“Open Conversations about Open Access” Welcome

Contributed by Nicole Sump-Crethar

The “Open Conversations about Open Access” conference started some exciting conversations. Rick Luce, Dean of Libraries at OU introduced the speakers for the conference as his “Open Access Dream Team.” In his introduction he included a little about his vision of Open Access.
Open access (sometimes abbreviated as OA) is “the practice of providing unrestricted access via the Internet to peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles. OA is also increasingly being provided to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters,” according to Wikipedia. Luce went on to describe how OA should look to readers, authors and to the university.

• Readers should see OA as immediate, free, worldwide access.
• Authors should be able to protect their traditional rights.
• The university should see open access as an extension of their mission where works created at the university should be used for the greatest possible benefit and should stimulate innovation.

The first speaker on Thursday, Heather Joseph, the executive director for The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition or SPARC, kicked off the meeting with an overview of where open access started and how far it has come in terms of acceptance in the scholarly community and in national legislation and regulation. She described the situation we are already familiar with here at OSU. Budgets continue to shrink while costs continue to rise at a faster pace than inflation. Happily, recent legislation followed by some important regulations at the federal level are requiring researchers who receive funding from government agencies to make their research available to the public. In essence, if taxpayers fund the research, then taxpayers should have free and open access to that research.

Joseph also talked about the current state of OA publishing in terms of infrastructure and popularity. For example, the Directory of Open Access Journals offers 8,600 journals in nearly every discipline imaginable.

What are your perceptions of open access? What do you think the perception of open access is on our campus?

Brinley Franklin's Presentation

Library employees may find the slides from Brinley Franklin's March 5 presentation to the staff and faculty on the staff drive at U:LibraryFutures\ or the Library's intranet. 

Comments and questions on the presentation can be added to the comments section below.

Repurposing Space-Q9

To what extent are other academic support services physically and organizationally connected with the library? Should we?

What are we already doing related to the question?

If we wanted to consider starting this initiative or expanding what we are already doing, what do we want to learn about it from our future speakers? What questions do we want to ask during our upcoming speaker series?

Repurposing Space-Q8

To what extent does the library include a “learning commons” with comfortable space for collaboration, study and access to computer and network resources? Should we?

What are we already doing related to the question?

If we wanted to consider starting this initiative or expanding what we are already doing, what do we want to learn about it from our future speakers? What questions do we want to ask during our upcoming speaker series?

Repurposing Space-Q7

To what extent has the library implemented a regular deaccession/weeding cycle? Should we?

What are we already doing related to the question?

If we wanted to consider starting this initiative or expanding what we are already doing, what do we want to learn about it from our future speakers? What questions do we want to ask during our upcoming speaker series?

Staff Notes from Nov. 14, 2012

Library employees may find the notes from the employee follow up discussion on Nov. 14 on the staff drive at U:LibraryFutures\ or via Sharepoint.

Comments and questions on the presentation can be added to the comments section below.

Repurposing Space-Q6

To what extent are print acquisitions planned in coordination with consortia partners to reduce duplicate holdings? Should we?

What are we already doing related to the question?

If we wanted to consider starting this initiative or expanding what we are already doing, what do we want to learn about it from our future speakers? What questions do we want to ask during our upcoming speaker series?