether business or personal.

PET PEEVES: Snobiness.

PHILOSOPHY: I keep a wall of quotes in my office. The most recent addition is: “If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, you’re not thinking big enough.”

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Signing on with Coherent Digital, my first true start-up.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: I believe librarians will make great gains in diversifying and decolonizing knowledge over the next five years. Companies who can contribute and make this living, sustainable, and ongoing work will be the most successful.

Toby Green

Co-Founder

Coherent Digital

2 Impasse de L’Eglise, Marquemont Haut, Monneville 60240, France

Phone: +33 6 07 76 80 86

<toby.green@coherentdigital.net>

https://coherentdigital.net/

BORN AND LIVED: Born in Broadwindsor, Dorset, UK. Lived in London, Oxford and Paris.

EARLY LIFE: Educated at Marlborough College and then read microbiology and virology at University of Warwick.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: Started out in 1983 promoting books at Academic Press, London before learning about journals at Applied Science Publishers. In 1987, joined Pergamon Press where I learned about major reference works, A&I services and CD-Roms and then, after Elsevier Science acquired Pergamon, newsletters and magazines. Moved to France in 1998 to join OECD Publshing where I learned to wrestle with datasets and publishing reports and led OECD to a digital-first operation, closing the print-shop in the process. In 2019, left

OECD to co-found Coherent Digital. Was active with ALPSP, including as Chair, and member of RSC’s publishing board.

FAMILY: Married with three almost grown-up offspring.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Cook, garden and play disc golf.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Gulliver’s Travels. (First book I ever liked and read cover-to-cover).

PET PEEVES: Thoughtless bureaucracy.

PHILOSOPHY: It’ll all come right in the end.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Winning Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year at London Book Fair.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: To see Coherent Digital thriving.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Probably still bogged down with trying to make open access journals affordable and sustainable (when all the interesting action is elsewhere).

Jessica Lawrence-Hurt Chief Marketing Officer

Cadmore Media

4800 Hampden Road, Suite 200

Bethesda, MD 20814

Phone: (202) 281-0257

<jessica@cadmore.media>

https://cadmore.media/

BORN AND LIVED: Grew up in New Hampshire; college north of Boston, ten years in DC, and now back in Boston area.

EARLY LIFE: I’m the oldest child in a large family and have often been told I give “big sister energy”! I had a very bohemian childhood; homeschooled, playing in the woods, writing plays and energetically “directing” my younger brothers. Books were a huge part of my life then and now: weekly trips to the library where I used my mom’s library card to check out as many books as I wanted. The children’s card only allowed for a measly two books at a time, which would not have gotten me to the next day, never mind the next week. My first “real” job was as a library page, where I was supposed to shelve books but really spent a lot of time reading…..

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: I’ve been in scholarly publishing my whole career and have been fortunate to have roles in all sorts of environments, from journals, books, and digital resources to now working for a tech platform. I went back and forth between acquisitions and marketing for a while before finally settling where I belong: on the sales and marketing front. Along the way I’ve been involved in SSP, AUP, Boston Women in Information, and various mentorship programs. This year I’m co-charing the Community Engagement Committee for SSP.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Reading of course! Roughly split between nonfiction and fiction; I especially like travel, memoir, and essays, and staying on top of the latest releases in literary fiction. I also travel as much as possible.

PET PEEVES: Rudeness, especially to those in a service position. I think anyone who’s ever waited tables knows what I mean!

PHILOSOPHY: “Happiness is when what you think, what you do, and what you say are in harmony,” Gandi.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Things tend to move slowly and then all at once in scholarly communications. I

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anticipate five years from now we’ll still be wrestling with the implications of OA, but by and large the infrastructure will be in place for the majority of content. Streaming media will be a part of most publisher portfolios, in some capacity. The industry as a whole will have banded together to make serious inroads in teaching information literacy and research skills.

Curtis Michelson

CEO, infoDJ <curtis@infodj.io>

www.infodj.io

BORN AND LIVED: Miami, FL; Managua Nicaragua; and Orlando, FL.

EARLY LIFE: Grew up in Miami, FL, graduated with BA in Philosophy. Lived in Managua in 1991 and experienced a poltical radicalization that led me to become a full-time community organizer for Florida PIRG. Became a software developer and hacker in my 30s. Entrepreneur and consultant in my 40s and the father of one beautiful boy. Today, in my 50’s, I’m a full-time ecosystem organizer and outspoken gadfly advocating for human-centered organizations and radical rethinks of standard business approaches. And, now in my 50s, a happy gardener and grower of luscious fruits and vegetables.

