April 4, 2024
We have a Vision, and a Mission to lead us there
Since October 2022, Educopia has realized a Shared Leadership Model, refined an iterative organizational development practice, and introduced tactics to continuously strengthen our relational framework, i.e., our ways of working in community. Today, we’re unveiling our new Vision and Mission statements.
September 8, 2022
Scaling Diamond OA: Universities as Centers of Open Publishing Excellence
From the Budapest Open Access Initiative 20th anniversary recommendations to the UNESCO Recommendation for Open Science and the Harvard endorsement of Diamond OA, many recent reports on open scholarship are calling for scholarly research to be published and disseminated via open infrastructure that is community-owned and -governed. This call for open infrastructure is particularly important … Continue reading Scaling Diamond OA: Universities as Centers of Open Publishing Excellence
May 16, 2022
Migration is the Hard Part
In scholarly communications, when we talk about “vendor lock-in”, what we actually mean is the difficulty (or seeming impossibility) of moving from one platform to another: “migrations.” This can be technical. Platforms may not provide data export in a standardized format or there may be no tooling to complete the migration automatically. Lock-in can also … Continue reading Migration is the Hard Part
August 23, 2021
Making Community Spaces Safer: On Being “Inclusive”
This post was adapted from The PPPDiaries “Is everyone else nodding?” Educopia is a fully remote organization, so video calls were old hat even before the pandemic. We get to meet up occasionally, but for the most part we communicate via Slack and video calls. My work itself involves coordinating project teams, committees, and other … Continue reading Making Community Spaces Safer: On Being “Inclusive”
July 15, 2021
Stick-With-What-You-Have and Add Slowly: Configuring Technology for a Virtual Conference
About this series: The 2021 Virtual Library Publishing Forum was a huge success, combining excellent content with smooth facilitation and a liberal dose of whimsy and care. We decided to pull back the curtain on how it was run to support other organizations that are interested in hosting thought-provoking, humane events on a shoestring. Because … Continue reading Stick-With-What-You-Have and Add Slowly: Configuring Technology for a Virtual Conference
February 16, 2021
Making Community Spaces Safer: On Being “Caring”
Over the course of 2020-2021, members of the Educopia staff will be contributing blog posts to the “Making Community Spaces Safer” series. Each post will explore one of our organizational values and describe our efforts to live into that value, including our successes, our failures, and the hard-won lessons that occur in between. We will announce new … Continue reading Making Community Spaces Safer: On Being “Caring”
February 4, 2021
Achieving Sovereignty for Data Curation and Preservation
Forging into 2021 marks an official full decade of work for me in the field of digital preservation, first with LOCKSS and Educopia (2010-2015), then with Grand Valley State University Libraries (2015-2019), and then back with Educopia and its MetaArchive and BitCurator communities (2019-2021). My how time flies! Reaching a decade milestone provides one with … Continue reading Achieving Sovereignty for Data Curation and Preservation
April 27, 2020
MetaArchive is Collaboratively Charting a New Pathway Forward for Distributed Digital Preservation
When Community Cultivation—A Field Guide was published in late 2018, the MetaArchive Cooperative figured prominently as an example of a community entering the Transition Lifecycle Stage of maturation. Indeed, since early 2019 the MetaArchive community has undertaken a series of intensive evaluations of both its organizational model and its technical approaches to distributed digital preservation. … Continue reading MetaArchive is Collaboratively Charting a New Pathway Forward for Distributed Digital Preservation
July 23, 2019
Why Are So Many Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Providers Running a Red Queen’s Race?
A few weeks ago, we at Educopia published the first project deliverable for the “Mapping Scholarly Communication Infrastructure” project, which we’re working on with Middlebury College and TrueBearing Consulting. The deliverable is a report and a set of data visualizations based on our deep dive into the organizational and technical infrastructures of “Scholarly Communication Resources,” … Continue reading Why Are So Many Scholarly Communication Infrastructure Providers Running a Red Queen’s Race?
March 15, 2019
Community Transition
Digital preservation is, by definition, a long-term commitment. Libraries, archives, and museums engaging in this crucial work must actively plan to maintain digital assets through decades, centuries, and millennia. As such, these organizations must both anticipate and welcome change. When the Educopia Institute helped MetaArchive Cooperative to formalize as a membership community and service in … Continue reading Community Transition
February 11, 2019
Community Acceleration
The question of when to tackle formal strategic planning is a tricky one for any community. Strategic plans can be powerful instruments for communities that are ready for them, but at some stages of community development, a labor-intensive planning process may sap energy needed elsewhere or stymie playful innovation. We’ve found that strategic planning is … Continue reading Community Acceleration
October 15, 2017
Nexus LAB: Layers of Leadership
The “Layers of Leadership,” developed in partnership by Educopia Institute, the Center for Creative Leadership, and more than 35 museum, library, and archives associations and representatives, provides a common lens for understanding high-demand leadership training skills and competencies in these fields. The “Layers of Leadership” documents the key challenge, key leadership tasks, skills necessary to … Continue reading Nexus LAB: Layers of Leadership
December 9, 2014
Chronicles in Preservation
The Chronicles in Preservation project aimed to study, document, and model the use of data preparation and distributed digital preservation frameworks to collaboratively preserve digitized and born-digital newspaper collections. Project Outputs: Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Readiness, published 04 March 2014 Guidelines for Digital Newspaper Readiness are an effort to distill preservation-readiness steps into incremental processes … Continue reading Chronicles in Preservation
September 30, 2014
Library Leadership Roadmap
Built on the work of the Recommendations for Action, the 21st Century Library Leadership Logic Model and Library Leadership Roadmap establish the benefits of coordinated action to enrich library leadership training. The Logic Model describes the current state of leadership in libraries and the need for stronger leaders. The Roadmap charts the high-level needs for librarians … Continue reading Library Leadership Roadmap
September 15, 2014
BitCurator Consortium Launches
The Educopia Institute is pleased to announce the launch of the BitCurator Consortium (BCC), a new independent, community-led membership association to support the curation of born- digital materials by libraries, archives, and museums. Members of the BitCurator user community have founded BCC to enhance, promote, and explore this growing area of professional activity. “Managing born-digital … Continue reading BitCurator Consortium Launches
August 24, 2009
MetaArchive II
The “Cooperative Network and Service Providers” grant enabled the MetaArchive distributed digital preservation network and service framework to formalize and extend its model into an ongoing, sustainable business. The resulting service and community was designed to be the first incubated community of the Educopia Institute, a nonprofit organization founded to cultivate community action between libraries, … Continue reading MetaArchive II