Featured Blog
May 14, 2020
Making Community Spaces Safer: On Hiring and Transparency
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 … Continue reading Making Community Spaces Safer: On Hiring and Transparency
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
April 27, 2020
Educopia Research Energizes Communities to Work Together for Mutual Benefit and Maximum Impact
Educopia Research serves as a collaborative hub that energizes communities of players to work together for mutual benefit and maximum impact. Our research activities are designed to support our strong belief that system-wide change can only accomplished with system-wide leadership. We build networks of players across numerous boundaries, helping them to align their work to … Continue reading Educopia Research Energizes Communities to Work Together for Mutual Benefit and Maximum Impact
April 27, 2020
Broadening Energy and Opportunities in the Library Publishing Coalition
The Acceleration Lifecycle Stage is punctuated by rapid increases in a community’s reach, activities, and impact. For the Library Publishing Coalition, opportunities have proliferated across committees, events, and research projects, all of which expanded in 2019 to encompass the community’s broadening energy and capacity.
April 27, 2020
BitCurator Consortium is Fusing Technical Concerns with Broader Field of Born-Digital Archiving
The BitCurator Consortium initially formed in 2014 around an Open Source Software environment that supports the acquisition and initial curation of born-digital collections in libraries, archives, and museums. It has grown into a burgeoning community of practice that fuses these technical concerns with the broader field of born-digital archiving and the institutional and workflow needs … Continue reading BitCurator Consortium is Fusing Technical Concerns with Broader Field of Born-Digital Archiving
April 27, 2020
Building Community and Capacity in the Software Preservation Network
In January 2019, the Software Preservation Network (SPN) launched a two-year seed funded effort to secure SPN as a sustainable, community-owned organization. As part of this process, institutions were asked to invest—not just financially, but also in a series of facilitated community cultivation sessions in which members would make key decisions regarding the form, function, … Continue reading Building Community and Capacity in the Software Preservation Network
October 18, 2019
Educopia partners with Curtin University-led alliance to increase the impact of university-based research
A new alliance of researchers led by Curtin University in partnership with Educopia Institute will work together to improve the way research is shared, charting new pathways for the future of universities around the world. Fresh strategies to reform the role of universities and build them into information-sharing Open Knowledge Institutions will be developed through … Continue reading Educopia partners with Curtin University-led alliance to increase the impact of university-based research
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?
July 2, 2019
Educopia and LPC awarded IMLS Grant to study journal publishing workflows
We are very excited to report that Educopia Institute, the Library Publishing Coalition, and twelve partner libraries (Atlanta University Center, California Digital Library, Claremont Colleges, Columbia University, Illinois Wesleyan University, Pacific University, University of Alberta, University of Michigan, University of Pittsburgh, University of Redlands, Virginia Tech, and Wayne State University) have received an Institute of … Continue reading Educopia and LPC awarded IMLS Grant to study journal publishing workflows
June 20, 2019
Educopia Releases “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape – 2019 Census” Report and Data Visualizations
We are pleased to announce a new report released by Educopia Publications: “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape – 2019 Census.” The paper, authored by Katherine Skinner (Educopia) and edited by David Lewis, Mike Roy, and Melanie Schlosser, is the product of an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded project, “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Infrastructure,” led by Middlebury … Continue reading Educopia Releases “Mapping the Scholarly Communication Landscape – 2019 Census” Report and Data Visualizations
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
February 8, 2019
Making Community Spaces Safer…
We deserve a better organization. We deserve a better profession. What happened to me and what happens to so many others cannot be allowed to continue. – April Hathcock “ALAMW: What Happened, and What Should Happen Next” All of us at Educopia have been actively grappling with the recently reported ALA Midwinter 2019 Code of … Continue reading Making Community Spaces Safer…
January 22, 2019
Community Validation
After a community has formed and coalesced around a central set of ideas, the next step on the path to maturity is to test the community’s validity. In this crucial “validation” stage, communities often need to strike a careful balance between focusing on continued internal development while simultaneously expanding their external networks of support.
December 17, 2018
Grassroots Formation
In 2014, my colleague Zach Vowell and I proposed a consortial model for long-term access to software and software-dependent data – we called it the “Software Preservation Network” (SPN). A year later, our institutions, California Polytechnic State University and the University of Texas at Austin, were awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services National … Continue reading Grassroots Formation
November 7, 2018
Community Cultivation, Revisited
I actually tried to stand in the way of Educopia’s founding! I’m the first to admit it. A dozen years ago, I was the naysayer. I really didn’t think we could sustain a nonprofit organization centered on the science of community and collaboration. I didn’t lack conviction that our field needed a more rigorous, structured … Continue reading Community Cultivation, Revisited
May 24, 2018
Library Publishing Curriculum: Pilot Experiences
The Library Publishing Curriculum has been created in 2018 as part of the “Developing a Curriculum to Advance Library-Based Publishing” project, generously funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In 2018-2019, we are piloting this open, freely available curriculum in virtual workshops, in person workshops, graduate school classes, and other environments. Here, we maintain a … Continue reading Library Publishing Curriculum: Pilot Experiences
September 29, 2017
Celebrating the origins and growth of SouthernSpaces.org
There are few things I’ve accomplished in my career that I’m as proud of as the work I did to help found SouthernSpaces.org. Today, our roundtable interview about its origins and early growth has been published–it provides a window into so many wonderful things about the publication, its staff and leadership, its mission and vision, … Continue reading Celebrating the origins and growth of SouthernSpaces.org
February 17, 2017
MetaArchive Cooperative Receives 2017 George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Award
The MetaArchive Cooperative was bestowed the 2017 George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Award for its commendable work in the digital preservation field. This award pays tribute to individuals or groups that “foster collaboration for preservation” by demonstrating leadership, vision and initiative to ensure libraries, archives and historical institutions protect cultural patrimony. The MetaArchive Cooperative is an … Continue reading MetaArchive Cooperative Receives 2017 George Cunha and Susan Swartzburg Award