Posts in: September, 2019

To the rescue: How academic libraries can support humanities monographs through open access

academic_monograph_02

When we think about open access (OA) publishing in academia, it’s very often about articles. That is, relatively short, data- and research-focused pieces in peer-reviewed journals. Trends in open science, public funding, cost containment, and library collection development have driven a lot of those conversations, and they’re important.

Today, though, I’d like to talk about the scholarly monograph. Book-length content published as a stand-alone work is not the norm for many of the hard sciences. But it is often the end result of important work done in the humanities, liberal arts, and social sciences—and often required for tenure and promotion in those disciplines.

The trends we’re seeing in OA for article-level materials are very promising. But they also often work against monograph publishing, which is not good for academic presses working in the humanities.

There is an opportunity here, however, for academic libraries to engage in OA publishing to promote and protect the work being done by their humanities scholars.

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The resource sharing gene: still going strong after 40 years!

40th-ill-anniversary

I have worked in OCLC Resource Sharing for more than 33 years and I think that librarians are born with a ‘togetherness’ gene. Sharing is one of our profession’s bedrock values—sharing work, sharing collections, sharing knowledge. Nowhere is this value practiced more diligently than with interlibrary loan. We build our collections and share our materials with a commitment to serve our users—who we consider to be anyone, anywhere in the world!

It stands to reason, then, that resource sharing is one of the most popular topics on our Next blog. As we celebrate the 40th anniversary of OCLC ILL this year, I invite you to enjoy three of our most-read resource sharing posts again.

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Breaking through change barriers in three steps

Change

By Charles Pace, Executive Director, Gwinnett County Public Library, and
Michael Casey, Director of Customer Experience, Gwinnett County Public Library

What role does the library play in the community? That was one of many questions that led the Gwinnett County Public Library (GCPL) toward organizational change in 2016. We were (and still are!) fully committed to being a continuous change organization with a clear outside-in focus and a customer-centric approach. It’s been a journey, and our biggest lesson is probably that we always have more to learn. Change is complex. What’s helped is keeping our ultimate purpose in clear view. And for us, every initiative is always geared towards improved service to the community.

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