The Open Access In Media Studies blog published an interview with Kathleen Fitzpatrick (Michigan State University) conducted by Jeroen Sondervan (Utrecht University and OA Media Studies) and Jeff Pooley (Muhlenberg College). The interview covers Fitzpatrick’s work on open access initiatives in the humanities, and touches on the roles of academic libraries and librarians in that space:
OAMS: Academic libraries and librarians have taken a more active role in scholarly communication, through subsidies and even in-house publishing. What role do you see libraries playing in a future, more open publishing ecosystem?
KF: I’ve long argued that libraries have a key role to play in the transitions that I describe above, not least because of their position in knowledge development and dissemination within universities. The conventionally understood library has long gathered the world’s knowledge for use by researchers and students on campus, but as the processes of research and scholarly communication become increasingly intertwined, libraries become hubs for a range of knowledge-development activities rather than just the repositories of information they’re often imagined to be.
Fitzpatrick goes on to discuss the mission of Humanities Commons and the nuances of defining data for humanities scholars.
