2016-2018

Library Publishing Curriculum

Quick Access Points

For Students:

Library Publishing Workshop (asynchronous, virtual course taught by Dr. Katherine Skinner)

For Trainers:

Library Publishing Curriculum (CC-BY and ready for use and adaptation!)


About the Curriculum

The Educopia Institute and the Library Publishing Coalition (LPC), in partnership with the Public Knowledge Project (PKP), NASIG, and BlueSky to BluePrint, are delighted to offer the “Library Publishing Curriculum,” a suite of synchronous and asynchronous professional development offerings for librarians that are open and free under a CC-BY license for anyone to offer or adapt. This dynamic, extensible, multimedia curriculum is intended to empower librarians to meet local demands to launch and/or enhance scholarly publishing activities.

Released in 2018, the initial curriculum includes four modules that address major competencies in library publishing: Content, Impact, Policy, and Sustainability. Each module has been authored by field experts, and each is roughly the equivalent of a 12 hour “course.”

Each module contains an introduction plus 4-6 “units” that address topics of interest. Within each unit, we have produced and offer freely the following components: a narrative, a slideshow with talking notes, and activities for use in a physical or virtual classroom for workshops and courses.

The project team piloted more than a dozen workshops and courses based on the curriculum between 2017-2019. The team also assembled a permanent, asynchronous virtual workshop based on these curriculum elements. The eight-module course is taught by Dr. Katherine Skinner and is freely available to anyone who is interested in learning more about library publishing.

The Library Publishing Curriculum and the Library Publishing Workshop were created as part of the “Developing a Curriculum to Advance Library-Based Publishing” project, generously funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The project has already had an impact on the quality and quantity of library publishing services offered to scholars and students and is contributing to a healthier, more equitable publishing ecosystem.


Curriculum Module Descriptions

  • The Content Module covers how library publishers attract, select, edit, manage, and disseminate content. It includes information about how to recruit partners and select content for a program, and how to incorporate diverse voices into each part of the publication process. It also shares information about common production workflows, identifying the resources and staff skills needed to support various editorial strategies and content types.

Authors: Peter Berkery, Executive Director, AAUP; Meredith Babb, Director, University Press of Florida; Jasmine Mulliken, Stanford University Press; Friederike Sundaram, Stanford University Press; Dennis Lloyd, University of Wisconsin Press; Mary Rose Muccie, Director, Temple University Press; Brenna McLaughlin, Director of Marketing & Communications, AAUP

Editor: Sarah Lippincott, Consultant

  • The Impact Module focuses on how library publishers measure and extend the impact of their work. It covers how to identify and apply specific impact measures for publications, how to assess the performance of a publishing program and publication portfolio, and how to build an engagement strategy and evaluate its effects.

Author: John W. Warren, Director, Mason Publishing/George Mason University Press

Editor: Sarah Lippincott, Consultant

  • The Sustainability Module addresses core concerns related to library publishing as a socio-technical system. In order for library publishing endeavors to establish longevity and long-term success, professionals need to address a range of concerns related to people, policies, communities, technologies, and financials.

Authors: Laurie N. Taylor, Digital Scholarship Librarian at the University of Florida; Brian W. Keith, Associate Dean for Administration and Faculty Affairs at the George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida

Editor: Sarah Lippincott, Consultant

  • The Policy Module covers how library publishers develop policies that guide specific areas of their work. In this initial release, it is focused on policies related to copyright, diversity, and digital preservation, and guidance on creating legal agreements. We recognize that there are many more policies that may be used by library publishers, and hope to expand this module in future.

Authors: Sara Benson, Copyright Librarian and Assistant Professor, University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Harriet Green, Interim Head of Scholarly Communication and Publishing, English and Digital Humanities Librarian and associate professor, University Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Merinda Hensley, Associate Professor and the Digital Scholarship Liaison and Instruction Librarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Janet Swatscheno, Visiting Digital Publishing Specialist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library; Melanie Schlosser, Scholarly Communications Program Leader, Educopia Institute; Katherine Skinner, Executive Director, Educopia Institute

Editors: Melanie Schlosser, Scholarly Communications Program Leader, Educopia Institute; Katherine Skinner, Executive Director, Educopia Institute


Diversity in the Curriculum

Scholarly publishing has a well-documented diversity problem, which this curriculum addresses via an explicit focus on diversity issues and how they play out in library publishing. For each module, the authors were asked to consider the skills, workflows, and strategies they covered through a diversity and inclusion lens, and to explore the places where learners could be prompted to think critically about the impact of their work in either maintaining the status quo or in helping to create a more inclusive scholarly publishing landscape. As a result, the curriculum includes guidance on recruiting a diverse staff for publishing, creating a portfolio of publications that includes underrepresented perspectives, and writing a diversity policy for the publishing program, among other topics.


Pilots

The pilots listed in this section were organized as part of the grant-funded project. At the end of the project period, the curriculum will continue to be both hosted and taught through the Library Publishing Coalition, an Affiliated Community of Educopia Institute.

  • Content WorkshopLibrary Publishing Forum. May 24, 2018. Instructors: Joshua Neds Fox (Wayne State University) and Charlotte Roh (University of San Francisco)
  • Impact WorkshopLibrary Publishing Forum. May 24, 2018. Instructor: Rebecca Welzenbach (University of Michigan)
  • Scholarly Communication and Publishing: Access, Intellectual Property, and Impact, San Jose State University graduate course. June 16-August 10, 2018. Instructor: Katherine Skinner (Educopia Institute)
  • Sustainability Virtual Workshop (four-week synchronous course). July 2018. Instructor: Holly Mercer (University of Tennessee, Knoxville)
  • Impact Virtual Workshop (four-week synchronous course). August-September 2018. Instructor: Charles Watkinson (University of Michigan)
  • Content WorkshopDigital Library Federation Forum. October 14, 2018. Instructor: Matt Ruen (Grand Valley State University)
  • Content Virtual Workshop (four-week course). January-February 2019. Instructors: Joshua Neds Fox (Wayne State University) and Charlotte Roh (University of San Francisco)
  • Policy Virtual Workshop (four-week asynchronous course). March 2019. Instructors: Melanie Schlosser and Katherine Skinner (Educopia Institute)
  • Policy Lab (in-person workshop), Library Publishing Forum. May 7, 2019. Instructors: Melanie Schlosser and Katherine Skinner (Educopia Institute)
  • Library Publishing Curriculum Virtual Workshop Series (open set of six units, including recorded lectures, readings, narrative overviews, and a range of helpful examples and handouts). December 16, 2019. Instructor: Katherine Skinner (Educopia Institute)

Project Outputs

  • Four Curriculum Modules (Content, Impact, Sustainability, and Policy) that are released openly and designed to promote the use/reuse of their contents by many different professors and trainers, published February-August 2018
  • Pilot virtual workshops, in-person workshops, and graduate school courses to demonstrate and test the efficacy of the curriculum, held May 2018-May 2019
  • An online home for the four curriculum modules that is open to anyone who wishes to use it
  • A sustainability framework for the continued development and upkeep of this curriculum

Credits

Nancy Maron, BlueSky to BluePrint, served as a curriculum consultant on all modules, and helped to cultivate and guide the author teams in terms of scope and layout.

Sarah Lippincott, Independent Scholarly Communications and Digital Scholarship Consultant, served as an editorial consultant to integrate reviewer feedback, ensure a common rhythm between all materials, improve cross-referencing between modules, and to copyedit the set of modules as a whole.