March 4, 2013
K-State Libraries joins Library Publishing Coalition
K-State Libraries, together with more than 50 academic libraries and the Educopia Institute, is beginning a two-year project to create the Library Publishing Coalition, or LPC. The project emerged from conversations between Purdue University, the University of North Texas and Virginia Tech regarding the need for a community dedicated to advancing the field of library publishing.
As a founding institution, K-State Libraries will help provide oversight for program during its two-year founding and start-up period, will maintain representation on the organizing committee, and along with other institutions, plan and implement the initial activities of the LPC, including a research study, forum, Web-based hub and training opportunities.
Academic libraries and the researchers and organizations they support are facing a new paradigm in scholarly publishing. The Web, information and social media technologies, and the Open Source and Open Access movements are changing the framework in which scholarship is created, collected, organized, and disseminated. Yet, as shown by the highly regarded, IMLS-funded Strategies for Success project, library-based publishing groups lack a central space where they can meet, work together, share information and confront common issues.
Through seed support from Educopia and participating institutions, the LPC project will engage practitioners to design a collaborative network that intentionally addresses and supports an evolving, distributed, and diverse range of library production and publishing practices.
During the first stage of the project, the LPC’s project team will document and evaluate how best to structure this initiative in order to promote collaboration and knowledge sharing for this field. The project team will produce several concrete deliverables, including:
- Targeted research, building on existing broader surveys, that will focus on topics of particular interest to the community, including costs, staffing and how libraries are financing these ventures.
- Compilation of a directory of existing library publishing services, providing details including staff contacts, types of products produced and software platforms utilized.
- A forum for networking and sharing communications about library publishing services, including an annual event and ongoing virtual training and community-building activities.
- The design and implementation of the Library Publishing Coalition as an ongoing, institutionally owned organization that serves the needs of this community.
"Through the Library Publishing Coalition, we're taking significant steps toward a new conception of libraries and the services they offer," said Lori A. Goetsch, dean of libraries. "And partnerships like this allow us to do so much more for the K-State community than we could ever do alone."
More information and a full list of participating institutions are available on the project website.