News from the Field

David Free

UNC Charlotte Names 2024 Atkins Fellows

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte J. Murrey Atkins Library has named three fellows in the eighth year of the Atkins Fellows summer program. This program offers paid, full-time work experience for MLIS students at the midpoint in their library, archives, or information science degree programs, and graduates who completed their programs in the last year. Participation in the program includes an additional stipend to help fellows with housing and transportation costs. Each Atkins Fellow works on a project throughout the summer, participates in workshops, tours, and panel discussions, and engages in department and library committee meetings. The purpose of the program is to prepare MLIS students and recent graduates to work in academic libraries, archives, and other institutions, while supporting the mission, goals, and initiatives of Atkins Library. The 2024 Atkins Fellows are Sydney Anderson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Sarah Hensler of Indiana University, and Brian Powell of Louisiana State University. Projects include work with digital humanities research, open access usage data, and education collections and technology. To learn more about the current Fellows, Fellows alumni, and the program and projects, please visit https://library.charlotte.edu/atkinsfellows/.

UCSF-JHU Opioid Industry Documents Archive Launches OIDA Curriculum Library

The Opioid Industry Documents Archive (OIDA), a collaborative undertaking between the University of California-San Francisco and Johns Hopkins University, announces the launch of the OIDA Curriculum Library, a resource created to facilitate use of OIDA documents in the classroom. The OIDA Curriculum Library provides materials that introduce students at the undergraduate and graduate level to the role of corporate tactics in the opioid crisis as demonstrated by documents held in the archive.

The library contains lectures and classroom activities of various lengths that provide an overview of the opioid crisis and specifically address the corporate marketing strategies used by pharmaceutical and consulting companies involved in the manufacturing, sales, and distribution of opioids, along with an annotated bibliography of relevant resources—scholarly articles, books, investigative journalism, documentaries, etc.—for use in the classroom. These materials have been pilot tested and refined by the OIDA team in a variety of courses ranging from undergraduate- and graduate-level public health courses to courses on substance use and health policy for health professionals such as medical and nursing students. To learn more and access the OIDA Curriculum Library, visit https://oida-resources.jhu.edu/oida-curriculum-library/.

PALNI Releases New Open Textbook

The Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) recently released Ultrasound Physics and its Application in Medicine, a new open textbook edited by Arbin Thapaliya, Alec Sithole, Michael Welsh, and Gaston Dana. The textbook, made possible through a Textbook Creation Grant from the PALSave: PALNI Affordable Learning program, is set to enhance the way medical professionals learn and apply ultrasound technology. As a peer-reviewed, open educational resource (OER), it is entirely free to students and is ready for use in any classroom. Thapaliya received a PALSave Textbook Creation Grant for the project in 2022. He is among several faculty authors at PALNI-supported institutions who are working toward eliminating textbook costs and making quality open educational resources widely available. The textbook is available at https://doi.org/10.59319/BDXA4939.

ACRL Releases Digital Humanities in the Library, Second Edition

ACRL announces the publication of Digital Humanities in the Library, Second Edition, edited by Arianne Hartsell-Gundy, Laura R. Braunstein, and Liorah Golomb, offering ideas and strategies for cross-institutional collaborations and new approaches to digital humanities work.

The field of digital humanities—and the way libraries and library workers support and engage with it—continues to expand and evolve with technological innovations and global and national events that have had a large-scale impact on the world. There are productive new ways to interrogate and expand the meaning of digital humanities and the contributions of subject specialists, digital scholarship center directors, user experience experts, special collections librarians, and technical specialists.

This revised and expanded edition of 2015’s Digital Humanities in the Library includes key reprints from the first edition and new chapters that explore digital humanities and diversity, inclusion, and equity; issues of labor, precarity, and infrastructure; scholarly communication and taxonomies of credit; long-term sustainability; and library digital humanities in the age of institutional austerity.

Divided into sections on theory and practice, chapter authors work in a variety of institution types in many different roles. As Paige Morgan says in the foreword, “Any digital humanist who can enthuse about data can also tell you that computers alone cannot do the work—you need the thoughtfulness of a human expert to find the way forward. This collection can help us do that.”

Digital Humanities in the Library, Second Edition 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.

