This week, the Graduate Center Library has had about 100 RSVPs for WordPress and citation manager workshops. All of these have been sold out, and as a result, speak to the need to support digital scholarship on campus. Library collaboration with OpenCUNY, a student run and student based WordPress platform where “people are participants, not users” is a direct response to the need for digital initiatives to be at the helm of current scholarly communications.
On Monday, February 10th, OpenCUNY Coordinators, Laurie Hurson (Environmental Psychology), Margaret Galvan (English), and Christina Nadler (Sociology), met with Chief librarian, Polly Thistlethwaite; Electronic Resources librarian, Alycia Sellie; Digital Services librarian, Stephen Klein; and myself, Reference Librarian, Shawn(ta) Smith, to discuss the possibilities of collaboration. The conversation went a little something like this:
Why should OpenCUNY Collaborate with the Library Now?
OpenCUNY is turning five years old and will be surveying its participants alongside this milestone to think forward about what the participatory community can and will be. In the coming survey and through the events throughout the semester, OpenCUNY will raise questions on the minds of many CUNY students in the face of digital scholarship: How am I meant to integrate into the digital landscape? How is my research discoverable, and what are the implications? What is open access and how does OpenCUNY contribute to this landscape?
Order of appearance: Chief librarian, Polly Thistlethwaite, Reference Librarian, Shawn(ta) Smith, OpenCUNY Coordinator, Margaret Galvan (English), Electronic Resources librarian, Alycia Sellie, OpenCUNY Coordinator, Laurie Hurson (Environmental Psychology), and OpenCUNY Coordinator, Christina Nadler (Sociology), with photographer Digital Services librarian, Stephen Klein.
To kick off a series of events around these questions, OpenCUNY will throw a fifth birthday party on Friday, February 28, themed around the question “Why Have A Website?”–and guided by the idea of “Beyond the Blog” or “Thinking Outside the Blog”. More than an event, this theme is reflective of the mission for the entire semester of OpenCUNY, which aims to engage students on issues of open-source and participatory digital mediums.
In the same moment that OpenCUNY looks forward, the Graduate Center library is developing its new Institutional Repository, strengthening the ability for students and faculty to contractually host open access publications. The alliance with OpenCUNY will help to distinguish between publisher contract parameters that require pre-print versions of published articles to be self-archived on either author websites or institutional repositories only.
This semester, expect 4-5 collaborative events that function as a sort of meet up without the traditional workshop.
The first event will be held on Friday February 28th and would take place before the OpenCUNY 5th Birthday Party, to which all students and OpenCUNY participants are invited! Additional workshops will include online curriculum vitae (CV) creation, open scholarship conversations, and the most elusive teaching portfolio. A 5th event will be determined organically by whatever is developed throughout the series.
Stay tuned for more on this great collaboration, including additional collaborative partners as the semester and series unfolds.
