News from the Field
SMU Breaks Ground on Rees-Jones Library of the American West
Southern Methodist University (SMU) broke ground this May on the Rees-Jones Library of the American West. The library will house the Rees-Jones Collection of Western Americana, which consists of thousands of rare books, manuscripts, photographs, maps, and other artifacts. It will also be home to the holdings of SMU’s DeGolyer Library and its complementary special collections. The library will be a premier destination for scholars, students, and history enthusiasts.
Formed over the past 20 years by Dallas entrepreneur Trevor Rees-Jones, the Rees-Jones Collection has become one of the most significant holdings of Western Americana in the country. A diverse and deep resource for Western Americana research, the collection includes items from the late 17th century to the mid-20th century.
The library will feature study areas, reading nooks, and a grand reading room. A digitization and conservation lab will preserve rare materials, while a map room and gallery will support hands-on learning. Exhibition and seminar rooms will bring history to life for scholars and visitors. Since the May 5, 2023 announcement of a $30 million commitment to construction and endowment, plus the gift of the Rees-Jones Collection valued at over $100 million, establishing the Rees-Jones Library of the American West, Trevor Rees-Jones and his wife, Jan, have continued to make significant contributions for collection enhancement and expenses related to the incorporation of the collection into the SMU library system.
Project MUSE and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Launch New Initiative
Project MUSE, a division of Johns Hopkins University Press, in collaboration with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, have announced a new landmark in the museum’s longstanding Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945 (ECG) series: ECG volumes I-IV are now fully searchable, open-access digital publications freely available to everyone around the world. The most comprehensive resource on Nazi persecutory sites, the ECG offers users the ability to dynamically engage with empirically grounded research that documents thousands of camps, ghettos, and other sites of persecution operated by the Nazis and their allies. Work on the multivolume encyclopedia stretches back over 25 years and involves the work of more than 700 scholars in the fields of history, Holocaust Studies, and other related disciplines. To date, this global scholarly collaboration has documented evidence of thousands of camps and ghettos.
Project MUSE and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are committed to broadening access to and increasing engagement with this vital scholarship. This new digital format will be an invaluable resource for wide-ranging audiences, including scholars, researchers, Holocaust survivors and their descendants, digital humanists, educators, students, librarians, archivists, nonprofits, and the general public. Users will gain straightforward access to extensive bibliographic citations comprising research in more than a dozen languages and varied source bases, including material in hundreds of archival collections, survivor and eyewitness testimonies, memoirs, diaries, memory books, and up-to-date scholarship.
Users can navigate to the text of the ECG through a new interactive map that demonstrates the vast scale of this network of Nazi-era persecution. Learn more at https://muse.jhu.edu/encyclopedia/ushmm.
Stanford Debuts Rare Music Online Exhibit
The Stanford University Libraries recently announced that the refreshed and greatly expanded Rare Music at Stanford online exhibit is now available for exploration. This exhibit was established in 2016 as a beachhead for items digitized for patrons from the Memorial Library of Music and numbered approximately 250 objects. In 2016, Ray Heigemeir, Head of Public Services in Music, initiated the Memorial Library of Music Plus project (MLM1), a systematic review of rare music collections in the Stanford University Libraries holdings, aiming to identify all manuscript scores and musicians’ letters. The review included the Memorial Library of Music Collection, plus other collections such as the Mario Ancona Collection, as well as items added individually to our rare music holdings over the decades. With MLM1 completed, 1,300 digital objects are now available to the public for close viewing and download.
Exhibit highlights include autograph manuscript full scores by Cherubini, Brahms,
Mascagni, and Stravinsky; collections of letters by Vieuxtemps, Spohr, and Gounod; copyist manuscripts documenting Lully’s operatic output; a complete set of 16th-century Flemish master engravings, Encomium musices; and archival materials from the life of the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. Learn more and view the online exhibit at https://exhibits.stanford.edu/rare-music.
New from ACRL—Supporting Neurodiverse Students
in Academic Libraries
The ACRL recently announced the publication of Supporting Neurodiverse Students in
Academic Libraries, edited by Amanda Boyer and Amir El-Chidiac, offering practical
advice and effective practices for supporting students with autism spectrum disorder, brain trauma, depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders.
