Author: jbolick

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New to the SCN: Learning Data Ethics for Open Data Sharing

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Learning Data Ethics for Open Data Sharing” (available via Scalar, OSF, and in the SCN OER Commons Hub). This work was created by Lynnee Argabright, Research Data Librarian at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Lynnee argues that “Responsible data sharing is vital to building a positive academic and public community around the availability of shared data.” Through this open resource, she provides a great vehicle for LIS students, librarians, and researchers to learn more about ethical data sharing. Here’s Lynnee to introduce Learning Data Ethics for Open Data Sharing:

I entered my first academic librarian job after library school in a newly created data librarian role. I’d gotten some scholarly communications training during school about teaching the benefits of open access, about how to do basic data research methods, and about how to deposit content into open repositories. Being a “data expert” on behalf of a whole campus, however, was new, and meant I spent a lot of time on professional development and researching to prepare before consultations in order to apply open science concepts to data. As a special focus for my campus, I realized there was little to no informed leadership about data privacy for research data. So I joined the IRB (Institutional Review Board) Full Review Board as an ex-officio member and targeted a lot of my own training on data ethics.

Finding data ethics professional development opportunities has felt like a treasure hunt and now I’m a dragon sitting on an expanding ethics lair. For example, I enrolled in an National Libraries of Medicine data ethics course, berry-picked attending singular data DEIA (Diversity Equity Inclusion Accessibility) sessions from various library subject-specific conferences, found social justice data and text analysis webinars held virtually at other universities during Love Data Week, attended numerous redundant data management webinars from peer institutions to see how they brought up data storage, watched out for new Journal of e-Science Librarianship articles to see how sensitive data was included in data librarian services research, and scrolled through my Twitter news feed for interesting data toolkits… Wouldn’t it be nice to share some of this knowledge bounty?

I also noticed that the few faculty at my campus who were already sharing their data were non-human subjects researchers with zero documentation associated with their datasets; and that human subjects faculty would unanimously state in their IRB applications they would not share data outside their collaborators and would destroy it upon completion of their study. To advocate for open access, while knowing grant funders and journals are developing open data sharing policies, I wanted to start building up awareness about what is involved with open data sharing and that a data repository record can be controlled or restricted depending on the confidentiality needs for the data. I started thinking about how to make this process a little bit easier and more transparent. That meant curation checklists to help target and process red flag sensitive data curation. Template language to set up data sharing intentions from the beginning. De-identification strategies to streamline practice. Sustainability considerations to keep in mind as a solo data librarian or solo data researcher.

The resulting Open Educational Resource uses the open source Scalar platform to allow users to explore and connect between the concepts of data ethics and data sharing and some practical curation methods and workflows to use with these in mind. It offers activities to practice engaging in data ethics, data sharing, and data curation, to help realize what issues come up and experience what it’s like to curate data. It provides initial overviews of these topics–such as FAIR, CARE, and CURATED–with links to further resources. Because of its coverage of data ethics specifically as it relates to the process of research data sharing, it is not a comprehensive course on data ethics at large–which needs to be considered in all parts of the data lifecycle areas; however, I hope it will be a beneficial course for building confidence and context towards guiding or developing responsible open human subjects research data.

About the Author

Lynnee Argabright is the Research Data Librarian at University of North Carolina-Wilmington (UNCW). She provides guidance about collecting, using, managing, and sharing data in research, through instructional workshops or individual consultations. Since joining UNCW in August 2021, she has initiated and been involved in several programs, including facilitating Love Data Week, reviewing Data Management Plans, instructing about Responsible Conduct of Research, developing guidelines for secure data access and use, and is an ex-officio member of the university’s IRB Full Review Board.

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New to the SCN: LIS Teaching OER Toolkit

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “OER for LIS: Toolkit for Building and OER Librarian Course” (available in the SCN OER Commons Hub). This work was created by Steven Bell, who has extensive experience working to advance OER and teaching about it. As we are interested in using open materials to support LIS instruction on topics like OER, this project was right up our alley. Steven has compiled and openly licensed his complete course materials to support LIS instruction on OER. Here’s Steven to introduce OER for LIS:

The beauty of the open education community is its inclusiveness. All are welcome to join the effort to advance openness in education at all levels. One segment within the community of library workers has yet to take hold of this invitation – students enrolled in master’s degree programs in library and information science (LIS). This is through no fault of their own. In their pursuit of the degree these aspiring librarians, especially those seeking positions in college and university libraries, are rarely exposed to the world of open education and Open Education Resources (OER).

