Library Publishing Toolkit e-book available as free download! | Omega Alpha | Open Access

"I want to make sure to pass along items of interest that surfaced during my summer hiatus. For example, on August 1, 2013, the Press of the Information Delivery Services (IDS) Project, a resource-sharing cooperative of New York public and academic libraries, published an open access e-book entitled Library Publishing Toolkit, edited by Allison P. Brown, et al. (with a Forward by Walt Crawford). The 401 page book is available as a free download here (PDF). This book is a positive resource for those seriously inclined not to follow Dorothea Salo’s (satirical) advice in “How to Scuttle a Scholarly Communication Initiative” (that I referenced in my last post), and it falls in the same vein of several of my previous posts (such as here and here) covering the 'library as publisher' movement. Library Publishing Toolkit is divided into two parts, focusing on public (Part 1) and academic (Part 2) libraries. Regarding the academic library context (which gets majority attention in the book), topics addressed include ... Under each of these topics are several chapter essays offering case studies, best practices, real-world experience, and practical advice.  Why are libraries getting into publishing? A cynic might say this is a just another attempt by libraries (along with their coffee shops, video game rooms, and beanbag chairs) to claim continuing relevance in a time when print collections are seeing declining use, and digital packages from commercial publishers and vendors are nominally deemed 'library resources' only because they pass through the library website or are paid for from the library budget ...   I found it of particular interest that IDS Project Press utilized Public Knowledge Project’s recently released Open Monograph Press (OMP) open source platform software to publish the Library Publishing Toolkit e-book. Public Knowledge Project is well known for the development of the Open Journal Systems (OJS) open source journal publishing platform, which is used by thousands of open access journals world-wide. By all accounts OMP will also prove to be a robust publishing platform for e-books. Through it PKP aims to make online publishing of monographs as accessible to scholar and library publishers as it has for journals. Be sure to read the chapter in Library Publishing Toolkit by the folks over at PKP (Simon Fraser University and Stanford University) entitled 'The Public Knowledge Project: Open Source e-Publishing Services for Your Library' (pp. 359-66) ... "