Book Reviews

The Scholarly Communications Cookbook. Brianna Buljung and Emily Bongiovanni, eds. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, 2021. 358p. Softcover, $88.00 ($79.20 ALA members) (ISBN: 978-0838938478).

The Scholarly Communications Cookbook, edited by Brianna Buljung and Emily Bongiovanni, offers a wide range of successful scholarly communications programs and projects that can serve as inspiration for librarians seeking to expand scholarly communications services at their institutions. A broad scope of scholarly communications topics is represented, including open access (OA) publishing services, open educational resources (OER) initiatives, research support tools, campus collaborations, and teaching and learning opportunities.

The metaphor in the book’s title appropriately describes the book’s format as well as how it is best read and used: just like an actual cookbook. Each chapter is a short, digestible “recipe” for an aspect of scholarly communications; you most likely won’t read it from cover to cover. Instead, the Cookbook is a resource to consult when you want to know how to “cook” a certain “recipe” (implement a specific project or service), or for inspiration for how to use the “ingredients” (resources, staffing, and the like) that you already have. There is a strong focus on practicality and putting scholarly communications initiatives into action. Recipes walk readers through the nuts-and-bolts of preparing for and implementing a number of events, workshops, programs, and services.

After a brief introduction, the book is divided into four sections. The recipes in Section I: “Taking Your Program to the Next Level” take a “big picture” (9) approach to scholarly communications programs, focusing on aspects that contribute broadly to developing or expanding programs, such as partnerships and collaboration, engaging campus stakeholders, and institutionwide events or initiatives.

Section II: “Open Educational Resources” provides a wealth of recipes for advancing the use of OER. Many of these recipes address grant programs, campus OER committees, workshops and training programs, and awareness-raising efforts, offering different perspectives on activities that are commonly seen within OER initiatives. Additional recipes address a range of program elements, including some that are not as prevalent in the broader OER literature: project management, statewide ambassadors, curation by subject librarians, an OER assignment library, and more.

Section III: “Publishing Models and Open Access” starts with recipes for campus OA policies, OA publishing funds, and infrastructure that supports OA, followed by recipes for various aspects of OA journal publishing. Several recipes in this section provide multiple approaches to facilitating campus engagement with scholarly communications and OA topics at an introductory level, such as through student workshops, events, a faculty cohort, campuswide events, and online learning objects. Workshops, events, and instructional activities geared toward specific topics are also included: predatory journals, accessibility, Creative Commons licenses, copyright and the public domain, and information privilege.

Section IV: “Tools, Trends, and Best Practices for Modern Researchers” is dedicated to how libraries leverage tools, skills, and services to support all stages of the research process. The recipes span citation management tools, research data management, data and computing skills, repository services, and scholarly identity and impact. Most recipes in this section take the form of workshops, and many deal with specific software. The recipes that are similar to lesson plans (in this section and others) could easily be used as templates and adapted for individual or institutional needs.

The number of recipes can appear overwhelming at first, with most sections including more than 20, but each entry is meant to be brief and easily digestible. Each recipe uses a consistent format, with headings such as Learning Outcomes, Number Served, Cooking Time, Ingredients & Equipment, Preparation, Cooking Method, Chef’s Notes, and so on. This structure allows for a concise overview of the program, activity, or initiative described in each recipe, including background information, logistics, alignment with professional standards (such as the ACRL Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education or the ACRL Scholarly Communications Toolkit), description, and considerations. Many recipes include visual aids where appropriate, such as photos, templates, rubrics, or examples. Additional resources at the end of recipes point readers to LibGuides, slides, handouts, toolkits, and other resources that expand upon the main recipe.

The recipe-like language might cause confusion for some readers and at times gets in the way of a smooth reading experience. For example, the use of food-related puns in recipe titles, along with the large number of recipes available, might make it difficult to quickly find the type of recipe you want. Similarly, the recipe headings (such as Cooking Method, Chef’s Notes, and others) can inhibit the ability to skim and locate desired information due to the use of cooking-related language that is not descriptive of the individual scholarly communications programs. These relatively minor critiques may be helpful to be aware of, but certainly shouldn’t deter anyone from consulting the book. However, those seeking in-depth discussions of and reflections on the concepts underpinning these recipes should look elsewhere, as this book’s strength is in breadth rather than depth.

The Scholarly Communications Cookbook is a valuable resource for finding inspiration and for guidance on how to put ideas into action. This collection will be useful for academic librarians at any career stage and at any institution type and is informative for those seeking to expand their knowledge of scholarly communications beyond a narrower area of expertise. For example, as an OER librarian, I gained a useful overview of OA initiatives. The collection of recipes represents how librarians in a variety of academic library contexts are currently engaging themselves and their campuses with scholarly communications. Each recipe is licensed with a Creative Commons license, allowing readers to use and adapt the contents according to the terms of the specific license applied.—Ariana Santiago, University of Houston