PET PEEVES: Pharma ads on American broadcast news

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: How can I not say a move to more open web resources? ;) I’ll also stake my claim on a future world where sense-making services (librarianship) are increasingly more needed and valued, and large aggregate content collections stabilize in price or get cheaper. Add-on services, most all of them AI-powered or augmented, will allow us to finally integrate civil, govt, academic and citizen neworks into a whole trustworthy ecosystem of solid knowledge and shared understanding.

Andrea Eastman-Mullins Founder / CEO West End Learning

500 West 5th Street, 4th Floor

Winston-Salem, NC 27101

Phone: (336) 448-3327

<andrea@westendlearning.com>

https://www.westendlearning.com/

BORN AND LIVED: Born in Fairborn, Ohio. Lived in Ohio, Florida (a few times), New York, Virginia, Michigan, and Winston-Salem, North Carolina, now home.

EARLY LIFE: Aspiring poet, philosopher, and world traveler living small town life in rural Ohio.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: A degree in philosophy led to my first jobs in editorial roles at SIRS Publishing and ChadwyckHealey. Since then, my career spans more than 25 years covering all aspects of aggregated collections for teaching and research. In executive and product management roles for ProQuest, Alexander Street Press, Chadwyck-Healey, and SIRS, I led teams to develop over 300 library databases including the first streaming video and audio collections for academic libraries. Most recently, I launched West End Learning, a business supporting the adoption of OER and affordable learning resources.

I have always had an interest in learning and technology. With a Master’s in Higher Education Administration with a focus on Instructional Design from the University of Michigan, I researched the peer review process of MERLOT.org, one of the first aggregations of digital learning objects. At the University of North Carolina’s Teaching and Learning with Technology Collaborative, I led faculty development initiatives statewide.

I have been a speaker at the Charleston Conference, ER&L, UKSG, MLA, and Educause and have published on OER and affordable learning.

FAMILY: I live with my husband of nearly 25-years, Rob Eastman-Mullins, a scenography professor at Wake Forest University, son, Ian, daughter, Dana, and pandemic puppy, Gobo.

IN MY SPARE TIME: When not planning our next trip, I throw things — bowling balls and pottery (not together).

PHILOSOPHY: Yes, my favorite subject.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Leaving a stable job to bet on myself and found West End Learning.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: Make a significant contribution to the future of education.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Teaching and learning will become a key priority for academic libraries as they align their work with the university’s focus on student success. Yet teaching and learning will evolve tremendously over the next 5-20 years. It will be considerably messy as libraries shift their focus to support a moving target. Thousands of e-learning platforms, new business models, and publishing programs will emerge and divert resource from journals and books. My bet is the ones that are faculty-led have the potential to be most effective and innovative.

Gary Price

Librarian, Researcher, Speaker

Co-Founder: infoDJ

Co-Founder, Editor: infoDOCKET

Editor: ARL Day in Review

416 E. Franklin Avenue Silver Spring, MD 20901

Phone: (301) 538–33709

<gprice@gmail.com>

http://infodj.io

http://infodocket.com

https://www.arl.org/category/day-in-review/

BORN AND LIVED: Born in Chicago, IL. Lived in Lawrence, KS, Detroit, MI, and Silver Spring, MD.

EARLY LIFE: Raised in Chicago’s Northern Suburbs not far from Northwestern University. Undergraduate Degree, Film Studies, University of Kansas. Masters of Library and Information Science, Wayne St. University.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: Winner of Three Awards From Special Libraries Association.

FAMILY: Husband, Father, Brother, Uncle.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Listening to Music, Learning About Musicians, Genres, Recording Studios, etc. Learning About Commercial Aviation and Other Forms of Transportation. Movies. Learning About and Discovering Maps, Databases, and Other Research Tools (Print and Digital). Visiting Libraries.

FAVORITE BOOKS: Siddartha by Hermann Hesse. In the past few years, The Box by Marc Levinson.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: I have several but one of them was speaking about digital privacy in the Gaillard Center at the Charleston Conference.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: My hope is that the industry will be doing a better job explaining and demonstrating the value of what we offer to a wide variety of current users as well as potential users. At the same time my hope is that the skills and abilities that information professionals offer are better understood by the public. If we don’t explain, who will?