SUNY Joins Paradigm University Press Library Program

Paradigm Publishing Services, a division of De Gruyter Brill, and the State University of New York (SUNY) Press have signed a partnership agreement allowing libraries access to the complete collection of SUNY Press titles. SUNY Press publishes distinguished research and works of general interest across many disciplines but brings especially notable scholarly content to the University Press Library (UPL) in Asian and South Asian studies, film and visual culture, Jewish studies, literature, gender and sexuality, and more. The SUNY Press collections include more than 3,500 comprehensive ebook titles, which are DRM-free in the UPL. For more information about Paradigm Publishing Services, please visit https://cloud.newsletter.degruyter.com/paradigmdg.

Penn State, Taylor & Francis Sign Read and Publish Agreement

The Penn State University Libraries has signed a two-year pilot “Read and Publish” (R&P) agreement with Taylor & Francis Group, a publisher of peer-reviewed academic books and journals. Under this agreement, Penn State corresponding authors’ accepted articles will be open access (OA) if they choose the “open publishing” option, including the retroactive conversion terms for articles accepted on or after January 1, 2024. The pilot agreement, which extends through 2025, covers up to 210 articles per year that have been accepted by any Taylor & Francis imprint in 2024 or 2025 at no additional charge. Both fully and hybrid OA journals are included in the agreement.

New from ACRL—Toxic Dynamics: Disrupting, Dismantling, and Transforming Academic Library Culture

ACRL announces the publication of Toxic Dynamics: Disrupting, Dismantling, and Transforming Academic Library Culture, edited by Russell Michalak, Trevor A. Dawes, and Jon E. Cawthorne, providing evidence-based solutions to mitigate the negative effects of toxicity, change management strategies, and ways to confront and challenge values that harm library workers and their well-being.

Academic libraries are full of inspiring collections, resources, and services, but libraries are special because of the people who run them. And what people believe about and face in their culture impacts ideas, plans, and outcomes. Academic library workers endure many contemporary challenges that contribute to toxic work cultures—the rapid change of higher education, diminishing resources, lack of diversity, power hierarchies—and addressing these problems requires innovative solutions, ongoing professional development, and effective leadership.

Toxic Dynamics: Disrupting, Dismantling, and Transforming Academic Library Culture provides practical solutions for confronting these complex issues and innovative ways to promote a healthy and sustainable work culture. It addresses critical and timely challenges such as “faculty versus staff” or “us versus them” mentality, unionization, gendered labor, organizational change, self-care, tenure, and promotion.

By understanding the root causes of toxic cultures, recognizing their impact, and implementing solutions, leaders can create a more supportive and positive work environment and improve morale, retention, and productivity. Toxic Dynamics is an important resource for anyone interested in improving workplace culture and addressing issues related to toxicity and inequity, and for library leaders at all levels.

Toxic Dynamics: Disrupting, Dismantling, and Transforming Academic Library Culture 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.

Bloomsbury Launches Global Food Cultures Collection

Global Food Cultures, an ebook collection bringing together market-leading monographs and reference works to provide a thorough exploration of food culture around the world, is now live on the Bloomsbury Food Library. The collections covers topics from the intersectionality of food within world religions, to the global traditions around cooking and eating, and the cultural dynamics of food and art. The collection contains 54 market-leading monographs and reference works, including 5 major multi-volume reference works spread over 12 volumes, including Food and World Culture; Cooking Through History; and Food, Feasts, and Faith; 6 single-volume encyclopedias and handbooks exploring topics such as street food across the globe, vegetarianism, global food and culture, and food in world mythology; 11 standalone monographs exploring key areas of food history and culture such as African American food culture, Latino food culture, food in modern pop culture, food and the family, and obesity; 20 ebooks from the Food Cultures in . . . series, including studies of India, Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, the Pacific Islands, and the near East, Middle East, and North Africa; and 5 ebooks from the Food Culture of . . . series, including in-depth studies of Israel, Japan, and Mexico. Learn more at https://www.bloomsburyfoodlibrary.com/about-bloomsbury-food-library.

Comment on Proposed Removal of the Academic Libraries Component from NCES IPEDS

ACRL joined ALA, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) in a comment (PDF) objecting to the proposed elimination of the Academic Libraries component from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), the interrelated surveys conducted each year by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). The associations strongly object to the elimination of academic library data from IPEDS, believing it is essential to understanding the value of libraries and their contributions to the mission of higher education. We would welcome the opportunity to contribute to identifying a workable solution to continue this data collection going forward. We strongly believe that elimination of the Academic Libraries component without an alternative solution would do a disservice to libraries and to higher education as a whole. Learn more on the ACRL website at https://www.ala.org/acrl/issues/acrlspeaksout.