Open Access on Campus: Bringing Nonprofits to the Libraries

Low attendance at Open Access Week events caused academic librarians to ask: What can we do to further open access without asking faculty and students to attend events during such a busy time of the semester? Instead of reaching out to faculty directly, librarians at the University of Tennessee Libraries are reaching out beyond the campus community. Health sciences, social sciences, and scholarly communication librarians offer a workshop to East Tennessee nonprofit organizations to assist them in finding and accessing scholarly research. After the workshops, participants are invited to be interviewed on camera about why public access to research matters, giving the Libraries’ important personal stories for Open Access advocacy. After hearing these stories, do faculty ask librarians more questions about how to publish openly? What else can we do to increase the desire to share research publicly?

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