LACUNY Scholarly Communications Roundtable Meeting Minutes, September 11, 2014

September 11, 2014, 2pm-4pm, John Jay College Library

Attendees: Ann Matsuuchi (LCC), Beth Evans (BC), Caileen Cooney (NYCCT), Jay Bernstein (KB), Jean Amaral (QCC), Jill Cirasella (GC), John Schriner (LC), Karen Okamoto (JJ), Lisa Finder (HC), Maura Smale (NYCCT), Maureen Richards (JJ).

Action items:
1. Jill will ask Greg Gosselin to speak about the new CUNY institutional repository.
2. Jay will contact the Center for Worker Education about hosting the Internet’s Own Boy screening. He will follow up with Jean.
3. Jean will contact Kenneth Schlesinger about SCRT’s decision to support, but not draft, a CUNY Libraries open access policy.
4. Maureen will draft and send an email to CULIBS about OA week resources. Jean and Karen will help.
5. Jill will send a Word Doc of the OA basics poster/info sheet from the CUNY OA site.
6. Beth will send us an email template promoting OA titles for the OA week email (point 4, above).
7. Jean will find excerpts from the Internet’s Own Boy to screen.

What are campuses doing for OA week?
KCC- Jay will communicate ideas from SCRT back to his campus
Lehman – no plans but excited.
Hunter – occupied with renovations.
GC – author’s rights workshop, which will probably be offered every semester moving forward. Week after OA, faculty workshop on how to self-submit to IR.
QCC – has done an author’s rights and an intro to OA in the past. Not sure what they will do this year.
BMCC – will likely organize an intro to OA event
Laguardia – screening Internet’s Own Boy,
NYCCT – predatory publishing. They would also like to know what others are doing.
Brooklyn – Miriam Deutch is starting an OER movement on campus.
JJ – nothing planned, but will promote other OA week events.

Fall program on the GC’s institutional repository (IR)
Jill: this semester the GC is spreading the word to faculty. She will talk about their outreach plans and lessons learned in establishing their IR.
– other campuses want to know what to do about the IR and how to communicate with faculty
– the CUNY scholarly communications librarian will most likely not start until next semester (or the end of this semester). This person will learn about/know all the details about the IR
– libraries would like to know details about the IR e.g. storage space
– we will invite Greg Gosselin from OLS to answer these questions and explain the contract
– because OA week is about educating those who don’t know much about OA we will not schedule this during OA week. It is a librarian-targeted event.
– New suggested dates for the IR program: Sometime in November but not the 13th because of the Bepress webinar. Thurs 11/13 or Fri 11/14, 10am-12pm are suggested dates. To be held at the GC.

Internet’s Own Boy
– issue of news coverage of Aaron Swartz as an idealistic activist? What about links to WikiLeaks?
– provide a counter-point (e.g. Snowden) and raise the issue of who can restrict information (e.g. corporations)? In our promotional email for the screening, we can send links to background information on Aaron’s case.
– With a running time of 1 hour and 45 minutes, we decided it would be too long to screen the entire documentary and have a discussion afterwards. Jean will find excerpts to screen.
– We discussed possible screening dates and times: 10/24 or 10/23, late afternoon/evening is preferred e.g. 3-5pm
– Possible venues: Jay will contact the Center for Worker’s Education on Broadway. Possible dates: Thurs 10/23 or Fri 10/24, 3-5pm, during OA week. Back-up venue: City Tech’s faculty lounge, but streaming the video will be an issue.

Beth’s OA week ideas, as posted on the CUNY Commons
– encourage bibliographers and subject liaisons to recommend OA books to faculty members. Beth will develop an email template to be included in the toolkit and in the OA week message to CULIBS

The OA toolkit
– QCC has a community listserv and an all-faculty list. If our campuses have such lists, we can send messages during OA week and highlight a resource each day.
– We can also cherry pick items from the OA CUNY blog and send these links to colleagues on CULIBS and other departments on campus. We can also print and distribute items from the blog e.g. the infographic on OA that Jill created
– Other links that can be distributed: ACRL toolkit highlighting a specific page, video from PhD comics and Plos “open access explained”
– Maureen, Jean and Karen will draft and send the email to CULIBS

A CUNY-wide OA policy
At the Council of Chief Librarians meeting on 9/8/14, Kenneth Schlesinger suggested that the LACUNY SCRT Roundtable could consider developing a CUNY-wide policy on open access. We had a spirited discussion about this. The following points and issues were raised:
– the term “policy” and “mandate” can be intimidating. We could instead call it a resolution of support or a statement of support
– As a roundtable we do not have the authority to create CUNY-wide policies. We can, however, gauge departmental support for OA and help our departments adopt a resolution. We can also post templates and sample policies on our toolkit. We can also reach out to tenure committees and explain OA.
– There are several different government bodies on our own campuses and at CUNY that can pass and adopt such resolutions/policies.
– There’s also the issue of enforcing policies. Automatic transfer policies for authors have more of an impact than other kinds of policies.
– There was a suggestion that a chief’s subcommittee could take on this task, or the soon-to-be-established OLS scholarly communication committee could develop it
– We will tell Kenneth that we are happy to provide suggestions, work with our own departments, and post policies on the toolkit, but we’re not in the position to develop a CUNY-wide policy

Next meeting in January.