Neurodiverse students encounter myriad barriers and hurdles
to thriving in academia, and there is an increasing need for all types of accessibility in our libraries. Librarians and educators working in academic institutions can partner with neurodiverse students to help them flourish on campus and establish
community.
In five parts, Supporting Neurodiverse Students in Academic Libraries offers practical advice and activities that can be easily implemented and scaled to various types, sizes, and budgets of libraries.
- Instruction
- Services
- Cross-campus collaborations
- Resources
- Spaces
Chapters include effective practices for students with autism spectrum disorder, brain trauma, and PTSD, but also depression, anxiety, and other mental health disorders.
Supporting Neurodiverse Students in Academic Libraries demonstrates the power of working alongside students to create welcoming spaces, services, and resources that can help all students succeed.
Supporting Neurodiverse Students in Academic Libraries 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 US or (770) 442-8633 for international
customers.
Standards for Libraries in Higher Education Draft Revision Review
The ACRL Value of Academic Libraries (VAL) Committee invites feedback on a proposed draft revision of the ACRL Standards for Libraries in Higher Education. VAL is following ACRL procedures for updates and an open comment period laid out by the ACRL
Standards Committee. After the close of the review/comment period, the VAL subcommittee working on the revision will review and incorporate feedback as needed before sharing the proposed draft revision with the ACRL Standards Committee and the ACRL Board
of Directors.
The draft revision, along with a link to the feedback form, is available on the ACRL website at https://www.ala.org/acrl/standards-guidelines-and-frameworks-alphabetical-list. Please share comments and suggestions by July 31, 2025. Contact Subcommittee Chair Mark Emmons of the University of New Mexico at emmons@unm.edu with questions.
ResearchGate and AccScience Publishing Announce Journal Home
ResearchGate and AccScience Publishing (ASP) have announced a new Journal Home partnership to broaden the international reach, readership, and authorship of ASP journals. The Journal Home partnership will initially cover five fully open-access journals covering engineering and medicine disciplines. The partnership will enable ASP to increase brand reach and visibility for its journals with ResearchGate’s community of more than 25 million researcher members, in particular across Europe and North America.
The journals will benefit from seamless integration of all version-of-record into the ResearchGate platform, increasing the discoverability of all ASP’s content and a growing readership worldwide; increasing the journal brand profile, with dedicated profile pages that showcase key information and content, along with prominent journal branding on all associated article pages; ensuring continuous engagement with authors throughout their researcher cycle and unique audience insights, enabling ASP to deepen relationships with researchers, attract new authors, and increase author loyalty; and providing an advanced experience for authors, with automatic upload of new content to author profiles, metrics showing who is engaging with their work, and a new way to directly engage with readers. Learn more at https://www.researchgate.net/journal-home.
Taylor & Francis Collective Funding Pilot Reaches OA Target
Taylor & Francis has confirmed that both journals in its Collective Pathway to Open
Publishing (CPOP) pilot will be converted to open access (OA) for 2025. Announced in November 2024, CPOP has been devised as an alternative OA model for Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) journals, particularly those focused on regions with a high uptake of OA agreements.
With funding thresholds met for the pilot, every article in the 2025 volumes of Nordic Psychology and Nordic Social Work Research will now be published OA at no cost to authors. This includes all specialist and professional content, a key feature of HSS journals that is not usually included in OA agreements. The CPOP model combines several existing funding sources to support the conversion of journals to OA, one volume at a time. Institutions participating in Taylor & Francis’ OA agreements fund publishing for their affiliated authors, accounting for a high percentage of articles in the Nordic pilot journals. In addition, continued support from a small group of institutions with subscriptions and other read access is used for the remaining new articles.
ACM Joins India’s ONOS Initiative with a Transformative ACM Open Agreement
ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, the world’s largest computing society, has joined India’s One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) initiative through a transformative new read-and-publish agreement with the ACM Open program. This agreement provides 6,500 government-funded higher education and research institutions across India with premium access to the ACM Digital Library, while enabling authors in participating institutions to publish an unlimited number of open-access research articles in ACM journals, ACM conference proceedings, and ICPS Proceedings with no article processing charges (APCs).
ONOS is enabled by the Information and Library Network (INFLIBNET) Centre, an initiative of the Government of India. Institutions across India will gain access to ACM’s full suite of research publications and tools. 
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