News from the Field

David Free

ACRL Sets 2024–25 Legislative Agenda

Each year, the ACRL Government Relations Committee, in consultation with the ACRL Board of Directors and staff, formulates an ACRL Legislative Agenda. Drafted with input from key ACRL committees, ACRL leaders, and the ALA Public Policy and Advocacy Office, the ACRL Legislative Agenda is prioritized and focuses on issues at the national level affecting the welfare of academic and research libraries. The 2024–25 ACRL Legislative Agenda focuses on five issues that will be the focus of ACRL’s advocacy efforts (listed in priority order): upholding intellectual freedom, federal funding for libraries, net neutrality, safety and security of artificial intelligence, open access to federally funded research, and the Affordable College Textbook Act.

The agenda also includes a watch list of policy issues of great concern to academic librarians. The 2024–25 watchlist includes proposed elimination of the IPEDS Academic Libraries Survey, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA)/immigration Issues, environmental impact of data centers and emerging technologies, consumer data privacy, accessible instructional materials, and pending cases. The complete legislative agenda is available at https://www.ala.org/acrl/issues/washingtonwatch.

Open Research Oklahoma Launches

Oklahoma State University (OSU) has migrated its institutional repository to a new platform that will better serve the university and the state. The new site, Open Research Oklahoma, was developed with OSU’s land grant mission in mind. Open Research Oklahoma supports OSU’s research, teaching, and outreach by enhancing the visibility and impact of the university’s scholarly output. Currently, the repository houses content from OSU Stillwater and OSU’s Center for Health Sciences including a mix of faculty publications, digital theses and dissertations, undergraduate research, open educational resources, and more. However, the intention of Open Research Oklahoma is to amplify not only OSU’s scholarly work but also contributions across the state of Oklahoma. To learn more about Open Research Oklahoma, visit https://openresearch.okstate.edu/.

ONEAL Project Launches Open Negotiation Curriculum for Academic Libraries

The Open Negotiation Education for Academic Libraries (ONEAL) Project has launched their Foundations module. The curriculum includes seven lessons with video lectures, readings, practical hands-on activities, and case studies to practice vendor negotiations using academic library context. Lessons introduce contracts and licensing, negotiation best practices, planning (including internal analysis and vendor research), and negotiating for accessibility. Curriculum materials are also available for MLS/MLIS instructors to integrate content into their learning management systems. These resources are designed for both individual and group learning. Instructors and learners can choose what content they wish to engage with—whether it be a single lesson or the entire curriculum.

The ONEAL Project is supported by an IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grant and is a collaboration between Indiana University Indianapolis (formerly IUPUI), Grand Valley State University, and Belmont University. The project partnered with the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) to host these OER materials. To learn more, visit https://sparcopen.org/our-work/negotiation-resources/oneal/.

ARL, CNI Release AI-Influenced Scenarios for Research Environment

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) recently released The ARL/CNI 2035 Scenarios: AI-Influenced Futures in the Research Environment. These scenarios explore potential futures shaped by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration within the research environment. Developed through a robust, member-driven process, these scenarios serve as a strategic resource to aid leaders in the research environment in navigating the complex landscape of AI technologies. Library directors, IT leaders, funding agencies, academic presidents and provosts, and those working in scholarly publishing are among the many individuals who will find these scenarios useful. The full scenarios document is available for download from the ARL website at https://doi.org/10.29242/report.aiscenarios2024.

Penn State Releases Frederick Wiseman Open Monograph

Penn State University Libraries’ Open Publishing program has released Making Documentary Film: Frederick Wiseman and His Collaborators, a new monograph by Thomas W. Benson, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Rhetoric Emeritus at Penn State, and Carolyn Anderson, professor emerita of communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Wiseman’s films, the subject of scholarly books and articles, have been broadcast on public television for decades and honored at retrospectives worldwide. According to Benson and Anderson, Making Documentary Film takes a new approach to considering the work of one of the world’s most influential filmmakers by placing the focus on Wiseman’s collaborators. The monograph contains transcriptions of interviews with Wiseman’s collaborators conducted by the authors in the United States, Canada, and England. The transcribed interviews emphasize the filmmakers’ relationships with his cinematographers and his advocate at WNET-Channel 13 before, during, and after filmmaking, building on the authors’ extensive research into and criticism of Wiseman’s films and working methods. The monograph is freely available at https://openpublishing.psu.edu/wiseman/.

