Author Archives: chadwelf

Chicago trips in May/June

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University Librarian/OSU Press Director travels (May-June 2018)

May and June were unusually busy travel months for me.  In May, I attended two meetings that I don’t typically attend—Center for Research Libraries Forum and Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) 40th Annual Conference.  Both were held in the Windy City so I stayed with my fiancée Cara at her place in Chicago.  I also went to AUP in San Francisco and ALA Annual in New Orleans.

CRL Global Resources Collections Forum, May 17-18

OSU Libraries is a long-time member of CRL and they have an in-person meeting every other year.  This is the first time I have attended a CRL meeting.  The forum was held in Chicago at the University of Chicago Gleacher Center. All of the sessions were recorded and are available at https://www.crl.edu/events/crl-global-resources-collections-forum-2018

The common themes at this year’s CRL forum:

Archival holdings are vulnerable, if not  threatened, across the globe.  Derek Petersen’s talk on African government records demonstrated this but he also questioned whether digitizing such records and opening them up  in places like Uganda was a good idea.  His point was that what works in the Western world may not work in other regions.  It was startling to see photos of new facilities that had been built to house records but without adequate shelving, staffing, etc. to process them.  I also liked the presentation from UTexas (Benson Collection) curators of a huge Mellon project to implement a post-custodial approach to curating documents related to documents related to Central American politics (Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador).

The use and potential reuse of data needs our attention.  CUNY law librarian Sarah Lamdan raised the alarm regarding how commercial vendors like Lexis Nexis have ramped up their involvement (and profit gain) from the world of gathering data for surveillance purposes.  They and others are contracting with US government entities like Homeland Security.  There was a similar message from Irena Knezevic’s presentation on what big Agra companies like Monsanto are doing to commercialize research results—big data—that comes from farmers who may or may not know what their data rights are.  Finally, I enjoyed Cliff Lynch’s presentation which built on his First Monday publication “Stewardship in the ‘Age of Algorithms.'”

Society for Scholarly Publishing  40th Conference highlights

SSP was kicked off with a series of Sponsored Sessions.  These enable vendors to talk about their products and services and are clearly labeled in the program.  I’m not sure why we don’t do this in “Libraryland.” They could be revenue generators plus a timesaver for all of us who want to learn about a vendor’s new product.  Since they are clearly delineated as “sales talks”in the program, attendees can avoid them if they want to do so.

I was curious about all the publishing platforms that are available for scholarly publishers so I went to a Typefi Systems session on automation. The session covered several case studies demonstrating how investment in their platform improved productivity. Typefi Cloud allows production of HTML and PDF outputs and authors, editors, designers and others can keep using the same software (i.e. Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign), they are comfortable with to create scholarly works.  This is helpful so authors don’t have to learn InDesign.

Diversity, inclusion, equity issues are an emerging topic in the publishing world.  A panel covering this topic featured Jody Gray from ALA’s Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services; Association for University Presses’ Executive Director Peter Berkery, and Jean Shipman from Elsevier.  The panelists reported on efforts at their organization.  I was keen to learn what Elsevier is up to but they are struggling as much as any of us in this arena.  Everyone has the same challenges we have in terms of recruitment.

There were two awesome keynotes. First, Safiya Noble spoke about her new book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. https://www.playbackssp.com/2018-ssp-annual-meeting/14181-gs1 Her book is on my nightstand of books to read sooner rather than later.  Noble also gave the closing keynote at AUP in San Francisco.  I thought the AUP keynote might be a repeat but she did an excellent job of covering similar ground without being repetitive.  The other keynote was by Steve Mirsky, an editor and columnist for Scientific American.  His talk focused on how psychologist Robert Cialdini’s six principles of influence (reciprocity, commitment, social proof, authority, liking, scarcity) can be applied to changes we want to see in the scholarly communication environment.  Mirsky has a lot of concern (as do many) about the preponderance of denial related to scientific evidence supporting evolution, climate change, etc. https://www.playbackssp.com/2018-ssp-annual-meeting/14181-gs2?html5player=true

I also went to several sessions where metadata and its role in machine learning or AI were the focus.  A speaker from Science talked about the metadata they are collecting on authors (gender, ethnicity, degrees).  That was a bit scary in regards to privacy concerns. He wasn’t altogether clear what they were doing with this data (supposedly kept internal) or how they were collecting it. (DON”T) Rage Against the Machine  a session on Artificial Intelligence (AI) was another session on how use of AI can improve discoverability (ie., introduction of new music) online learning, prediction of things like revenue and other trends.  There was also a good panel with 3 women and one male (the U of Utah AUL Rick Anderson, BTW) that was a really good conversation with considerable Q&A to engage with the audience.

