This is the last section editor announcement, and like the others, a very exciting one for a variety of reasons. Open Science and Infrastructure are super actively evolving spaces, and Micah Vandegrift is an ideal colleague to help us consider them and where they fit in the LIS scholarly communication landscape. Micah was the first scholarly communication librarian at Florida State University, where he built a phenomenal team and program, and mentored lots of folks who now work in scholcomm spaces (we call ourselves Vandeminions). Micah is a provocateur, challenging us to live up to our professed ideas. But he’s not reckless; he’s thoughtful and kind and supportive, which is evidenced in his post below. In mid-2018, Micah became the Open Knowledge Librarian at NCSU, and then promptly embarked on a five month tour of Europe imagining the future of open scholarship (which is to say: scholarship) and infrastructure. We’re really excited to have him engaged in the production of the open textbook of scholarly communication librarianship. Here’s Micah in his own words:
What is Open Science and Infrastructure, and What’s it Doing in Library School?
Friends, colleagues, folks, I am humbled and frankly pretty nervous to be an invited section editor for the forthcoming OER + ScholComm resource. I count my co-section-editors (Brianna, Lillian, & Amy) and Will, Josh, and Maria as inspirations and luminaries, and I am excited to play a small role in shaping the scholcomm minds of tomorrow.
The open umbrella is well on its way to becoming a big tent. Organizations like SPARC and communities like OpenCon have helped refine and define action areas in open data, open education, and open access. But, what does it mean when we simultaneously aim to open ALL OF science (read: wissenschaft), and the services, protocols, standards, software, and people (read: infrastructure) through which knowledge flows? Someone had a ludicrous idea to hire an “open knowledge” librarian, who tricked someone else into letting said librarian wander Europe asking these kinds of questions. And, so, here we are.
I’m cautiously treading into these topics, both because they are hyper-current (in 2019), and because they can be political, expensive, career-shaping, and organization/institution steering. Ever since my wee-Hack Library School days, I’ve been interested in poking holes in structures we assume as solid, and I intend to continue that impulse in the open science and infrastructure section of this text. My hope is that in compiling a primer on these interconnected topics, readers/learners/colleagues will gain a landscape perspective that will continue to advance what we have called “the library” deeper and broader into a more equitable, just, and open ecosystem for the circulation of knowledge.
So, I invite your suggestions – what is open science and infrastructure and what SHOULD it do in library school?