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Stephen Rhind-Tutt

President, Coherent Digital, LLC

Alexandria, VA 22314

<rhindtutt@coherentdigital.net>

https://coherentdigital.net

BORN AND LIVED: Windsor, UK; Hamburg, Germany; Brussels, Belgium; Jever, Germany; London, UK; Boston, MA; San Francisco, CA; and now Washington DC.

EARLY LIFE: Went to a British boarding school, spent blissful vacations with my family in Europe. Went to college at University College London, then MBA at Boston University.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: I began as a sales rep for a consumer foods company, then joined a fledgling CD-ROM publisher in the late 1980s. Since then I’ve worked for a wide range of companies in the information industry including SilverPlatter, Gale, ProQuest, and Chadwyck-Healey. I’ve sat on several boards including the University of California Press and the Council on Library and Information Resources. I co-founded Alexander Street Press in 2000. In 2018 I cofounded Coherent Digital with colleagues and friends Toby Green, Eileen Lawrence and others.

FAMILY: Married to Janice for 20+ years, 3 kids – Michael (19), David (16), Serafina (13). Lots of relatives in the UK including cousin Julian who now dominates every search on Google for the name Rhind-Tutt.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Movies, books, travel. Tried sailing, flying and golf, but somehow never found joy in them.

FAVORITE MOVIES: Ipcress File, Bridge on the River Kwai, Anchorman, Italian Job, Le Clan Sicilien, Das Boot, Witness, Ordinary People, Aliens, Ground Hog Day – I can just keep going on this, but I’ll stop here.

PET PEEVES: I’d like the President to create an executive order that fines those who deliberately jump lines in traffic $1,000 automatically by camera.

PHILOSOPHY: Do it with all thy might.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Yet to come!

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: To have really made progress in “taming wild content!”

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: There will be much more content, in many more formats. It will be ever more aggregated and atomized. It will appear on ever more screens which will get larger and smaller. It will get more current and go back further. Machine tools and AI will enrich it more and more, and make it much easier to process programmatically. It will be more open and more closed. I’d love to say that the hegemony of journals over all other forms of content will be broken, but I don’t see that happening within five years.

COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Cadmore Media

4800 Hampden Lane, Suite 200 Bethesda, MD 20814 USA

Fernhill, Churchlane, Drayton Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4JS UK https://cadmore.media/

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Products and services to embed video and audio content on any website or to create a branded site. Configurable streaming media players for video and audio content; a streaming media platform for content management; a media library product; and embedded live events.

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE: Scholarly societies, associations, and publishers.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 17

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/ PUBLISHING PROGRAM: Cadmore Media was founded in 2018 by scholarly and video publishing veterans who saw a need to make video publishing an accessible proposition for a wide range of academic and professional use cases. Essentially, we want to transform the creation and dissemination of video and audio content in the scholarly world through expert technology, robust partnerships, and best-in-class service. To do this, we hire great people, build client-driven products, and facilitate industry-wide innovation. We were awarded the Digital Science Catalyst Grant in 2018 and the NFAIS Digital Startup Challenge in 2019. Today, we employ 17 people across the US and UK, serve leading academic and professional associations and societies, and are making strides toward bringing video into the wider publishing ecosystem.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU THINK WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO OUR READERS? You can subscribe to our newsletter for timely articles about the current status of video in scholarly communication here: https://cadmore.media/contact. Check out the Resources section of our website for curated reports, articles, and presentations on streaming media, accessibility, and virtual events: https://cadmore. media/resources

Coherent Digital, LLC

623 South Fairfax Street

Alexandria, VA 22314

https://coherentdigital.net

OFFICERS: Stephen Rhind-Tutt, President; Toby Green, Managing Director; Genevieve Croteau, COO.

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Policy Commons, Mindscape Commons, Africa Commons, Canada Commons, History Commons, Sabinet Complete, South Asia Archive.

Each Commons is an authoritative and comprehensive source of critical research and learning materials within a discipline. It includes content that’s uncatalogued, undiscoverable, uncitable, prone to link rot, and likely to disappear. Where content is in danger of being lost forever, we make sure that it’s stabilized, findable, and preserved.