More than a few of the approximately 52 American Library Association accredited programs offer a scholarly communications course. Students may be exposed to OER concepts and resources as part of a much broader set of ideas, resources and practices. It is hardly enough to do more than whet their appetite for a deeper dive into the world of open education. That can now change at scale, if more LIS program faculty wish to take advantage of a new opportunity.

New to the Scholarly Communications Notebook is my open resource OER for LIS: Toolkit for Building an OER Librarianship Course. It is based on the Open Education Librarianship course I have taught for four years for the San Jose State University iSchool program. Designed from scratch as an asynchronous course, now any LIS instructor can adopt or modify the entire course to create a similar course within their own program. This article published in the International Journal of Open Education Resources provides detail on the origins and development of the course, as well as student responses to what the course delivers.

The Toolkit provides all the necessary materials, including a syllabus, lecture slides, video lectures, assignments, assignment rubrics, weekly discussion board topics, weekly quizzes, required and recommended readings/videos and supplement course materials such as a resource list, course success tips, instructor’s welcome video and more. While all of this could be adopted as is, my expectation is that other LIS educators will want to customize the materials to better suit their needs. Think of the Toolkit as a starting point, not unlike a blank canvas, awaiting the next owner’s personal creative touch.

To be sure, there are other paths for learning the theory and practice of open education for librarians. Both SPARC and the Open Education Network offer excellent programs for current librarians who wish to develop or enhance their OER skills and leadership capability. There are several outstanding open texts for learning both basic and advanced concepts and practices that are the domain of Open Education Librarians. None of those is quite geared to the needs of LIS program students who must learn the skills within the structure of a credit-earning course. That is a gap I sought to remedy when I first introduced this course in 2020. Now, with the introduction of this Toolkit, I invite other LIS faculty to help continue the work of closing the gap, and instead, fully bring our LIS student community into the world of open education.

About the Author

Steven Bell, associate university librarian at Temple University Libraries is a long-time advocate for open education. In addition to numerous articles and presentations on open education projects, his contributions include serving on SPARC’s Open Education Advisory Board, mentoring participants of SPARC’s Open Education Leadership Program and serving on the Executive Board of Affordable Learning Pennsylvania. Steven currently serves as an adjunct instructor for the San Jose State University iSchool, and regularly contributes blog posts to the Charleston Hub. You can learn more about Steven at stevenbell.info

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How to Add Content to the Scholarly Communication Notebook

The Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN) is a hub of open teaching and learning content scoped to topics directly relevant to scholarly communication librarianship, such as copyright, open access, open education, open data, scholarly sharing, and research impact. Presently available formats of SCN content include curricular and lesson plans, slides, games, exercises, A/V resources, and introductory texts, but almost anything topical that is digital and openly-licensed is fair game for inclusion. We’ve populated it initially by sponsoring the creation of content as well as curating existing resources. We also mean for librarians, LIS faculty, and LIS students, and related allies (instructional designers working in open education, and open publishers, for example) to be able to contribute resources if they wish, either their own creations or existing open work by others. Doing so is easy, and very welcome, so here’s how:

Step 1: Add Content to the OER Commons

The first step to getting new work into the SCN is adding it to OER Commons.  The SCN is a Hub built in OER Commons by ISKME. Adding content to OER Commons (https://www.oercommons.org/) is simple, but first you must create a free OER Commons profile (see How to create a profile in OER Commons).

After creating your profile, you can add content either by creating it in their Open Author tool or using “Submit from Web.”  If you would like to use the first method, the OER Commons provides instructions for using the Open Author tool.  For the most part, we have added content by submitting from the web, which entails adding a link and descriptive information. Either method is fine. Whichever you choose, please be thoughtful about providing the most complete and accurate descriptive metadata possible.

Screen capture of OER Commons banner, highlighting green "Add OER" button with red arrow.
The “Add OER” Button is at the top and slightly right of center on the OER Commons home page, oercommons.org.
Screen cap detail of the "Add OER" options, the Open Author tool and "Submit from Web"
Resources may be added to OER Commons via the Open Author tool or by submitting them from the web.

