The Authority File

In our capitalist society, libraries—free, public spaces—continually face the challenge of trying to prove their value through quantitative, tangible means. But what about the emotional value? The abstract, qualitative worth? The opening chapter of Dr. Toni Samek’s co-edited volume,  Minds Alive: Libraries and Archives Now , poses the controversial question: Libraries—why bother? As budgets shrink...

As the cost of college in the US continues to rise, prospective students wonder how their postsecondary education will help them land a career. When universities feel the pressure to prepare students for the ever-changing job market, how does that impact the offered curriculum? Dr. Rupert Maclean of RMIT University interrogates how a vocationally-driven education model has impacted how we view sch...

Last November, the Citrus County Commission in Florida denied its library funding for a digital subscription to the New York Times. One commissioner cited the paper as “fake news.”  1  While libraries are commonly perceived as impartial providers of information, they often face contestations—geography, funding, politics—that impact a library’s holdings and role in its community. Dr. Toni Samek of...

Established in 1945 after World War II, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) works to inspire and help build peace through promoting robust and comprehensive educational opportunities and reforms worldwide. With 193 member states in all parts of the world, from Thailand, Iraq, and Germany to the Pacific Islands and virtually all countries in between, the or...

Corralling contributors for an edited volume is no easy task. Adding the extra step of encouraging contributors to communicate and read each other’s chapters is a whole other undertaking. Toni Samek of the University of Alberta and coeditor Patricia Demers were willing to challenge the writers of their co-edited volume,  Minds Alive: Libraries and Archives Now , to read the whole manuscript and in...

Item holds can function as both the bane of patrons, and valuable insight for librarians. The more holds on an item, the more popular it may be, helping inform future purchasing choices. Jill Grunenwald, Communications Specialist at OverDrive, discusses OverDrive’s approach to the admin side of its Libby app. While some librarians choose to manually look at the holds list and how many people are w...

Community work doesn’t have clear-cut, one-size-fits-all solutions. Each community in need requires a unique approach, meaning successful community development requires action rooted in malleability, empathy, and most importantly, communication. Sarah Todd of Carleton University wanted the chapters in her edited volume,  Canadian Perspectives on Community Development , to be in conversation with e...

As the publishing industry embraced digital reading options, audiobook and ebook reading app choices exploded to accommodate the modern, mobile patron. But how do you make an app that appeals to both public and academic library end-users? Accessibility is a safe place to start. OverDrive has marketed its Libby app as a “one-tap reading app” that’s streamlined, user-friendly, and most importantly,...

One assumption about community work is that state actors function as the rigid, weighty authority compared to local powers’ more flexible, adaptable direction. However, like most things in life, the dynamic is much more nuanced than that. Sarah Todd of Carleton University explains how local level authorities can be just as rigid as those on the state level. Some local communities have even called...

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every trade—publishing and librarianship included. But what has it revealed about these markets? How can stakeholders best prepare for the fast-approaching fall semester? What of these temporary changes will stick once we regain “normalcy”? Jill Grunenwald, Communications Specialist at OverDrive, explains how OverDrive has adjusted to meet student and faculty nee...

Theory is not a hard-and-fast rule. It’s a fluid practice, something that warps and bends due to new information, context, and the situation it’s being applied to. Sarah Todd, of Carleton University, believes that one of the dangers of applying theory to community work is clinging so tightly to a belief that it drowns out that community’s needs. When privileged, university-educated outsiders enter...

Librarianship can lead one to many places. Jill Grunenwald, Communications Specialist at OverDrive, has worked in collection development, at a career college, and as sole librarian at a prison in Cleveland, which inspired her memoir  Reading Behind Bars . “It was actually really challenging in a lot of good ways,” Grunenwald explains. “I was the only librarian, so I did all of the work. It was a g...

