Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge, Maria Bonn, Josh Bolick, and Will Cross (eds.) ACRL, 2023, 9780838939901 Softcover, 528p., $150

Scholarly Communication Librarianship and Open Knowledge, edited by Maria Bonn, Josh Bolick, and Will Cross, is an openly licensed textbook, packed with foundational knowledge, as well as practical lessons in open data, open access, and open education; it also includes short case studies from those working in the field. Readers hear from nearly 80 scholarly communications (scholcomm) practitioners, offering a range of perspectives on everything from coordinating an OER program to supporting reproducible research through the curation of open data.

The book, intended for MLIS students and those new to scholcomm, addresses several well-known curricular gaps in the profession’s training—namely, in the areas of copyright, open data, open education, and scholarly publishing. Scholarly Communication Librarianship provides both the contextual information, and the practical skills and resources necessary for a deep, multi-faceted understanding of scholcomm and all it entails.

As an open textbook, Scholarly Communication Librarianship follows OER best practices in that it is written to be reused. The content is modular and easily adaptable for other audiences and contexts. It makes good use of previously published articles, book excerpts, conversations, charts, and interviews, pulling in relevant content from a variety of open sources. In addition, it is published under a CC-BY Creative Commons license for maximum reusability. The book provides an excellent example for other OER authors on how new and existing content can be interwoven to create an effective curricular resource.

Scholarly Communication Librarianship is divided into three parts. Part I describes the interplay between formal and informal scholarly communications systems and outlines the contexts—social, economic, technological, and legal—that shape scholcomm. The editors author this first section, and their chosen frames are apt, focusing on the tensions faculty experience in navigating systems for which they have not been trained, the economic realities of shrinking library budgets, the monopolistic practices of commercial academic publishers, and the many biases built into academic publishing systems.

In Chapter 1.4, “The Social Context,” the authors examine the colonial legacy that continues to privilege English speaking researchers in Western countries, even as research itself has become a thoroughly networked and global endeavor. The chapter also introduces the concept of open access (OA) as a partial solution to publisher control of information through paywalls. While the book teases out and explores the many facets of OA throughout, it introduces the concept early as a foundational concept.

Part II, “Scholarly Communication and Open Culture,” explores the concept of open in greater depth, not just as it pertains to open access journal publishing and OER, but also open data, open pedagogy, and open science. Here, the editors invite a variety of scholcomm professionals to introduce complex concepts, share theory, practices, and resources in their own voices. Many authors pull in articles, quotes, graphics, and essays from others, creating a collage of voices and perspectives.

For example, in Amy Buckland’s chapter 2.1, “Open Access,” the author incorporates several relevant readings to further illustrate concepts. In service of debunking the myth, “everything should be open,” Buckland includes an essay by Tara Robertson about the privacy implications of digitizing a lesbian-created porn zine from the 1980s-early 2000s. Later, the author includes a short piece by Meredith Jacob covering open licensing and how Creative Commons licenses facilitate open access. This technique demonstrates by example how open allows us to avoid recreation of the wheel and can provide learners with a multitude of entry points into a given concept or topic.

Part III of Scholarly Communication Librarianship shifts from theory and concept to practical example. It again features voices from the field, this time in the form of short pieces divided into the categories of “perspectives,” “intersections,” and “case studies.” Here, readers will again find a great deal of variety, both in terms of authorial voice, but also job and experience type. Those who find themselves in a similar role or situation to the ones described in this section could use this part of the book as a reference source. Alternatively, readers could also read this section straight through to gain a better sense of the breadth of projects that scholcomm practitioners find themselves taking on.

The pieces focusing on the intersections between scholcomm and other areas of academia and librarianship were the most interesting and potentially useful. Indeed, scholcomm librarianship does involve intersection with many areas, and the focus on university press publishing, collection development, and public libraries is particularly important as budgets diminish and areas of expertise shift.

As a textbook, Scholarly Communication Librarianship succeeds in providing learners with a strong foundational understanding of the many intersecting domains within scholarly communications. Each chapter includes discussion questions, extensive bibliographies, and suggested readings for students who wish to dig deeper. The authors have written about complex topics in a conversational and engaging manner, avoiding the terminology soup that can sometimes plague writing about scholcomm. — Mahrya Burnett, Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of Iowa