2022 Scholarly Communications SkillShare Regional Meet Up – Edmonton

June 1, 2022

On May 5th, 2022, librarians and library technicians from Concordia University of Edmonton, MacEwan University, and the University of Alberta met to informally discuss current projects and new developments in the field of scholarly communications. Below is a summary of what is happening at institutions in Edmonton:

Amanda Wakaruk, Copyright and Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of Alberta

  • Led by Denise LaFitte, Associate University Librarian, Amanda and other members of the Library’s Scholarly Communications Team have been speaking with faculty members in various academic units about open access. Conversations to date have included the role of OA mandates, the nature of transformative agreements, and related interests and challenges. This is a “listening tour” being conducted at the request of the University's Research Policy Committee, and the results will inform decision making in this area of work at the UofA. 
  • Amanda continues to offer copyright literacy sessions that incorporate scholarly communications topics (including information about publishing agreements and author rights), both online and in person, to members of the UAlberta community.

Robyn Hall, Scholarly Communications Librarian, MacEwan University

  • MacEwan Library hosted the 2022 True North Science Boot Camp, a professional development program for librarians, virtually from May 10th to 12th. Boot camp activities spanned three days and featured educational presentations delivered by scientists, engineers, and librarians on community-based science. 
  • MacEwan is working on transitioning from Islandora to DSpace 7 for its institutional repository (RO@M) over the summer. The Library also plans to formally launch its Pressbooks instance, MacEwan Open Books, in coming weeks. 
  • Beginning in July, Robyn will be spending a sabbatical year researching ways that academic libraries can provide enhanced support for community-engaged scholarship and knowledge mobilization.

Sarah Severson, Digital Initiatives Project Librarian, University of Alberta

  • A call has been sent out for volunteers for the 2023 Student Journal Forum Organizing Committee. Interested parties should fill out the sign-up form by June 30th, 2022: https://forms.office.com/r/LYR5tsyfBY 
  • Sarah co-hosted, alongside Jessica Lange from McGill University Library, a virtual workshop entitled Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Scholarly Publishing for Student Journals, where specific actions journal teams can take to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their publication and teams based on existing journal practices was discussed.
  • Sarah is currently finishing up the analysis on a set of interviews with journal editorial teams of small, independent Canadian journals for the final part of a research project with Jessica Lange (McGill University)  that is looking at labor- and workflow-related practices.

Victoria Eke, Scholarly Communications Librarian, Concordia University of Edmonton

  • Concordia University of Edmonton (CUE) Library hosted a Research Data Management (RDM) Symposium on May 17th. The event included presentations from experts in RDM, as well as a discussion panel  where the challenges of implementing RDM policy at small and medium institutions were addressed.
  • CUE Library is looking to transition to a hosted instance of DSpace for its institutional repository. Currently, the university’s repository lives as a collection within ERA, the University of Alberta’s Education & Research Archive.

Emily Zheng, Publishing & Digitization Specialist, University of Alberta

  • Emily works alongside Sarah Severson to support various projects in the University of Alberta Library’s Digital Initiatives department.

Penny Chu, Scholarly Communications Technician, MacEwan University

  • Penny is new to scholarly communications and is responsible for providing copyright support as part of MacEwan’s institutional repository service. 
  • Penny also provides support for Pressbooks, Dataverse, Digital Exhibits (Omeka), and Open Journal Systems. 
Honorary members of the Edmonton Scholarly Communications community: Holly and Noodle.