News from the Field

David Free

Michelle Demeter Appointed College & Research Libraries Editor

ACRL announces the appointment of Michelle Demeter, head of instruction and undergraduate services at New York University, to the post of editor for College & Research Libraries (C&RL). Demeter will serve as editor-designate for the journal beginning July 1, 2024, and begin an initial three-year term as editor on July 1, 2025.

“The ACRL Board of Directors is thrilled to name Michelle Demeter as the next editor of C&RL,” said ACRL President Beth McNeil of Purdue University. “Her experience and familiarity with the ACRL publication program, knowledge of editorial processes and the scholarly communication landscape, vision for the journal, and strong commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion make her the ideal candidate to lead C&RL. We look forward to this next chapter for the journal and thank outgoing editor Kristen Totleben for her service to ACRL and the profession.”

“I am honored to lead C&RL and steward the scholarship reflecting academic librarianship today,” Demeter said. “I look forward to working with the editorial board as we seek opportunities to expand C&RL’s impact.”

In the position of editor, Demeter will also serve as chair of the C&RL Editorial Board and as a member of the ACRL Publications Coordinating Committee. She succeeds Kristen Totleben, open publishing librarian at the University of Rochester, as C&RL editor. Totleben will work closely with Demeter over the next year to ensure a smooth transition.

As part of her record of publishing, editing, and reviewing scholarly writing, Demeter has served as a C&RL reviewer, C&RL Editorial Board member since 2019, and as a Library Leadership & Management (LL&M) Editorial Board member (2011–2017, 2021–2023) and a reviewer from 2011 to 2023.

FSU Expands Peer Tutoring in Strozier Library

Florida State University (FSU) students will have more opportunities to take advantage of high-quality tutoring for some of their most challenging courses, thanks to a gift that boosts resources for these services to meet students where they are. With a gift from the Fogg Charitable Trust, the Academic Center for Excellence (ACE), which serves as FSU’s center for tutoring and study skills resources, will expand its operations to Strozier Library. The library already offers tutors for students, but the gift will increase availability and allow ACE to offer its services as the university experts in tutoring. ACE tutoring is led by peer tutors—undergraduates who have already succeeded in the courses and are chosen for their knowledge and ability to explain complicated subject matter.

The Fogg Charitable Trust is active in the Southeast and is dedicated to supporting efforts and communities that the late Ed and Lisbeth Fogg contributed to. The Foggs were the developers and managers of Farm Stores, a convenience store that specializes in its own brand of milk, bread, and ice cream, and created multiple other business and philanthropic ventures. For more information, visit https://ace.fsu.edu/.

New from ACRL—Universal Design for Learning in Academic Libraries: Theory into Practice

ACRL announces the publication of Universal Design for Learning in Academic Libraries: Theory into Practice, edited by Danielle Skaggs and Rachel M. McMullin. It includes lesson plans and strategies for the wide range of instructional activities that occur in academic libraries, including in-person, online, synchronous, asynchronous, and research help, as well as different types of academic library work such as access services and leadership.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework for improving and optimizing teaching and learning. It’s focused on intentionally designing for the needs and abilities of all learners—putting accessibility into the planning stages instead of as an accommodation after the fact—and providing flexibility in the ways students access and engage with materials and learning objectives.

Universal Design for Learning in Academic Libraries explores UDL in four parts.

• Theory and Background
• In Instruction and Reference
• Behind the Scenes
• Beyond the Library

Chapters include looks at UDL and US law and policy; working with student disability services to create accessible research services; UDL and the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education and the Reference and User Services Association’s Guidelines for Behavioral Performance of Reference and Information Service Providers; making open educational resources equitable and accessible; and much more.

Universal Design for Learning in Academic Libraries can make learning about UDL and implementing it into your work quicker and easier and provides ways to become an advocate for UDL inside your library and across campus.

Universal Design for Learning in Academic Libraries: Theory into Practice 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.

