Library Publishing Coalition--A Milestone in Evolution of Scholarly Publishing

As soon as I read some of the first reports of the new Library Publishing Coalition I knew this was going to be a milestone. Paula Hane of Information Today's Newsbreaks asked me if I wanted to research and write up a news report for the blog - I was thrilled just to be asked!

The NewsBreak was just published this morning and is available here.

Anytime you do interviews or research there is always so much that just doesn't fit into the article. Here is some background information and perspective on the motivation to establish this two-year effort from Rebecca Kennison, Director of Columbia University's Center for Digital research and Scholarship:

"The LPC arose from the perception - rightly, I believe - that the existing organizations were limited venues for discussion and collaboration among those of us within academic libraries who provide services in support of scholarly communication endeavors on our campuses. Are we publishers, so should we attend publishing conferences? Are we librarians, so should we attend library conferences? Or are we "liblishers," as John Unsworth famously put it in his keynote address to the Society for Scholarly Publishing meeting in 2005, "Pubrarians and Liblishers: New Roles for Old Foes." (I know my colleague Charles Watkinson of Purdue University Press has proudly claimed that title: http://librarypublishing.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/my-name-is-charles-and-im-a-liblisher/.)

While, as Unsworth observed, library-based publishing was already starting to emerge more than a decade ago, the number of libraries engaged in publication support has exploded in the last few years - for several reasons. First, the barrier to entry into publishing has been lowered by increasingly easier-to-use software and open-source platforms. Second, several university presses have recently undergone reorganizations that have resulted in their now reporting to the university librarian/director of the library/dean of the library. Third, many university librarians/directors of the library/deans of the library have embraced scholarly communication services as a primary role to be played by their libraries and have created positions and (in some cases, such as Columbia's Center for Digital Research and Scholarship, the group I head) entire units devoted to fulfilling that role.

I do think the membership of the LPC will grow, if the LPC can establish itself as a organizational venue in which those of us who are providing publication services - however those are defined now, however those might be defined in the future - within the library context can converse with colleagues about problems and solutions unique to that environment. It remains to be seen whether the LPC can coalesce around a shared sense of what it means to do library-based publishing, what it means to be a "liblisher." That is the current challenge: to create a mission statement for the coalition, to craft the goals the group would hope to achieve as an organization, and then to construct programs and projects that would fulfill those goals. It is my hope that by the end of the two-year planning stage that the LPC will emerge with a clear mission, clear goals, and clear programs, particularly in bringing together like-minded colleagues who not only can but will collaborate on projects.

To that last point, the reason Columbia is a founding member of the LPC is our commitment not only to library-based publishing, a role in which we are seen to be leaders, but also to forging collaborative partnerships with our colleagues. As you observe, the Center for Digital Research and Scholarship provides robust support throughout the entire research and scholarly communication life cycle via an operation that enjoys backing from the highest levels within the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services. Even so, we recognize that we cannot and should not "go it alone," as it were, and we are always looking for collaborators and collaborative projects with others. Our hope for the LPC is that more of these collaborations will develop among members of the community, so that we can be even more effective on our campuses."

If you have any interest/concern about the future of scholarly communication, new roles for libraries or potential publishing futures, you will want to give this article a read!

Do you see a future for libraries as publishers? Feel free to share your thoughts here.