New from ACRL—Critical Library Leadership: Managing Self and Others in Today’s Academic Library

ACRL announces the publication of Critical Library Leadership: Managing Self and Others in Today’s Academic Library, edited by Kristin Henrich and Cinthya Ippoliti, offering thoughtful solutions and practical resources to help shape our approach to leadership for ourselves and others.

How can we improve as leaders? How can we nurture and support engaged, productive teams? Many of us arrive in supervisory positions with little or no formal training in academic library leadership, attempting to teach ourselves the skills to be good managers and organizational leaders while mitigating our own changing identities and evolving needs.

Critical Library Leadership bridges this gap, addressing critical and often hidden issues like gendered labor, feminist management in practice, career pivots, identity shifts, fear of feedback, knowing when to move on, and trauma-informed leadership. Authors from a variety of leadership positions and types of academic libraries provide practical, effective strategies that combine theory and research to help readers grow and reflect on their own leadership journeys and implement solutions for change in both formal and informal ways.

Part I: Leader as Self

Section I: Care, Empathy, and Authenticity

Section II: Career Development

Part II: Leader as Role

Section III: Relationships with Others

Section IV: Management Practices

Critical Library Leadership offers a sense of recognition and community, new ideas for personal and organizational practice, and a renewed appreciation for the immense amount of affective, emotional, and practical labor that is required of library leaders at all levels.

Critical Library Leadership: Managing Self and Others in Today’s 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.

Path to Open Announces 2024 Titles

Path to Open, a pilot program to support the open access publication of new groundbreaking scholarly books that brings diverse perspectives and research to millions of people, will add 300 new books from 44 university presses in 2024. This includes titles from nine publishers new to Path to Open, with several that expand the initiative’s global coverage: Bristol University Press, Sydney University Press, Melbourne University Publishing, and Leiden University Press. Faculty and students at Path to Open participating libraries will gain access to the 2024 books on JSTOR immediately upon publication, adding to the 2023 list of 100 books already available. All Path to Open books will become open access three years after publication. Learn more at https://about.jstor.org/path-to-open/.

Gale Primary Sources Releases New Archives

Gale, part of Cengage Group, is continuing its support of academic initiatives in diversity, equity, and inclusion with the release of four new archives on the Gale Primary Sources (GPS) platform. These archives unlock perspectives on interdisciplinary subjects, including the histories of LGBTQ+ communities in North America, the treatment of disabilities in society, refugeeism and relief work during the Cold War period and the environmental impact of colonial policies in Africa and Asia—all topics that represent some of the fastest-growing areas of research and teaching. Making accessible the often-unheard voices of those who lived it, these unique collections enable researchers and students to break past barriers, gain new insights, and make key connections between past events and their influence on the world we live in today. The new archives include Archives of Sexuality and Gender: Community and Identity in North America; History of Disabilities: Disabilities in Society, Seventeenth to Twentieth Century; Environmental History: Colonial Policy and Global Development, 1896–1993; and Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: The Early Cold War and Decolonization. Learn more at https://www.gale.com/primary-sources.

OCLC Acquires cloudLibrary

OCLC has acquired cloudLibrary, a platform that offers access to a wide variety of digital content through libraries. The acquisition will help OCLC support public libraries in their efforts to successfully manage accelerated shifts to digital collections. Nearly 500 libraries in 20 countries rely on cloudLibrary to provide access to a rich collection of digital content including millions of ebooks and audio books as well as tens of thousands of magazines, digital newspapers, digital comics, and streaming media services in more than 50 languages. Libraries make these collections available to their communities through cloudLibrary’s mobile app while a web portal makes it easy for library staff to manage their subscriptions. Libraries subscribe to their own collection of materials through the cloudLibrary platform. They can also choose to become part of a cloudLink group within a state or consortium.

MIT Press Releases Direct to Open Impact Report

The MIT Press has released a report on its Direct to Open (D2O) program detailing the impact that it has had in its first three years. Launched in 2021, D2O is a sustainable framework for open access monographs that shifts publishing from a solely market-based, purchase model where individuals and libraries buy single ebooks, to a collaborative, library-supported open access model. To date, D2O has funded 240 books: 159 in the humanities and social sciences (HSS), and 81 in science, technology, engineering, art/design, and mathematics (STEAM). The data show that, on average, open access HSS books in the program are used 3.75 times more and receive 21% more citations than their paywalled counterparts. Open access books in STEAM fields are used 2.67 times more and receive 15% more citations than their non-open counterparts, on average. Regardless of their field, D2O books are making meaningful contributions to debates both within and beyond the academy. The full report is available at https://mitpress.mit.edu/open-access-at-mit-press/d2o-impact-report-2024/.