News – Page 3 – OER + ScholComm

February 17, 2023February 17, 2023

New to the SCN: Finding Balance

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 “Finding Balance: Collaborative Workflows for Risk Management in Sharing Cultural Heritage Collections Online” (available through Pressbooks and via OER Commons). This work was created by Carrie Hintz, Melanie T. Kowalski, Sarah Quigley, and Jody Bailey. Digitizing material is core work for many cultural heritage organizations, but navigating the rights issues can be a challenge. This team uses their experience at Emory to help the rest of us balance risk with reward to best support users and collections. Here they are to introduce Finding Balance:

Digitizing archives, special collections, and other rare and unique historical documents so they can be shared online is mission-critical work for most cultural heritage institutions. In particular, those with an educational or research mission want to provide open and equitable access to their collections to all users, not just those who can afford to travel across the globe to perform research in person. While most institutions share the goal of digitizing and disseminating the unique resources in our collections, traditional digitization workflows limit our ability to do large-scale digitization. Selecting, imaging, describing, and assessing rights for digitized content can be enormously resource-intensive and time-consuming. Rights clearance work, in particular, is highly labor-intensive, requires specialized knowledge, may require significant research, and has traditionally been conducted at an object level.

In this open educational resource, we offer guidance for creating scalable, cross-functional workflows using a risk-management approach that increases efficiency and distributes responsibility for rights assessment work more equitably across stakeholders. It includes advice for navigating knowledge gaps, building an engaged team with the right skillsets, reimagining workflows, and rethinking traditional archival processing work to build capacity for rights analysis during arrangement and description. The tools and insight in this resource are intended to help organizations make thoughtful, informed decisions about how to implement risk-analysis frameworks and workflows to perform rights analysis at scale. Our ultimate goal is that these tools will help maximize the amount of material we can make available online while working within our institutions’ risk-comfort zones. We hope this OER 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.

About the Authors:

Carrie Hintz

is the associate director of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University Libraries where she provides vision and leadership for all aspects of library operations, including archival processing, digital collection management, and research and engagement activities. She has led special collections technical services programs at Emory University’s Rose Library and Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library. (ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3040-2145)

Melanie T. Kowalski was the copyright and scholarly communications librarian for Emory University Libraries from 2013–2022. In this role, she was primarily responsible for copyright outreach, education, and consultation with faculty and students. Additionally, she was responsible for copyright consultation and analysis for digitization and managing rights metadata within the Libraries. In February 2022, Melanie moved on to a new role as the open knowledge licensing coordinator for the Center for Research Libraries, where she is working to operationalize an open knowledge strategy for licensing library content and serves as the primary resource for copyright information policy. (ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1815-9410)

Sarah Quigley was the head of collection processing at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University Libraries from 2019–2022. Prior to this, she was a manuscript archivist at the Rose from 2011–2019 and came to this project with significant experience processing collections and providing strategic oversight of the library’s processing program. In July 2022, Sarah became director of Special Collections and Archives at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Libraries where she provides vision and leadership for the division, including collection development, digital collections, public services, and technical services departments. (ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7186-6483)

Jody Bailey is the head of the Scholarly Communications Office at Emory University Libraries and leads a team of librarians and library specialists who are responsible for all library services surrounding copyright, open access and publishing, research data management, and open educational resources. The team also manages two scholarly repositories for Emory faculty and students. Before joining Emory University Libraries in 2018, Jody was director of publishing at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries where she oversaw all publishing and open education services. (ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4226-4173)

January 9, 2023

New to the SCN: Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication

Today we’re excited to share “Publishing Values-Based Scholarly Communication” (available through project site and via OER Commons). This work was created by Kath Burton, Catherine Cocks, and Bonnie Russell. We think they’ve done an incredible job! Here they are to introduce Publishing Values-Based Scholarly Communication:

In Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication, Kath Burton and Catherine Cocks of the Publishing and the Publicly Engaged Humanities working group and Bonnie Russell of the HuMetricsHSS (Humane Metrics in Humanities and Social Science) initiative have created a resource intended to increase understanding of how a values-based approach to scholarly communication can address the challenges of publishing publicly engaged scholarship.