The session on funders as publishers had representation from a library (as publisher of OA stuff), a faculty research from UC San Diego, an editor from AAAS, and rep from F1000. The response from the UL at the University College of London offered expected info in terms of their initiatives to run an IR and operate a relatively new OA university press. He also covered the political context in the UK—funders requiring OA.  Library as publisher begs the question: What does it mean to be a publisher—pre-print server?  What about distributing data or is publishing just mean being an entity that publishes publications?

All panelists addressed these questions:

What do researchers want from OA

  • Publish in high quality journal read by peers; the researcher Maryanne Martone from UC San Diego repeated the term “prestige economy” to describe why researchers publish;
  • Solid review process and short pub times
  • Make it easy to comply with OA requirements

Perceived benefits of OA

  • Access for scientists and for public

Perceived challenges of OA

  • Non-productive conversations
  • Quality comes at a cost

What are cost complications?

The AAAS editor focused on what he termed “transition pains” as funding migrates from subscriptions to APCs. He described a fragmented world in terms of sales because Europe will likely be APCs but rest of the world (including US) will be subscriptions.  He said the transition would likely hurt smaller publishers more.

Martone asked what were the costs of unrecovered research? More to the point what were the costs of not going with OA.  She mentioned the article on “long tail” data that has become dark so now the data is unavailable. She said there may be increasing ROI for funders through initiatives like bioRxiv, the biology preprint server.  Also described that there is more than just articles that researchers need access but important scholarly outcomes include data as well as code.  All research outputs need to be reusable. As a neuroscientist, Martone spoke to need to access big data because her field depends on integration.  Mentions library license agreements that don’t allow machine-based access or text-mining.

The UCLondon UL Paul Ayris  spoke about his campus’ coming adoption of new bilbiometrics.  They are not going to allow the journal impact factor to be considered for P&T as the journal impact factor does not provide insight into the value of the actual article—it’s not at an article level.

FOLLOWUP: Martone, Lamden, Noble (yes, again) might be speakers we would consider bringing to OSU to talk about scholarly communication topics of interest to OSU faculty

Destination Krakow, Poland

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My first trip to Eastern Europe led me to the beautiful city of Krakow, Poland. Dianna Fisher, the20160416_102628 director of Open Oregon State, and I were presenting on the OSU Open Textbook Initiative at Open Education Global 2016. OSU is a really new member of Open Education Consortium, the global network for open education.  Attendees from all over the world were in attendance.  Most U.S. participants are from community colleges since in our country they are at the forefront of open education adoption. This is not a library conference so there weren’t a lot of us in attendance.  That said, it is clear that faculty outside libraries are looking to academic librarians to be partners.

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AGH Library interior

The host institution is AGH University of Science and Technology, obviously a technical university, established in 1913.  Other campus libraries always interest me so I did peek into AGH’s but you’d have to have an ID to get much further into the building.

Conference Highlights:

  • All the plenary panels were excellent; these sessions demonstrated not only the global nature of the OE movement but the huge successes across Europe. Both the opening and closing panels were strong. The opening keynote panel on “Opening Up Poland” had reps from across government, higher education and IT; the closing keynote featured Jarosław Lipszyc, the President of the Modern Poland Foundation—quite a charismatic guy.
  • Learning about the National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), the first open and distant learning institution in the West African region;
  • A lab/workshop on advocating for open education through the Open Government Partnership;
  • Caleb Green’s report on the Creative Commons 2016-2020 Strategy and their 2015 annual report; this is a session that I could likely expect to hear in the states but I don’t get to the more focused conferences as I often as I once did.
  • Another terrific lab/workshop on the Open Research Agenda—this was not on how to “open up” research but where the research energy investigating OE issues ought to be focused. It occurs to me that this is a pretty good approach to leveraging your efforts and FTE so you aren’t spending time investigating dead ends.