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE: Researchers, faculty and students in universities, colleges, governments, corporations, and think-tanks.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 15

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NUMBER OF BOOKS PUBLISHED ANNUALLY (PRINT, ELECTRONIC, OPEN ACCESS, ETC.): We’ve licensed and published over 2,000 books, hundreds of videos, VR experiences, reports, magazines and other research and learning materials.

We publish approximately 6m pages of archival materials, licensed from leading archives such as the UK’s National Archives.

We’ve captured, indexed, enriched and preserved over 3.5m reports from think tanks, NGOs and IGOs. In 2021 we added over 2m new items. We’ve captured, indexed, enriched and preserved over 300,000 primary sources from over 600 different institutions.

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/ PUBLISHING PROGRAM: Coherent’s mission is to “tame wild content.” We do this by developing “Commons” in specific disciplines. Each Commons uses machine indexing, AI, and manual techniques to catalog and enrich content at speed and at low cost. Faculty can upload links or content, which become searchable and available within minutes. Over time, we enrich the content and build usage with new features, new links, and more context.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU THINK WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO OUR READERS? We were founded towards the end of 2019, just before the pandemic began. We’re 100% virtual with employees in 8 countries and 4 continents. The founders of Alexander Street cofounded Coherent Digital, and many of our staff are ex-Alexander Street.

infoDJ

1024 Garden Plaza

Orlando, FL 32803

Phone: (407) 319-8559

https://www.infodj.io

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Research scans for innovation teams + customized newsletters.

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE: Enterprise change and transformation teams.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 5

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/ PUBLISHING PROGRAM: infDJ began as an experiment. What might happen if library skills were leveraged on innovation initiatives. We discovered good things happen as teams pushing into unknown terrains get a psychological boost from an external librarian feeding them germane insights about their domain.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU THINK WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO OUR READERS? We believe the future specialty librarian is an AI. And, it is also a living breathing information science professional who engages with their management and leadership teams to help them make the most use of the AI, to develop fresh insights and growth narratives.

West End Learning 500 West 5th Street, Floor 4 Winston-Salem, NC 27101

Phone: (336) 448-3327

https://www.westendlearning.com/

OFFICERS: Andrea Eastman-Mullins, CEO.

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Product – Syllect, a platform that matches syllabi and course objectives to a vetted library of Open Educational Resources (OER), saving faculty time in course planning. Now available covering entrepreneurship and innovation.

Services – We apply our expertise in publishing, instructional design, and leadership to provide custom support for e-learning projects and OER initiatives.

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE: Faculty, colleges, associations, and organizations with a mission to educate.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 4 and growing.

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/ PUBLISHING PROGRAM: Andrea Eastman-Mullins founded West End Learning after a career working with libraries at ProQuest and Alexander Street Press and faculty at the University of North Carolina. She was struck by how valuable the library’s resources were for teaching but how few faculty found them during course planning. Some of the most affordable and highest-quality learning materials are missed, leaving students with expensive curriculum and content creators with limited impact.

West End Learning provides support in two ways: 1) Custom services for faculty, associations, and learning organizations to develop e-learning projects and increase their impact. 2) Syllect, a platform for faculty, aligns affordable learning materials to course objectives to make it easier to teach with affordable course materials that engage and inspire. We focus on materials that bring diverse perspectives, critical thinking, and active learning to the classroom starting in entrepreneurship.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU THINK WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO OUR READERS? West End Learning’s name is inspired in part by London’s theatre district. Effective theatre is truly a collaborative art--involving performers, playwrights, directors, designers, builders, and an interactive audience. We believe the future of teaching is the same-engaging faculty, instructional designers, libraries, content authors, and of course students in new ways of learning.

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Back Talk — Looking Backwards

Column Editor: Jim O’Donnell (University Librarian, Arizona State University) <jod@asu.edu>

One day in 1990, my colleague Rick Hamilton from the Bryn Mawr College Greek Department had an idea. “We need a new book review journal in classics,” he said. “Concise, timely, high quality reviews. It just takes too long for the system to get around to book reviews nowadays.” “Great idea,” I said, “and we can send them out via email!” Rick gave me a look.