Humanities and social science scholars are increasingly interested in doing research with and alongside communities outside the academy. This values-based, publicly engaged scholarship encompasses research, teaching, preservation, and programming conducted in partnership with diverse individuals and communities outside the university. It is intended to deepen and broaden the horizons of scholarship at the same time that it serves the public good in both its processes and outcomes. In short, this kind of research deploys the resources of the humanities to address society’s most pressing challenges.

But these collaborative research projects often call for publications quite different from the standard academic journal article or book. Works that incorporate multiple voices, are broadly accessible, and are designed to intervene in public issues may not fit easily into the standard academic journal article or monograph. Publicly engaged work is about process and methodology as much as it is about outcomes. What options exist for including all aspects of a project’s processes and methodologies, including failures and adjustments? And yet, the standard genres play an important role in an individual scholar’s career progression. Publishing models that support academic success and also include an explicitly values-based approach to scholarly communication are therefore required. In this OER we highlight several projects and we bring you the voices of scholars who are doing this work and finding creative ways to publish it. We also offer an exercise in analyzing the partnerships and publication outputs of several publicly engaged humanities projects.

University-based librarians have important roles to play in publicly engaged research. For scholars, libraries obviously offer crucial resources for conducting research, and some may also be able to provide resources to community organizations. Libraries can support public engagement efforts and facilitate connections between community organizations and scholars in many ways–for example, by hosting reading groups that bridge distinct communities; collaborating to create digital or material exhibits; consulting on issues of privacy and intellectual property; offering space, design assistance, and tools for digital projects, as well as flexible print publishing opportunities; and providing repositories for long-term access and preservation. Perhaps most important, as professionals focused on the broad circulation of knowledge, librarians can help scholars think through what it means to produce research in service to public, rather than solely disciplinary, aims.

To get readers started with values-based, collaborative scholarship, we offer the HuMetricsHSS Values Sorter. HuMetricsHSS (Humane Metrics in the Humanities and Social Sciences) was established to assist scholars and scholarly organizations in establishing a values-based approach to guide all kinds of scholarly processes through workshops and interactive tools. The Values Sorter is a self-assessment tool for everyone who wishes to engage in embedding values in their scholarly practices. We look forward to future iterations of the OER where we can include examples of effective practice using the Sorter and the HuMetricsHSS values framework.

Publishing Values-Based Scholarly Communication takes inspiration from the Scholarly Communication Notebook’s community of practice approach to empowering active engagement across the landscape. We are extremely grateful to colleagues at SCN for their generous funding and guidance as we sought to showcase the many examples of publicly engaged scholarship via this project.

To read the OER visit https://publiclyengagedpublishing.org/.

About the Authors:

Kath Burton is co-convener of the Publishing and Public Humanities Working Group. With extensive publishing experiences, ranging from commissioning to program management, she now leads the editorial development of the Humanities, Media and the Arts portfolio at Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Among other interests, Kath is an avid outdoor swimmer and helps grow community gardens in Reading, UK. ORCID: 0000-0001-7785-9604

Catherine Cocks is the interim director of Michigan State University Press and a member of the Publishing and Public Humanities Working Group. She formerly worked with Teresa Mangum and Anne Valk on the Humanities and Public Life series at the University of Iowa Press and continues to be passionate about publicly engaged scholarship. ORCID: 0000-0001-6581-4740

Bonnie Russell is the Project Manager for MESH Research at Michigan State University where she is the Project Manager (and resident librarian) for Humanities Commons and the Digital Specialist for HuMetricsHSS. She has worked with digital humanities scholars since 2012, helping scholars shape projects and identify technology needs. Before coming to MSU she spent 9 years as the Technical Project Manager at the Wayne State University Press, managing the Press’s online and digital offerings. ORCID: 0000-0002-0374-0384

December 12, 2022December 13, 2022

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

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.

October 26, 2022October 27, 2022

Which Open Is Which?

