Digital Commons Network^™

Understanding, Incentivizing, And Supporting Openness In Music Librarianship, Stephanie Bonjack, Michael Duffy, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Open Access (OA) and Open Educational Resources (OER) present great opportunities to music librarians and the communities they serve. There are nonetheless considerable challenges in understanding the models associated with both and determining how best to approach them at one’s library. This presentation offers an overview of OA and OER landscapes, outlining prominent models and key players, and also provides case studies of an institutional OER incentive program, a collaboration with an institutional Office of Research to support OA, and a comparison of OER and traditional/fee-based textbooks in music theory. By offering an overview and examples of OA and OER …

Champagne Wishes And A Domestic Beer Budget: Assessing And Supporting Serials Access At A Carnegie R2, Chad E. Buckley, Julie Murphy, Rachel E. Scott, Cassie Thayer-Styes, Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

As library budgets are cut or remain flat, librarians asked to do more with less are considering diverse data to investigate how best to invest limited funds. The data available to librarians are extensive but they may also be contradictory. In this presentation, we contextualize findings from interviews conducted with Illinois State University faculty with institutional and collections data. Using the words of faculty members across disciplines, we highlight some of the tensions around discovery and access to scholarly literature, perceptions of urgency, and engagement with open access. The interview results--triangulated with institutional usage and cost data—suggest a variety of …

Open Access, Anne Shelley, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

[Conclusion] While the embrace of Open Access within music scholarship and librarianship has been somewhat spotty and circumstantial to date, there are some patterns to celebrate. Music librarians have collaborated with stakeholders to create a number of high-value and openly-licensed online collections, libraries and publishers are exploring models that will better fund OA research by arts and humanities scholars, professional societies are responding to members’ prompts and formalizing their support through new OA publications, and the increased incorporation of linked open data standards will better connect information that was once siloed. It is challenging to predict the state of the …

Intersections Of Open Access And Information Privilege In Higher Education And Beyond, Caitlin Harrington, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Despite its capacity to reach readers irrespective of affiliation or geographic location, conversations about Open Access (OA) frequently center academic stakeholders in high-income countries. This presentation will examine opportunities for technical services librarians to explore with students some of the inequities of the scholarly communications landscape, including various approaches to and aspects of OA, and to consider the disparate levels of access available to individuals based on institutional affiliation. Because higher education settings afford students a high degree of information privilege, academic librarians face the challenge of teaching students to appreciate the value of information, acknowledge barriers to it, and …

Exploring Faculty Perspectives On Open Access At A Medium-Sized, American Doctoral University, Rachel E. Scott, Julie Murphy, Cassie Thayer-Styes, Chad E. Buckley, Anne Shelley

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Faculty hold widely varying perspectives on the benefits and challenges afforded by open access (OA) publishing. In the United States, conversations on OA models and strategy have been dominated by scholars affiliated with Carnegie R1 institutions. This article reports findings from interviews conducted with faculty at a Carnegie R2 institution, highlighting disciplinary and individual perspectives on the high costs and rich rewards afforded by OA. The results reiterate the persistence of a high degree of skepticism regarding the quality of peer review and business models associated with OA publishing. By exploring scholars’ perceptions of and experiences with OA publishing and …

Every Good Belletrist Deserves Funding: Arts And Humanities Scholars And Open Access Publishing Fees, Anne Shelley, Rachel E. Scott, Ana Dubnjakovic

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

We undertook this project to learn more about the Open Access experiences of scholars working outside of the sciences, with an emphasis on any related payments and funding sources. In addition to gaining insight into arts and humanities scholars’ engagement with Open Access publishing, we also seek to tease out some of the intersections of privilege, affiliation, disciplinarity, and publishing that are not yet well-documented in the literature.

In addition, we will consider the significance of our findings for librarians who support scholars in the arts and humanities, including but not limited to collection development implications for subscription journals with …

Open Access Literature In Libraries: Principles And Practices, Karen Brunsting, Caitlin Harrington, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Open Access has evolved into the most complex challenge of the scholarly communication landscape and something libraries grapple with on a regular basis. But although librarians hold increasingly positive perceptions about OA, including its richness of unique content and immediacy of access, many lack the understanding, training, documentation, and knowledge of best practices that would allow them to engage with it confidently. This book helps to fill that gap, using a holistic approach that walks readers through the steps of integrating OA resources into library collections and supporting OA initiatives irrespective of budget, institution type, collection size, and staffing. Explaining …

Documenting An Open Future In A Post-Policy World, Caitlin Harrington, Rachel E. Scott

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This session continues the work of a 2019 survey that investigated library policies related to Open Access (OA). Specifically, this study sought to address the self-selection of participants by randomly selecting and directly contacting academic librarians at libraries within one of four different Carnegie classifications to request input on their library’s collection development policies and the existence of OA policies or informal practices related to library collections. The findings surface disparities in the documentation of OA collection practices among institution classifications and highlight concerns about both OA and policies in the collections strategies of academic libraries.