Future of Scholarly Publishing, a talk by Kathleen Fitzpatrick

I came across this if:book version of a talk by Kathleen Fitzpatrick, founder of Mediacommons, on the Future of Scholarly Publishing. It's an excellent text that recounts the circumstances that led to her creating MediaCommons, so it nicely outlines a very thorough laundry list of the problems with scholarly publishing in the humanities (as these are what led her to create MediaCommons). This is about online peer review and publishing, and publishing that takes advantage of the possibilities of the networked environment.

All this fits incredibly well into two meetings I had today at work. The first was about the library's expanding role in supporting faculty dissemination of scholarship; the other was about a joint project between the library and the U.T. Press. Both meetings were very positive and gave me a strong sense of doing something productive at work, beyond what has been asked of me directly. In other words, I love taking initiative and thinking up new ways to inform and enable and I'm very happy to have found a way to do that within the context of a new environment, for me. As I was preparing for these meetings this morning, I remembered that I worked at the Office of General Counsel for over two years before I really started thinking outside the box. It took me that long to figure out what was *in* the box.

I haven't really focused much on my work for the library this semester because the classes have occupied my time and my energy. But they are not quite so satisfying as my classes were last semester, and at least I have the opportunity to look elsewhere for ways to contribute. Ten hours/week does make it a challenge, however. My, how quickly those ten hours pass by.