Collaboration is a key component of academia. While it’s easy to romanticize the lone scholar typing away in an ivory tower, academics working together birth some of the best and most exciting ideas—especially when each holds a different background or perspective. Sarah Todd, an English-speaking professor at Carleton University, discovered this for herself in meeting Sébastien Savard, a Francophon...

Karina Vernon, Associate Professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough, knew that when collecting material for her book,  The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology , she couldn’t include everything: “The fantasy of the total archive—it’s an impossibility.” She enacted several editorial guidelines to achieve her goal of presenting diverse Black stories that expanded the dominant narrative of th...

Though this may sound crass, a topic like a global pandemic—something that naturally attracts gossip, mania, and misinformation—is a gold mine for information literacy instructors. Is that pre-print reliable? Is that headline’s only purpose to strike an emotional chord? Who should you listen to, the politician or the scientist? But even as the need for information literacy programs grows, proving...

‘Scholarly’ does not equate to detached, apathetic, or impartial. In some cases, a researcher’s emotional ties to a subject can even give the topic more weight or urgency. Karina Vernon, Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto Scarborough, indeed felt a great pull to her subject, Black life and literature in the Canadian prairies. Dr. Vernon, a Canadian Prairie native whose fam...

It’s a crucial question on educators’ minds: How do I get my students to engage with the material? For a subject as timely and essential as information literacy, interest in the area has only grown as misinformation swells, the political divide deepens, and the public faces a relentless 24-hour news cycle just a tap away on their devices—but how can you make sure these lessons stick? Roz Tedford a...

Anthologies have the power to not only reshape the past, but also reflect on the current cultural moment. In  The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology , Karina Vernon, Associate Professor of English at the University of Toronto Scarborough, grapples with how her collection amends the history of the prairies, while impacting current North American cultural and social politics. Dr. Vernon explains t...

Though misinformation has long been part of our news and media, the 2016 election galvanized academics, librarians, and researchers into combating the issue with renewed force. Their methods have grown into a multidisciplinary approach that interweaves media literacy, social sciences, and data science through one-shots, workshops, and interactive lesson plans. Roz Tedford at Wake Forest University...

Writers like Sinclair Ross and W.O. Mitchell shaped the popular image of the Canadian prairie settler as white, anglophone, and male, and the region’s image as sweeping grasslands broken by farms and small towns. The prairies in fact have a much more diverse history—and collection of writers—than the popular images suggest. We talk with Karina Vernon, Associate Professor at the University of Toron...

Conspiracy theories. Fake news. Flat Earthers. These buzz words have seeped into our common vernacular. But how does misinformation spread? How does the internet expand its influence? And how can academics keep the next generation of students from falling prey to falsehoods? In this four-part series, three instructors, each with their own unique backgrounds—Roz Tedford, Director of Research &...

Publishers, librarians, and scholarly market experts have debated the future of open access publishing for decades now. What have they found? That it’s difficult to enact far-reaching, equitable, and sustainable change across an entire market. However, MIT Press hopes to make waves by creating an OA monograph publishing model usable for all presses, currently in the works thanks to a three-year $8...

With a three-year $850,000 Arcadia grant in hand, MIT Press has set to work building an open access publishing model that all presses can use. But what are the benefits of one model over another? What elements are most important to authors and publishers? How do you ensure inclusivity, scalability, and equity across a framework? These are the questions Raym Crow, Senior Consultant at SPARC and res...

Open access monographs are a relatively new product, and the existing distribution infrastructure for print monographs is largely opaque to publishers. That means, when building a financial framework for open monographs, there isn’t much reliable data out there. But MIT Press, The press hopes its three-year $850,000 grant from the Arcadia Fund will help produce a sustainable business model all pre...

In the past twenty years, scholarly monograph sales have sharply declined. As the publishing world moves online, the skills that can’t be robotized—copyediting, designing, marketing—continue to add up. While many hoped digitization would reduce printing costs, therefore paving the way for increased open access materials, Terry Ehling, Director for Strategic Initiatives at MIT Press, explains that...