To deposit via link, click the green “Add OER” button, and then click the “Add Link” button that appears under “Submit from Web.” In Step 1, enter the resource’s URL. In Step 2, you’ll describe the resource. The fields are: Title*, Overview*, Authors, Conditions of Use* (CC license), Subject Areas* (in our case, usually “Information Science”), Education Levels* (usually Graduate/Professional), Material Types*, Languages*, Educational Standards (probably NA for SCN content), Media Formats, Educational Use, Primary User, Grades (probably NA), Accessibility, and Tags (see Step 2 about Tags below). Some fields may already be populated from the link, but review every field and provide the best information you’re able. Asterisked* fields are required. In the 3rd and final step, preview the submission and, if the information is correct, submit for review.

OER Commons submission notification email. It reads: Dear Josh Bolick, Thank you for submitting content on the OER commons. Our curation team will review your submission within 24 to 40 hours from sbumittal to ensure that it meets our OER quality standards. You can access your submission in your submitted folder. While pending review, your resource is set to private and cannot be viewed by others. We will send you a confirmation message once your item has been approved for our digital library and is ready to be shared. Thanks for contributing to the Open Education community. Sincerely, the OER Commons team
On submission, you should receive this email from OER Commons.

Upon submission, you will receive an email from info@oercommons.org: “Your resource is awaiting review.” Review by OER Commons staff typically takes place within 24-48 hours, during which time the resource is set to private, though you have access to it in your submitted folder. Upon successful review, you will receive another email from the same address:, “Your resource is now searchable and shareable.”

OER Commons notification email. It reads: Dear Josh Bolick, Your resource has been published and cataloged in our digital library. The means your item, [title of item], is fully accessible to all users and available for sharing across the site. Thanks for contributing to the Open Education community. Sincerely, the OER Commons team
Upon review, you should receive this message from OER Commons.
Step 2: Tag Your Work Appropriately

Regarding tags: you may use whatever tags are most appropriate to help discover the content through keyword searches in OER Commons.  Although tags are not a required field when submitting content to the OER Commons, your submission must include tags to be included in the SCN.  We use specific tags to sort the resources into the SCN Collections to make them easier to browse. The collections are Open Access (tag: Open Access), Copyright (tag: Copyright), Scholarly Sharing (tag: Sharing), Open Education (tag: Open Education), Data (tag: Data), Impact Measurement (tag: Impact), and What/Why Scholarly Communication (tag: WWSC) for items that address the whole rather than a part or parts. Each collection has a description outlining the scope of the collection (click into the collection to view the headnote).  Please make sure to use the appropriate SCN Collection tag/s when submitting your work.

Step 3: Get Your Resource Endorsed

In addition to the correct tag/s, to be featured in the SCN, we must endorse the resource. Without the endorsement, it will be in OER Commons, but not in the SCN. You can let us know by copying the text of the “Your resource is now searchable and shareable” email and submitting it through the Contact form on our project site. We’ll have a look, and assuming we agree it is in scope and of reasonable quality, we will endorse it.

To summarize, in order to have a work included in the SCN, it must be (1) deposited to OER Commons, (2) have the correct collection tag/s, and (3) get our endorsement.

If you have any questions or concerns about depositing content or suggestions for making these instructions clearer, please contact us! If you’re using SCN content, we’d also love to hear from you to learn about your use and take any suggestions you may have.

Thanks to Dr. Lori F. Cummins for her very helpful suggestions on this post. It’s much clearer as a result of her review.

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Announcement: Open Review for “Finding Balance: Collaborative Workflows for Risk Management in Sharing Cultural Heritage Collections Online” (book)

Editors note: text below by the primary authors; shared here to support the authors’ open review. -Josh, Will, Maria

Carrie Hintz, Melanie T. Kowalski, Sarah Quigley, and Jody Bailey, the authors of Finding Balance: Collaborative Workflows for Risk Management in Sharing Cultural Heritage Collections Online, are seeking critical, constructive feedback and comments on this preprint draft of their book to ensure accuracy and clarity. To that end, we are sharing the book for open review. More information about the book and our plan for the review process is below.

