Library Publishing:
What’s in it for You?
Marcia Stockham & Beth Turtle
Kansas State University Libraries
Brick & Click
November 6, 2015
Agenda/Outcomes
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Our working definition of library publishing
Why K-State chose to invest in this endeavor
Benefits of belonging to a coalition
Overview of current activities at K-State
Potential benefits for you and your library
Definition
“…the set of activities led by college and university libraries to support
the creation, dissemination, and curation of scholarly, creative, and/or
educational works. Generally, library publishing requires a production
process, presents original work not previously made available, and
applies a level of certification to the content published, whether
through peer review or extension of the institutional brand. Based on
core library values and building on the traditional skills of librarians, it
is distinguished from other publishing fields by a preference for Open
Access dissemination and a willingness to embrace informal and
experimental forms of scholarly communication and to challenge the
status quo.”
(Library Publishing Coalition http://librarypublishing.org/about-us)
Key Points
• Activities that support the creation, dissemination,
and curation of scholarly, creative, and/or
educational works
• A production process presenting original works –
implies a standard of peer review or level of
certification
• Preference for open access
• Informal / experimental forms of scholarly
communication and challenge status quo
Today’s environment
• Keeping libraries relevant
• Changing roles of librarians
– Focusing on services, building relationships and
partnerships
• Increasing emphasis on scholarly
communication issues
– Copyright, fair use, open access data management
– Federal mandates for grant recipients
• Looking at collections more holistically
Strategic reasons for publishing
• Provides open access to scholarly work
– Peer-reviewed OA journals becoming more accepted
by researchers
– Federal funding mandates
• Provides mechanism for highlighting student
research
• Provides mechanism for niche publishing,
institutional conference proceedings,
monographs, digital humanities projects and data
Concerns about Library Publishing
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Staff-related costs (hire/train staff)
Equipment/platform costs
Deciding which services to offer
Other (quality of content, buy-in from
stakeholders, funding sources)
• Sustainability
Moulaison, Heather Lea and Chris le Beau. “U.S. Libraries as Publishers: Status and Concerns”.
IFLA/WLIC 2015
http://library.ifla.org/1159/1/187-moulaison-en.pdf
Library Publishing Coalition
• Independent community-led membership
association
• Purpose is to support libraries involved in
publishing activities
• Promotes collaboration and knowledge
sharing and networking
LPC Publishing Directory
http://www.librarypublishing.org/resources
/directory
Publishing @ K-State
• Started with pilot project to place ETDs in IR.
Graduate School made electronic submission
mandatory by 2007.
• Over 4000 ETDs now in IR plus 5500 older
ETDs that have been digitized
• Discussions began about the library expanding
publishing opportunities by starting an online
imprint
New Prairie Press
• Founded in 2007 as an online, OA imprint
devoted to journals in the Social Sciences &
Humanities
• Launched using OJS, but later migrated to
Digital Commons
Today we publish…
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Journals (10)
Monographs (4)
Conference proceedings (6)
Open Textbooks (1 and another on the way)
From all disciplines …
Services
We provide:
• Full-spectrum publishing platform
• Training & ongoing support for editors
• Troubleshooting
• Set-up, layout & design options
Services (cont)
• Formatting for epubs and other mobile
devices
• Digitization
• Copyright & metadata consultation
• Assignment of ISBN/ISSN
• Marketing/promotion
Digital Commons Provides
• Technical Support & platform upgrades
• Graphic Design (3 initial designs for new
projects)
• DOI Assignment
• Preservation through Portico/CLOCKSS
• Download Statistics
• Indexing in DOAJ, Google Scholar, WorldCat
Services in the Future?
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Print on Demand
Copyediting
Typesetting
Indexing/abstracting
Fee-based services may need to be considered
Operations
Budget
• contribute to change in the scholarly
publishing system – not for profit or cost
recovery
• no fees for our services
• funded from library operations budget
Operations
Staffing
• .5 coordinator
• Director & scholarly communications librarian
(marketing/promotion)
• .5 paraprofessional
Operations
Skill Sets Needed
• Strong communication & relationship-building
skills for “sales”/promotion
• Business skills – planning, project
management, marketing, business plan
• Knowledge of copyright/intellectual property
• Technical (capacity to learn software, layout,
design, social media, troubleshoot)
Operations
MOUs prepared for each client
Workflows
• Every project is unique; workflows must be
flexible
– How does client want to utilize software
– Digitization needed
– Graphic design needed (book covers)
Outreach & Marketing
• Absolutely critical to success
• Takes time to build & nurture relationships
• Must articulate benefits of OA and insure
quality/authority of library publishing
• Always on the look-out for new content
• Use liaison librarians
• Use social media
So, what’s in it for you?
Real rewards & benefits:
• Building tremendous relationships with
people/departments all over campus
• Filling a real need
• People are looking for a way to publish online
but don’t know where to go
• Publications are being found & downloaded
• New content – especially niche - that may
have never been published is being
disseminated & accessed
• People see the library differently
• Satisfying & rewarding work
• Scalable and strategic
Thank you!
For questions, please contact:
Marcia Stockham
Assistant Dean, Content Management & Scholarly Communications
stockham@k-state.edu
Beth Turtle
Scholarly Communications Librarian
bturtle@k-state.edu