News from the Field

David Free

ACRL speaker honoraria policy updates

At the 2023 ALA Annual Conference, the ACRL Board of Directors received the final report and recommendations from the ACRL Member Accommodation/Compensation Task Force. Due to changing landscapes, member feedback, and requests in recent years, the Board asked the task force to review existing policies and norms pertaining to member participation and compensation to better engage, acknowledge, and support a diverse library workforce and to help make ACRL a more welcoming, equitable, and accessible association.

On the task force’s recommendation, the Board approved a series of policy updates that allow ACRL units such as committees (including the President’s Program committee) and sections to offer honoraria to all speakers, regardless of their membership in ALA/ACRL, job position, or degree status. Examples of work for which honoraria can now be offered include speaking at virtual or in-person events, leading workshops, or presenting at ALA conferences. The Board also reaffirmed that the association will continue providing discounted registration for all speakers at future biennial ACRL Conferences. Learn more in the full update from ACRL President Beth McNeil on ACRL Insider at https://acrl.ala.org/acrlinsider/acrl-speaker-honoraria-policy-updates/.

Applications open for IMLS grant opportunities

Museums and related organizations across the United States have six opportunities in the coming months to apply for grants from the nation’s primary source of federal funding for museum services. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is now accepting applications for six grant programs including Museums for America, Inspire! Grants for Small Museums, Museums Empowered, National Leadership Grants for Museums, Museum Grants for African American History and Culture, and Native American/Native Hawaiian Museum Services.

Applications for all six programs are due on November 15, 2023. Applicants should review the notices of funding opportunity carefully to understand each program’s specific goals and objectives, which reflect the agency’s focus on championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access. Learn more at https://www.imls.gov/grants/grant-programs.

D2O opens access to new books

Thanks to the support of libraries participating in Direct to Open (D2O), the MIT Press will publish its full list of 2023 scholarly monographs and edited collections open access on the MIT Press Direct platform. Launched in 2021, D2O is a sustainable framework that harnesses the collective power of libraries to support open and equitable access to vital, leading scholarship. D2O moves scholarly books from a solely market-based, purchase model, where individuals and libraries buy single ebooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. Instead of purchasing a title once for a single collection, libraries now have the opportunity to fund them one time for the world through participant fees.

In its second year, 322 libraries from around the globe committed to support D2O, an increase of 33% from the first year. Expanding D2O’s international footprint, the MIT Press also entered into all-in agreements with Big Ten Academic Alliance and the Konsortium der sächsischen Hochschulbibliotheken, as well as central licensing and invoicing agreements with Council of Australian University Librarians, Center for Research Libraries, Greater Western Library Alliance, MOBIUS, Northeast Research Libraries, Jisc, Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation, SCELC, and Lyrasis. In the coming year, the MIT Press will seek to expand library participation in the model. Supporting libraries not only contribute to opening frontlist titles, but also receive exclusive participation benefits including term access to a backlist collection of more than 2,400 titles. To learn more about Direct to Open, visit https://direct.mit.edu/books/pages/direct-to-open.

Big Ten Open Books project launches

The Big Ten Academic Alliance recently announced the launch of the Big Ten Open Books project, a collaboration between the university presses and libraries of the alliance. The first 100-title collection centered on gender and sexuality studies is now published. The works included in the collection have all been previously published in print by the partnering university presses and are now being made openly available in digital form to read and reuse at no cost. The project creates open content that is immediately and universally available, on open infrastructure, Fulcrum, hosted by the University of Michigan, using open distribution models (including Project MUSE, JSTOR, and OAPEN) to envision a robust programmatic future for open monograph publishing. This work is aligned with the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s development of the BIG Collection’s ambition of uniting the collections of the libraries of the Big Ten Academic Alliance and is supported by the Mellon Foundation’s Public Knowledge program. To learn more about the project, visit https://bigtenopenbooks.org/.

New from ACRL—Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries

ACRL announces the publication of Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries: Theories, Methods, and Cases edited by Sarah Hartman-Caverly and Alexandria Chisholm, which collects practical ways to incorporate privacy literacy into your instruction and practice.

Privacy is not dead: Students care deeply about their privacy and the rights it safeguards. They need a way to articulate their concerns and guidance on how to act within the complexity of our current information ecosystem and culture of surveillance capitalism.

Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries can help you teach privacy literacy, evolve the privacy practices at your institution, and re-center the individuals behind the data and the ethics behind library work. It is divided into four sections:

1. What is Privacy Literacy?
2. Protecting Privacy
3. Educating about Privacy
4. Advocating for Privacy

Chapters cover topics including privacy literacy frameworks; digital wellness; embedding a privacy review into digital library workflows; using privacy literacy to challenge price discrimination; privacy pedagogy; and promoting privacy literacy and positive digital citizenship through credit-bearing courses, co-curricular partnerships, and faculty development and continuing education initiatives. Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries provides theory-informed, practical ways to incorporate privacy literacy into library instruction and other areas of academic library practice.

Practicing Privacy Literacy in Academic Libraries: Theories, Methods, and Cases is available for purchase in print and as an ebook through the ALA Online Store; in print through Amazon.com; and by telephone order at (866) 746-7252 in the United States or (770) 442-8633 for international customers.

ITHAKA announces new services for digital collections

ITHAKA has announced a new set of services to help academic, research, and cultural institutions easily and affordably share, preserve, and manage their local digital collections. Using the same infrastructure that powers ITHAKA’s nonprofit services JSTOR and Portico, institutions can now increase the reach and usefulness of their local digital collections, secure access for generations to come, and further the mission they share with one another and ITHAKA to improve access to knowledge worldwide. Following a successful series of pilots during which over 300 institutions shared more than 1,800 collections on JSTOR, and a cohort of 40 partners helped to define preservation and collection-loading needs, ITHAKA developed three services to support institutions of all sizes looking for high-impact, sustainable solutions. Institutions can now share collections on JSTOR, making it possible for millions of users to discover and use content alongside a rich trove of journals, books, images, and other primary source collections while bringing greater visibility to institutions; preserve collections with Portico to safeguard the accessibility and usability of digital files in the long term, addressing the needs of tomorrow’s scholars; and manage collections using JSTOR Forum, a web-based tool that makes it easy to catalog, edit metadata, and publish to JSTOR and other sites—all in one place. Learn more at https://www.ithaka.org/news/new-services/.

Project Muse adds new titles, prepares for Subscribe to Open

Project MUSE has announced five titles confirmed to join its curated Journal Collections beginning in 2024: Journal of Global Postcolonial Studies, The Journal of Race & Policy, Quebec Studies, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, and Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. All titles will be included in the Premium Collection. Selected titles have also been added to other Project MUSE journal collections for 2024. For full details, visit the Collection Updates page at https://about.muse.jhu.edu/librarians/journal-title-upgrades.

MUSE is additionally continuing with preparations to launch a coordinated multi-publisher Subscribe to Open program, built around current curated collections, for the 2025 subscription term. With more than 800 current journals in the humanities and social sciences on its platform from close to 200 nonprofit publishers, MUSE is positioned to develop and deploy an S2O program at scale for a significant number of its journals. Through the support of MUSE’s vast community of publishers and libraries worldwide, the S2O program will open a wealth of vital scholarship in disciplines not well served by other open access models. Learn more at https://about.muse.jhu.edu/muse/s2o/.

Springshare debuts LibCal tablet displays

Springshare has launched a set of customized UI screens in the LibCal calendaring and space reservations solution designed to seamlessly integrate with Crestron room scheduling panels. The new interface allows patrons to view availability and check in to rooms/spaces via Crestron room scheduling panels mounted in front of the bookable rooms. With this integration, library users can view details about a space, pulled from LibCal and displayed directly on the institution’s Crestron room scheduling panels; instantly see whether the space is available, in use, or has a booking starting soon; scan a QR code to book the space via LibCal; and check in and check out of their LibCal Space booking on the tablet screen. More details are available at https://buzz.springshare.com/producthighlights/libcal-libraries.

Enhanced Gale Presents: Peterson’s Test and Career Prep Suite user experience

Gale, part of a Cengage Group, has made updates to the Gale Presents: Peterson’s Test and Career Prep Suite, a comprehensive online tool for standardized test preparation, researching undergraduate and graduate programs, finding tuition assistance, and exploring and preparing for careers. With a newly redesigned interface with simplified navigation and improved accessibility, these enhancements provide learners with a better user experience to easily access and find the resources they need to achieve their academic and career goals more effectively. Key enhancements include a redesigned user interface, goal setting functionality, easier navigation, a Spanish language interface, and expanded content. Learn more at https://www.gale.com/elearning/petersons-test-and-career-suite.