Happy Open Access Week! In celebration of OA Week 2022, as well as the upcoming spooky holiday, we’re excited to share a post from Jill Cirasella, Associate Librarian for Scholarly Communication at The Graduate Center, City University of New York. Jill is one of the Curators for materials in the Scholarly Communication Notebook. For the past year Jill has been gathering open resources related to open access. Read on to learn more about the Curators’ work, the landscape of OA-focused OER, and to see some highlights from her collection. Here’s Jill:

Next week, on Halloween, you might have cause to ask, “Which witch is which?” In fact, there are numerous books with that title, so you might even find yourself wondering, “Which Which Witch Is Which is which?” But this week it’s Open Access Week, so this week let’s consider, “Which open is which?”

In my work as a scholarly communication librarian at the CUNY Graduate Center, I am immersed in both open access (OA) and open educational resources (OER). I regularly rattle off their definitions and discuss their commonalities and differences with our students, who are both graduate students and instructors of undergraduates. Nevertheless, while curating OERs for the Open Access collection of the Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN) hub on OER Commons, I often had to step back, pause, and ponder, “Which open is which? Which open is this?”

It wasn’t hard to recall my favorite open resources about OA, and it also wasn’t hard to find additional ones that were new to me. But which of those open resources are open educational resources? Thinking through that question was surprisingly hard! And it reminded me that those definitions I so readily recite are deceptively simple distillations of complex realms.

How complex does it get? Consider these concentric circles of openness:

There are many works on the topic of OA. (Of course, there’s plenty of debate about what “open access” does and does not denote, but that’s a different issue.)
Some (but alas not all) of the works about OA are themselves OA.
Some of the OA works about OA are explicitly educational in nature, or could conceivably be used in an educational setting or for independent learning about OA.
And then some of the educational OA works about OA are licensed with an OER-compatible Creative Commons license (i.e., a Creative Commons license that does not include the NoDerivatives (ND) clause).
And, finally, some of those works have that extra dollop of OER-ness: some kind of “pedagogical apparatus” (exercise, assignment, quiz, discussion questions, etc.) that makes the resource ready for other instructors to deploy in, or adapt for, their classrooms.

I was unfamiliar with the term “pedagogical apparatus” (it’s a mouthful, but a meaningful one!) until undertaking this project—hat tip to SCN co-PIs Josh, Maria, and Will for introducing me to it and for urging the SCN curators to seek resources with that additional component. I did identify and include some such resources (e.g., materials for the workshop Open Access: Strategies and Tools for Life after College and for the full course Open Science: Sharing Your Research with the World). I also included some resources where the pedagogical opportunities are implied rather than explicit (e.g., search the Directory of Open Access Journals, edit the Open Access Directory, or apply Think. Check. Submit.). But I also included some resources with OER-compatible licenses that are “merely” educational OA works about OA (i.e., resources that fall under the second-to-last bullet above). Though lacking any pedagogical apparatus, they are so informative and clear that they would make excellent additions to course syllabi or self-study lists (e.g., the book Open Access and the video Open Access Explained!).

However, I can’t claim credit for adding all of the works that appear in the Open Access collection. In order for a resource to appear in the collection, a few different things must happen. In some cases, I identified a resource that wasn’t in the collection and deliberately performed the necessary step(s) to add it. In other cases, different people interacted with a resource in different ways, and—voilà!—the resource appeared in the collection. It’s not quantum entanglement, but there’s still a hint of “spooky action at a distance.”

So, while I add to the collection, I also learn from it. In particular, I learn each time a new SCN-funded OER pertaining to OA appears in the collection as a result of the wisdom, work, and curatorial clicks of others. For example, I have been delighted to discover these SCN-funded projects in the collection: Open Access Publishing Biases by Chelsee Dickson and Christina Holm; Labor Equity in Open Science by CJ Garcia and Anali Maughan Perry; and Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Scholarly Communications Outreach by Camille Thomas.

Needless to say, then, the collection is not yet finished. It will continue to grow through both my curation and the actions of others. Or, bringing us back to Halloween, “It’s alive!!!”

Want to suggest an OER about OA for inclusion? Let me know at jcirasella@gc.cuny.edu!

October 17, 2022

New to the SCN: LIS Teaching OER Toolkit

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