Tag: Pressbooks

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New to the SCN: Introduction to the Library’s Institutional Repository for Scholarly Communications

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). A recently released Summer 2023 project report provides more context.

Today we’re excited to share “Introduction to the Library’s Institutional Repository for Scholarly Communications” (available via Pressbooks and in the SCN OER Commons Hub). This work was created by Dr. Jennifer Beamer and Sumayyah Jewell. Institutional repositories, or IRs, are at an interesting point in their development and use. Here is Jennifer to introduce their work:

In 2020, Jennifer and Sumayyah began refreshing the nearly 10-year-old institutional repository at the Claremont Colleges Library.  Our goal was to start creating documentation about the foundational concepts that we wanted our colleagues to know about.  As we were both strong advocates of new and soon-to-be librarians we talked many times about how learning about repositories in library school would be a great idea. So we created a simple guide of how institutional repositories operate within our library. We began documenting the actors and processes of the institutional repository while at the same time internally educating our staff, librarians, and leadership on how our campus’s students, faculty, and staff were interacting with the repository. There are four main areas we have addressed: Libraries and the Institutional Repository, Contents of the Library Repository, Labor and the Library Repository, and Organizations that Support the Library Institutional Repository.  At the end of each chapter, there are a few brief questions for exploring and diving deeper into the content presented.

We chose to create a Pressbook in the hopes that we can add more content in the future and possibly case studies. We would love others to get in touch with us and give us feedback on our simple content to date. We realize that it’s a basic introduction for now.  This resource is meant for librarians and library students – especially those who may be new to scholarly communication and or have no experience with institutional repositories. It presents how library workers are thinking as they undertake open-access publishing, manage institutional repositories, and assemble digital collections. The simplicity of the current version was well received internally. The feedback thus far has been that it is a good start and more content would be welcome. Please email Jennifer (jenniferb@claremont.edu) with any feedback.

About the Authors

Jennifer Beamer is the Head of Scholarly Communication and Open Publishing Services at The Claremont Colleges, a liberal arts college consortium comprised of seven colleges in Southern California. She believes in the library’s open publishing program by building collaborative relationships with partners from within the Library and across the campuses. Additionally, Jennifer provides leadership, outreach, and education on the scholarly communication ecosystem, including open access advocacy, open science practices, open educational resources, copyright and fair use, and research impact.

Sumayyah Jewell is the Digital Preservation Archivist at the Leonard Cohen Family Trust in Los Angeles, and a future Librarian.  She is passionate about facilitating the discoverability and preservation of knowledge. Sumayyah’s areas of expertise include practical experience in reference, scholarly communications, digital asset and repository management, digital preservation, community archives, resource sharing, and open access scholarship.

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New to the SCN: Accessibility Case Studies for SC Librarians and Practitioners

In the last couple of weeks we’ve started sharing works created for the Scholarly Communication Notebook (SCN, ISKME OER Commons Hub coming soon), 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 provided funding for this project so that we can build a solid initial collection, and pay creators for their labor. These works are the result of our first CFP last fall (round 2 opening soon; see also Recent Posts). Today we’re sharing Accessibility Case Studies for Scholarly Communication Librarians and Practitioners by Talea Anderson, Scholarly Communication Librarian at Washington State University. This is great and valuable work that helps all of us better serve all of our constituents and we’re proud and happy that we can support it! We’ll continue sharing projects and announcements (like the next CFP) on the News page of our project site. Here’s Talea introducing her book:

As a scholarly communication librarian, I think all the time about making resources accessible but I’ll confess that I didn’t consider the needs of people with disabilities until more recently. This is an ironic confession because I was actually born blind and, following surgeries, grew up with low vision. However, I don’t use assistive devices apart from text magnification so I’ve been able to use the Internet largely barrier-free. Only when I read Raizel Liebler and Gregory Cunningham’s article about accessibility issues in institutional repositories did I really begin to think about how my profession contributes to a system that excludes certain people on the basis of ability.

When I initially started this project, I knew I wanted to collect a variety of case studies that show how library publishers, scholarly communication librarians, and similar professions are handling accessibility in their work. I chose this format because I find that accessibility training materials sometimes tend toward the technical how-to checklist and I wanted to do more storytelling that connects publishing practices to the lived experience of people with disabilities. Rather than sketching out the technical details of a perfectly accessible document or publication, I wanted to show a variety of people and organizations thinking through what accessibility means in their work.

Of course, it’s not just libraries that are engaging with accessibility. Many other groups and organizations are doing this work, and I tried to include some of these examples in my case studies. For instance, in 2020, I was able to attend the National Federation of the Blind’s annual convention and listen as people grappled with the intersections between racism and ableism. These conversations partially informed a chapter I wrote about inclusive alt text descriptions and I’m sure many other case studies could have been included as well. I hope that we in libraries can continue to look outside of our own organizations to learn about inclusive practices from the communities that we aim to serve.

Thank you to the Scholarly Communication Notebook for supporting this project and to the many people who kindly shared their experiences, perspectives, and resources via the case studies. It’s been a wonderful learning experience for me personally and I hope this resource proves useful to others as well.

About the Author

Talea Anderson is the Scholarly Communication Librarian at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. She has participated in two excellent fellowship programs: the OER Research Fellowship with the Open Education Group in 2017/18, and the SPARC OE Leadership Program, Class of 2018. Talea is on Twitter at @anderstales.