His was in fact a very smart look. It was 1990, the Internet barely existed in the minds of more than a very few, and nobody had email except a few zealots like me. (I got email when I had to buy a modem to connect to a database with five million words of the Latin texts of St. Augustine. People have needs sometimes.) And Rick had already started a very successful textbook series for Greek and Latin that was all camera-ready copy, cheaply reproduced and sold for $1 a volume. Why not do the same with a book review journal? It was a fabulous idea, in fact.

But I stuck with my email idea and Rick humored me. Our first issue with a dozen reviews (stooged up from academic friends we asked to write about something they had just been reading) was available in print and went out by email as well on November 26, 1990. I’d put out a note on the Humanist list, so at least a few people subscribed to our listserv and a few more followed.

That’s when the wider world intervened. I got an email from Ann Okerson at the Association of Research Libraries. “Hi,” she said, “I’m interested in these electronic journals people have started publishing. In fact I had a meeting of all the ones I could find last fall. Is that what you’re doing? Can I put you on my list?”

Well, we went on to be pretty successful. Bryn Mawr Classical Review is still in business, with ten thousand email subscribers, scazillions of hits on our website, and a record of publishing 15,000 book reviews over the last 30-odd years. We meant to have a big 30th birthday party in Bryn Mawr in 2020, but Covid intervened, so we just had the party a few weeks ago. (For more on our history, see our website [link: http://bmcr.brynmawr. edu] and look for items with issue numbers BMCR 2022.11.18, 2022.11.22, and 2022.11.26)

Meanwhile, ejournals have flourished. The first ambitious project to make a splash was the Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials, announced with a flourish in 1991 and rolled out soon after. Alas, it died a long time ago. Innovators, even

when they’ve got a great idea, don’t always succeed. Ann Okerson, though, was the most visible chronicler, encourager, and impresario of good ideas in that period. She organized an annual series of exciting symposia on e-publishing in DC in the early ’90s for librarians, technologists, and publishers. I swear the university press community first realized what was about to hit them at one of those symposia. In 1991, Ann then published the first ever anywhere Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists and continued it through several more annual editions until the field became just too vast to try to control in something like a directory. The volume she and I coedited in 1995, Scholarly Journals at the Crossroads: A Subversive Proposal for Electronic Publishing, also published by ARL, may be the first manifesto for open access publishing anywhere.

The original 1991 edition of the Directory is worth a historical look. The Chronicle of Higher Education reported it thus: “The volume, the Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters, and Academic Discussion Lists, includes more than 30 journals, 1,000 scholarly lists, and 60 newsletters. It is available in a paperback book or in electronic text on Bitnet and Internet.” In fact there were 37 journals, extremely various in content, in that issue. What’s become of them?

It’s a little hard to be sure of the fate of some, but I made a sustained good faith effort over several months and, as best I can tell, there are three survivors. The most senior is Postmodern Culture, published now by the Johns Hopkins University Press and Project MUSE. John Unsworth and Eyal Amiran, the founding editors, beat Bryn Mawr Classical Review to the wires by a couple of months in the fall of 1990, and they credit the great librarian Susan Nutter at North Carolina State University for egging them on.

Those two survive in traditional academic ways. The only other survivor is a slightly different species of fish: Dargonzine [link: http://dargonzine.org/ ], offering “the Internet’s best fantasy fiction.” We can heave a sigh for Psycoloquy , the brainchild of the legendary Stevan Harnad, for example. The survival of PMC and BMCR can be attributed, I think, to the very good ideas that my colleague Rick and my friend John had about the content and the market. There really was a need for the content of those journals, that is, an audience ready to read and support them and write for them — and that’s what makes a serial publication successful.

That prehistoric world of “Bitnet and Internet” has faded from view, of course. It was in 1992 that the great Willard McCarty said to me in a conference hallway in Chicago, “You know, Jim, I think we’ve got about five years left.” “Huh?” I replied. “Oh, right now,” he went on, “people can say that you can’t do commercial activity on the Internet, but within about five years the big boys will discover the possibilities and we academics had better define and shape things as best we can before they show up.”

Four years later, in 1996, I bought a copy of C.L.R. James’s classic history of Caribbean revolution, The Black Jacobins, from a website called Amazon that offered to sell books. When I bought that book, I swear I assumed that it must be a site run by a feminist collective like the one that ran A House of Our Own Books down the street from where I worked in Philadelphia. I was, um, wrong. Willard was right.