Against the Grain Volume 26 | Issue 6 Article 10 2014 Publishing, Libraries, Publishers and Librarians Maria Bonn University of Illinois, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Bonn, Maria (2014) "Publishing, Libraries, Publishers and Librarians," Against the Grain: Vol. 26: Iss. 6, Article 10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7771/2380-176X.6945 This document has been made available through Purdue e-Pubs, a service of the Purdue University Libraries. Please contact [email protected] for additional information. Publishing, Libraries, Publishers, and Librarians: Shared Passions, Complementary Skills by Maria Bonn (Senior Lecturer, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois) <[email protected]> s I note in the forthcoming book on ac- spoke, again with those same pioneers, at a But library publishing is driven by opportu- ademic libraries and scholarly publish- 2004 Society of Scholarly Publishing (SSP) nity as much as anxiety. The rise of readily Aing (Getting The Word Out: Academic meeting on “What Are Those Libraries Up To available technology and tools to support Libraries and Scholarly Publishing, Maria and Should We Care?” The room was full, publishing, as well as easily accessible business Bonn and Mike Furlough, editors, ACRL, and the audience members, mostly publishers, services, has lowered the barrier to entry for forthcoming, 2015), in recent years library ranged from curious to skeptical to downright many academic libraries and made stepping publishing activities have drawn increasing antagonistic about libraries “claiming” to be into the publishing space less daunting than attention within the professional world of publishers. In recent years, SSP and similar it once appeared. Finally, there has been an academic libraries, from the scholars those venues, such as the AAUP annual meeting, increase in user demand and need on academic libraries serve and from established scholarly regularly feature sessions on publishing in and campuses, demand that service-driven librar- publishers who seek to assess both opportuni- from libraries, sessions attended by those eager ies are often eager to meet. Scholars want to ties and threats presented by this activity. This to learn about and assess both the challenges publish differently, for economic, principled, work goes by a number of names, with varying and the opportunities posed by this growth and functional reasons. Indeed, much of what connotative values: library publishing, pub- area of library activity. Indeed, one individual scholars are driven to do is communicate, and lishing libraries, library publishing services, well-placed in SSP observed to this author that the marketplace is poorly designed to support library publishing support services, and even libraries that publish have become an area of this essential function. So they turn to their just publishing. Whatever this work is called, special focus for SSP as representing an area libraries for help, and libraries are nothing if a sufficient number of libraries are engaged in of significant potential for membership growth. not eager to help. it that when the Library Publishing Coali- At this juncture, it is not difficult to amass Established scholarly publishers of all tion (LPC), a collaborative effort to “support evidence that publishing is an area of interest sorts — commercial, society, and university the emerging field of library publishing” was and often investment for many academic press — have watched this rise of library pub- formed in 2012, more than fifty college and libraries (and, in other lishing with curiosity and university libraries paid their membership fees forms, becoming so for consideration, wondering and added their names to the directory. LPC’s public libraries as well). if it represents a new form first Library Publishing Forum, in March 2014, So it is natural to ask why of competition or new was filled with people engaged with publishing we see so many libraries possibilities for collabo- and libraries, eager to share their experiences entering this space. There ration and support. This and their challenges. The 2015 edition of are multiple answers to author once attended a the directory, just released as of this writing, that question, answers that conference session where contains 124 entries and represents 56 member often must be combined to she heard a highly placed libraries. This evidences significant growth in come close to a complete publishing executive as- library publishing (both activity and interest) answer. Libraries have, of sert that publishers exist since its emergent years in around the turn of course, long been intimately connected to pub- to “connect users and information,” a sentiment the millennium. lishers and publishing, existing in a relationship she heard, at a different conference, expressed As director of the University of Michi- of symbiotic need. While the importance to by the dean of a major research library in gan’s Scholarly Publishing Office, founded in libraries of publisher-as-supplier is evident, exactly those words, substituting libraries 2000, this author was an early entrant into the what is less often remembered or discussed is for publishers. As one who has spent much field of library publishing. In 2001, I organized the long role of libraries as publisher. Many time in both libraries and publishing houses a panel for the Digital Library Federation of the earliest U.S. academic presses got their and has great fondness and respect for both, I (DLF) Forum entitled “Library Approaches to start in university libraries in the decades would encourage libraries and publishers not Scholarly Publishing.” The panel was the first surrounding 1900 (see Paul Courant and to contend for the role of primary connector of its kind for DLF, and was populated by what Elisabeth Jones, “Scholarly Publishing as and instead recognize their shared interests, I came to call the usual suspects, a group of an Economic Public Good” forthcoming in passions, and mission and see how they might pioneers, individuals from the institutions that Getting The Word Out: Academic Libraries best work together to further those. Publishing were investing substantially in library publish- and Scholarly Publishing, ACRL, 2015). As libraries need to learn from publishers, and ing (at the time, representatives from Cornell’s most of those presses spun off into their own publishers need to learn from librarians in Project Euclid, California’s E-scholarship, businesses and onto their own recognizance, li- order to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing and Columbia’s CIAO, along with myself braries continued predominantly as consumers information environment. The collocation and from Michigan), a group whose members rather than producers of publications. But in institutional alignment of university libraries soon found themselves presenting together the last years of the twentieth century, several and university presses poses a particularly rich on many similar panels in a variety of venues. factors came together to change that. While opportunity for this exchange of expertise and While library publishing raised many interested library publishing certainly has arisen from a experience. Both will benefit from exchang- eyebrows, at the time there were only a handful mission and service imperative (more on that ing and mutually nurturing their skill sets and of libraries actively engaged in and committing in a moment), it also comes out of frustrations experience in training. It is this belief that has resources to publishing. Thirteen years later, and dissatisfactions. Certainly libraries are given rise to my nascent efforts at the Graduate at the 2014 DLF forum, we see a panel on dissatisfied with the high cost of commercial School of Library and Information Science at “Publishing in Your Library: Defining Purpose, publications and have begun to ask if it might the University of Illinois to create a program Policies, and Practices” and its description be cheaper to produce publications themselves. on “publishing as an information profession” leads with: “Publishing in libraries seems to Libraries are also frustrated by the intellectual and to develop a cadre of what we at the School be everywhere (emphasis mine) these days — property constraints placed on scholarship by informally call “pubrarians.” These pubrarians from university press collaborations to public its publishers, constraints that make it difficult will be well-placed for employment in the libraries providing self-publishing services.” to carry out both the work of libraries and the swelling ranks of libraries that are publishing Similarly, but in a different context, this author work of the scholars and teachers they serve. continued on page 22 20 Against the Grain / December 2014 - January 2015 <http://www.against-the-grain.com> both might shape the ecosystem of scholarly an expertise that positions them well to offer Publishing, Libraries, Publishers ... communication. authors and other creators editorial guidance. from page 20 Librarians are attentive to intellectual Such guidance might profitably be offered as property laws and their implications, again an alternative to or in support of the work of a and offering publishing services, but they will university press developmental editor. also be poised and ready to make valuable fodder for cross-conversation with publishers additions