University
Librarian’s Update
Brainstorming with Penn State
Sarah Thomas
The Library’s Mellon-funded grant to create open-source journal-management
software supports collaboration between Penn State and Cornell. As we move
into the second and final year of the grant, we are thinking about how to encourage
the use of the software after its release next spring. To aid me in my thoughts,
I proposed that I travel to meet with my colleague Nancy Eaton, the dean of
libraries at Penn State. Soon the visit snowballed, and an informal exchange
of ideas had become a formal discussion involving Tom
Hickerson, Terry Ehling,
and David Ruddy; nine representatives from PSU, including librarians and the
deputy director of the Penn State Press; plus a consultant from Informed Strategies
who is evaluating our options for managing the open-source code and journals-management
service. Since we were arriving on the evening of the Libraries’ picnic,
we were invited to join in the festivities. It’s a tradition that the
picnic follows the annual “housecleaning day,” in which staff file,
back up data, and otherwise devote the work day to getting organized for the
new school year.
Our grant supports generalizing the journal-management software that CUL developed
for Project Euclid so that others can use it and making that software open
source. Cornell calls that software DPubS. Penn State has made a number of
advances in promoting the scholarly communications of its faculty and in making
scholarship affordably accessible. Penn State University Libraries has an assistant
dean for scholarly communications collections strategies who oversees the office
of digital scholarly publishing jointly with the Penn State University Press.
A board of faculty advisors works with the office to develop a strategy for
investing funds that the library has reallocated to support digital publishing
initiatives. In addition to Pennsylvania History, supported through
DPubS at present, the office plans to focus on publishing conference proceedings,
titles in Romance languages, and nutrition. In addition, the office is overseeing
the conversion of the Penn State Press’s entire backlist. The libraries
and the press have buy-in within their organizations, from senior administrators,
and from faculty.
The Cornell/PSU meeting was very helpful in illuminating some of the areas
in which we need to move forward. Although we were still awaiting the recommendations
of our consultants, we concluded that we need a clear and simple definition
of what DPubS is (a tool, a community resource builder, and a service) and
a chart that compares DPubS to other software and services being promoted within
the academy, such as DSpace, DLSX, HighWire, Portico, and FEDORA, so potential
users can understand their various features and how they relate to one another.
To spread the word about DPubS and its capabilities, we plan to speak at a
variety of forums that reach out to technical, administrative, and academic
audiences.
Internally at Cornell, the facility offered by DPubS and the support provided
by the Library’s Center for Innovative Publishing should be important
concrete services for faculty editors and authors. The Library has created
a valuable resource that we should employ to increase access to publications
of interest to our faculty, to reduce the overall costs of the publishing cycle
to the university, and to accelerate the availability of scholarship.
Next: Kudos