UNC-Chapel Hill Library Develops All-Digital Watergate Exhibit

The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) University Libraries launched a digital-only exhibition, “A Southern View of Watergate: Tar Heels’ Impact on a Nationwide Scandal,” on March 1, 2024. On that day 50 years ago, a grand jury indicted seven aides and advisers to then-President Richard Nixon and named the president as an unindicted co-conspirator. The exhibit spotlights key documents that all came to be housed in the Southern Historical Collection at UNC-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library: two Nixon subpoenas, Nixon’s written refusal to comply and a copy of the president’s infamous “enemies list.” Over the years, UNC-Chapel Hill acquired several “national treasures” related to the scandal. They were among the papers donated by Tar Heels who were also key Watergate investigation figures, Sen. Sam Ervin ’17, chair of the Watergate Committee, and Rufus Edmisten ’63, Ervin’s deputy chief counsel. The archive also includes the personal diary of the hearings and other papers from journalist and author Jim Reston ’63, whose book “The Conviction of Richard Nixon” was the basis of the play and movie “Frost/Nixon.” The exhibit is available at https://exhibits.lib.unc.edu/exhibits/show/watergate/introduction.

ACRL Releases Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications

ACRL announces the publication of Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications, book number 81 in the Publications in Librarianship series, by Monica Berger. This thorough book provides tools for understanding and teaching the impact of predatory publishing and contributing to its mitigation in the context of advocating for a more balanced, sustainable, and humane scholarly communications ecosystem.

Predatory publishing is a complex problem that harms a broad array of stakeholders and concerns across the scholarly communications system. It shines a light on the inadequacies of scholarly assessment and related rewards systems, contributes to the marginalization of scholarship from less developed countries, and negatively impacts the acceptance of open access.

To fix what is broken in scholarly communications, academic librarians must act as both teachers and advocates and partner with other stakeholders who have the agency to change how scholarship is produced, assessed, and rewarded. Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications is a unique and comprehensive exploration of predatory publishing in four parts.

• Background
• Characteristics and Research
• The Geopolitics of Scholarly Publishing
• Responses and Solutions

It examines the history of predatory publishing and basics of scholarly assessment; identifies types of research misconduct and unethical scholarly behaviors; provides critical context to predatory publishing and scholarly communications beyond the Global North; and offers structural and pedagogical solutions and teaching materials for librarians to use in their work with authors, students, faculty, and other stakeholders.

Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications gives powerful insight into predatory publishing worldwide, inside and outside of the library community, and provides methods for understanding and teaching its impact and contributing to its improvement.

Predatory Publishing and Global Scholarly Communications 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.

Florida Virtual Campus Joins Path to Open

Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC), a centralized service supporting the shared needs of Florida’s 40 public colleges and universities, has joined Path to Open, a pilot program to support the open access publication of new groundbreaking scholarly books that will bring diverse perspectives and research to millions of people. Path to Open launched in 2023 as a collaboration among JSTOR, a nonprofit service of ITHAKA, The University of Michigan Press, the University of North Carolina Press, and the American Council of Learned Societies. The program now has the support of nearly 150 libraries around the world, and 42 presses. FLVC marks Path to Open’s largest library consortia commitment to date with funding for the full 2024–2026 pilot period. This agreement gives all 2 and 4-year public colleges and universities in Florida access to Path to Open books as they are published and helps to ensure that more than 1,000 new books from university presses and their authors will be published through this new sustainable open access model. Learn more about Path to Open at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/.

Project Muse Adds Hosted Journal Titles

Five new additions to Project MUSE’s hosted journals program are now live on the platform. The new titles are American Benedictine Review (American Benedictine Review), Freedom Schools: A Journal of Democracy and Community (University of Texas Press), Getty Research Journal (Getty Publications), Korean Journal of Communication (University of Texas Press), and Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Montana Historical Society Press).

Current issues are available for Montana: The Magazine of Western History, Freedom Schools, Korean Journal of Communication, and American Benedictine Review. All eighteen back volumes of Getty Research Journal are available, and beginning with the forthcoming spring 2024 issue, the journal will be open access. Titles in the hosted program are not included in MUSE’s curated journal collections. Learn more at https://muse.jhu.edu/.