Overview of Book

In the fall of 2021, we submitted a proposal for this project to the Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN) initiative led by Will Cross at North Carolina State University Libraries, Josh Bolick at University of Kansas Libraries, and Maria Bonn at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences and supported by IMLS grants LG-72-17-0132-17 and LG-36-19-0021-19. We are grateful that our project was selected for inclusion in the SCN. It was conceived as an open educational resource (OER) focused on managing and creating workflows around copyright risk and digitizing and sharing cultural heritage collections online. We hope it will prove useful to library and information science students who are interested in working as scholarly communications specialists or archivists after they finish their studies. We also hope that library and archives professional practitioners will find this book to be a rich resource for continuing education. It is important to note that although much of this book focuses on copyright, we did not create it for legal scholars or attorneys. It is intended to be a practical guide to help cultural heritage professionals who are not experts in copyright law. Licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC 4.0) license, the book will be published more formally in 2023.

How will open review work?

The book is currently in Google Docs, and anyone can follow this link and add comments for approximately 8 weeks, at which point comments will be closed and considered by us as we move toward more formal publication. Anonymous review is permitted, and we ask all reviewers to provide comments only, not edits to the text itself. Reviewers who wish to have their review acknowledged should sign their review with their preferred spelling of their name. Critical, constructive feedback is welcome and appreciated; abusive or combative comments will be deleted and/or ignored. Be the reviewer you wish you had, and help make this work the best it can be. Thank you in advance for taking the time to review the book, and please contact us if you have any questions at FindingBalanceOER@gmail.com.

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New to the SCN: Open Pedagogy in Practice: A Primer for Librarians

This is the latest post in a series announcing resources created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook, or SCN. The SCN is a hub of open teaching and learning content on scholcomm topics that is both a complement to an open book-level introduction to scholarly communication librarianship and a disciplinary and course community for inclusively sharing models and practices. IMLS funded the SCN in 2019, permitting us to pay creators for their labor while building a solid initial collection. These works are the result of one of three calls for proposals (our first CFP was issued in fall 2020; the second in late spring ‘21, and the third in late fall 2021).

Today we’re excited to share “Open Pedagogy in Practice: A Primer for Librarians” (available via Pressbooks and in the SCN OER Commons Hub). This work was created by Lindsey Gumb and Mandi Goodsett to help librarians and LIS students understand perspectives from teaching faculty (via podcast interviews with them) and proposing an adaptable lesson plan for implementing open pedagogy in library instruction. Here they are to introduce Open Pedagogy in Practice:

As faculty interest and knowledge of open educational resources have increased over the last several years, so has their interest in involving students in the creation and revision processes of these free resources. As librarians and faculty navigate this new and exciting path together, all parties should be mindful of examining the needs of our students as they begin their own exciting journeys as open scholars.

In this support primer, you’ll find a collection of podcast interviews, as well as one-shot lesson plans for librarians or faculty who are exploring open pedagogy in the classroom. Mandi’s podcast series of faculty interviews will be helpful for other faculty seeking to learn more about their peers’ experiences with open pedagogy, but librarians will also benefit from hearing first hand perspectives so they can better understand the necessary support librarians might provide. The one-shot lesson plans are intended to assist academic librarians tasked with supporting faculty embarking on open pedagogy projects; however, we recognize that it often takes a village, and individuals in other roles will also benefit from these (adaptable) lesson plans.

We hope that the community will not only learn from this support primer but that it will expand upon it and transform it into something even better than we could have ever imagined! We’d love to hear from you if you have feedback or suggestions for us; contact us at a.goodsett[at]csuohio.edu or lgumb[at]rwu.edu.

About the Authors

Mandi Goodsett (she/her) is the Performing Arts & Humanities Librarian, as well as the Open Educational Resource & Copyright Advisor, at Cleveland State University. She serves as an OhioLINK Affordable Learning Ambassador and an instructor for the Open Education Network OER Librarianship Certification. Her research interests include open education, critical thinking in library instruction, mentoring new professionals, and sustainability in libraries. In her free time Mandi loves cooking, playing board games with friends, and enjoying the outdoors of Northeast Ohio.

Lindsey Gumb is an Associate Professor and Scholarly Communications Librarian at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, and she also serves as the Open Education Fellow at the New England Board of Higher Education in Boston, Massachusetts. With an active interest in the intersections of information literacy, open education, and critical librarianship, Lindsey works with faculty on her campus and region-wide to push the awareness of open education from a cost-savings tool to be more inclusive of pedagogies that allow for opportunities to create systemic changes in more representative and equitable information creation, evaluation, and access. She resides in Rhode Island with her family and together they enjoy the beach, hiking, gardening, and their animals.