Dianna Fisher and I had good attendance at our session (about 20-25 in attendance); we were joined by a couple of other presenters. After our presentation, someone came up to Dianna and told her he liked our presentation. This person also told her that we weren’t nearly as pompous as most Americans. At some point, I hope to put our presentation in ScholarsArchive.

Other Trip Highlights

Krakow as a destination exceeded my expectations. Compared to other places I’ve visited in Europe, it is quite inexpensive. My partner and I rented a great 1-bedroom apartment for about $75 a day. Polish cuisine is wonderful and a meal that would cost you $50 in Portland is about $25. Of course, I am not afraid to try new tastes:  delicious soups: borscht (beet soup), horseradish soup, sour rye; pierogi or filled dumplings; fried lard with fresh baked bread. Bagels originated in Poland and you can find them for sale all over the city. Even the conference food was outstanding. The opening conference reception offered a feast with various Polish dishes and we were entertained by a young Polish folk dance group.

My sightseeing included:

  • Rynek Glowny or Grand Square, the main square in Krakow with loads of activity;

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    Rynek Glowny at night

  • St. Mary’s Basilica, the location where a trumpeter plays five-notes from a Polish anthem from the church tower;
  • Kazmierz or the Jewish District where thousands of Krakow’s Jews lived before their forced move by the Nazis just a bit south across the Vistula River to Podgórze;
  • Podgórze, which became known as the Jewish ghetto, is the location of Schindler’s Factory; we also visited the exhibits here made famous in the Spielberg movie Schindler’s List.
  • A guided tour of Auschwitz-Birkenau, one of the concentration camps located about an hour from Krakow.   I am not sorry I did the tour though I am not sure I need to expose myself to another one in my lifetime. Both my partner and I agreed that going with a guide was the best option. I am not sure how we would have gotten through the tour without the guide pushing us along.  Scenes below include belongings of the camp’s victims like shoes and dinnerware.
  • Wieliczka Salt Mine which is actually pretty close to Krakow. The mine features lots of statutes and chapels carved out of rock salt by the miners themselves. This mine and its sister mine as well as Auschwitz-Birkenau are UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
  • Wawel Castle–the amazing residence for Polish kings for centuries; it’s difficult to photograph because it encompasses multiple structures (cathedral, residence, state rooms), courtyards, gardens.
  • Nowa Huta, a suburb of Krakow which the Soviets planned after they occupied Poland in the post WW2 era. Nowa Huta was planned with the idea that folks from surrounding rural areas would move there to work in the steelworks. Given the Communists’ dismissal of organized religion, they did not plan for building churches. This was apparently a critical mistake and the local workers’ push for churches was a significant underpinning of the Solidarity movement. Karol Wojtyla, whom we know best as Pope John Paul II, was then archbishop in Krakow, and he was a big supporter of the trade union as well.

Richard Sapon-White had suggested I read A Long, Long Time Ago, and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka.  I am glad I took him up on this suggestion.  Often in my travels, I endeavor to read a book set in the location where I am headed. Much of Pasulka’s novel is set in Krakow right after the communist regime has fallen. There is a parallel and interlinked narrative about a young couple set in the inter-war years leading up to WW2 and through the period just after the Nazi occupation of Poland. Pasulka really brings the city to life. I would recommend this book even if you aren’t planning a trip to Poland anytime soon. Since I am a fast reader, I also read a short book on a black German woman who discovered that her grandfather was the commandment overseeing Podgorze. He was the evil sadistic character Amon Goeth that Ralph Fiennes portrayed in Schindler’s List. The book is My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family’s Nazi Past by Jennifer Teege. Teege’s book was an interesting look at how descendants of Nazi war criminals have dealt with their ancestors’ horrific crimes against humanity. Since I’ve been home I have also read a terrific short young adult novel, Anna and the Swallow Man.  Highly recommended.