News from the Field

David Free

Vanderbilt University launches Digital Lab

The Vanderbilt University Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries have strengthened their resources for teaching and learning with the recent launch of the Digital Lab, an initiative that equips faculty, students and staff to create, develop, and sustain digital projects. The new Digital Lab combines three library departments—Digital Scholarship and Communications, the Digital Commons, and the Digital Humanities Center—into one overarching unit, realizing efficiencies that advance the Heard Libraries’ goal of facilitating transdisciplinary research and teaching through cohesive services.

Led by Senior Director Andrew Wesolek, the Digital Lab supports several existing digital projects, such as the Slave Societies Digital Archive and Syriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portal, but also works to identify and cultivate emergent projects and partners. The lab incubates these nascent projects, connecting them with local experts, finding funding opportunities, and anchoring them within the university’s broader initiatives, including Discovery Vanderbilt. In addition to supporting digital projects, the Digital Lab offers technology-rich discovery spaces for experiential learning, such as Peabody Library’s new GIS Lab, which features state-of-the-art computers and software for geospatial visualization and analysis. Learn more at https://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/digital-lab/.

DOAJ, Lyrasis collaborate to facilitate open access support

The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and Lyrasis are pleased to announce a new partnership that enables libraries to provide crucial financial support to DOAJ. This collaboration underscores the commitment of both organizations to strengthen open access and democratize access to scholarly research. The collaboration opens up the possibility for US libraries without existing opportunities to support DOAJ via a consortial arrangement to directly contribute to DOAJ’s sustainability and its mission of enhancing the visibility and accessibility of open access research. This partnership simplifies the process of library contributions for both libraries and DOAJ, facilitating financial support for DOAJ’s vital work and ensuring that it can concentrate its efforts on its core mission of evaluating and indexing trusted open access journals. Learn more at https://lyrasisnow.org/doaj-and-lyrasis-collaborate-to-facilitate-library-support-for-open-access/.

Penn State recognizes Open Champions

At the end of the spring 2023 semester, six Penn State Commonwealth Campuses named faculty members as Open Champions, recognizing their work with open education in the second year of Penn State’s Open and Affordable Educational Resources (OAER) Champion Awards. A collaboration between Penn State University Libraries and the University-wide OAER Working Group, the OAER Champion Award began as a pilot initiative in 2022 and seeks to recognize excellence, innovation, and impact in open educational practices at Penn State campuses. Complete details and a list of honorees is available at https://www.psu.edu/news/academics/story/second-annual-open-champion-award-winners-honored-work-open-education/.

PALNI recognizes affordable learning champions with Open Educator Award

The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) has named nine faculty and staff members from its supported institutions as recipients of the PALSave Open Educator Award for the 2022–23 academic year. The award recognizes innovation and excellence in support of higher education, textbook affordability, and student success. As part of the PALSave: PALNI Affordable Learning Program, these individuals have been key players in the creation and adoption of Open Educational Resources, or OER—a move that reduces costs for students, improves access to required texts, and increases student success and retention. For more information and list of honorees, visit https://palni.org/palsave/open-educator-awards.

ACRL publishes Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge

ACRL announces the publication of Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge, edited by Maria Bonn, Josh Bolick, and Will Cross. This open textbook and practitioner’s guide collects theory, practice, and case studies from nearly 80 experts in scholarly communication and open education.

The intersection of scholarly communication librarianship and open education offers a unique opportunity to expand knowledge of scholarly communication topics in both education and practice. Open resources can address the gap in teaching timely and critical scholarly communication topics—copyright in teaching and research environments, academic publishing, emerging modes of scholarship, impact measurement—while increasing access to resources and equitable participation in education and scholarly communication.

Divided into three parts, Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge delves into the economic, social, policy, and legal aspects of scholarly communication as well as open access, open data, open education, and open science, and infrastructure.

• What is Scholarly Communication?
• Scholarly Communication and Open Culture
• Voices from the Field: Perspectives, Intersections, and Case Studies

Practitioners provide insight into the relationship between university presses and academic libraries, defining collection development as operational scholarly communication, and promotion and tenure and the challenge for open access.

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge is a thorough guide meant to increase instruction on scholarly communication and open education issues and practices so library workers can continue to meet the changing needs of students and faculty. It is also a political statement about the future to which we aspire and a challenge to the industrial, commercial, capitalistic tendencies encroaching on higher education. Students, readers, educators, and adaptors of this resource can find and embrace these themes throughout the text and embody them in their work.

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge is available for purchase in print through the ALA Online Store and Amazon.com; by telephone order at (866) 746-7252 in the Unites States or (770) 442-8633 for international customers; and as an open access edition at https:\\bit.ly\SCLAOK.

GPO digitizes Congressional Directories

The US Government Publishing Office has completed an effort to digitize and make available all historic Congressional Directories on GovInfo, the one-stop site to authentic information published by the Federal Government. The public now has free and easy access to nearly 130 years of additional directories and can explore directories from the 41st Congress (1869–1870) through the 117th Congress (2021–2022). Future Congressional Directories will continue to be released on GovInfo as they are completed.

Historically, the Congressional Directory has been one of the most comprehensive and detailed resources for identifying the components of the three branches of the Federal Government. It includes short biographies of each member of the Senate and House, as well as terms of service and contact information for members of Congress. In addition, it provides descriptions of various executive branch departments and judiciary information. The Congressional Directory serves as the official handbook for Congress and is also widely used by Federal Agency officials and the general public.

New from ACRL—Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library

ACRL announces the publication of Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library, edited by Brian Flota and Kate Morris, a collection of best practices for the acquisition, preservation, storage, and cataloging of comics, particularly single-issue (or floppy) comics, within the special collections units of academic library collections.

Comic book properties continue to dominate popular culture, and there has been continued growth in the academic field of comics studies. Graphic novels and comic trade paperbacks populate the shelves of many academic libraries. Single-issue collections of “floppy” comic books, however, tend to find their home in special collections libraries because their flimsy construction, highly acidic paper, and, occasionally, the scarcity of certain specific issues warrants special storage and handling. Thoughtful consideration must go into any decision to begin or sustain these collections.

In Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library, four sections answer:

• Why Should Your Institution Collect Comics?
• Your Library Collects or Wants to Collect Comics. Now What?
• How Do You Engage in Library Instruction and Outreach with Your Comics Collection?
• How Can Comics Be Used as Primary and Secondary Source Material by Students and Faculty?

Chapters address challenges specific to comic book collections in academic libraries, such as finding space and funds to build a collection, making diverse and inclusive collections, leading innovative library instruction sessions with comics, and working with undergraduate and graduate students on comics research. Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library can help you develop, cultivate, grow, catalog, and make use of comic book collections.

Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library 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.

Project MUSE expands availability of Latin American university press books

Project MUSE has launched an initiative to greatly expand the Spanish and Portuguese language book content on its platform, via partnerships with a large number of distinguished university presses from Latin America. Much of the current output from these presses is not easily available to libraries digitally in unlimited-use models, and MUSE hopes to help the publishers significantly expand their global reach through our variety of library acquisition options. Project MUSE currently hosts nearly 1,000 Spanish language titles, which have been accessed across 300 institutions in 44 countries. To help reach a broad group of university press publishers from the region, MUSE engaged with EULAC, the Association of University Presses of Latin America and the Caribbean, which represents more than 350 university presses across Latin America. More details are available at https://about.muse.jhu.edu/news/latin-american-expansion.