2016 Charleston Library Conference

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's 2014-2015 Scholarly Communications Initiative funded more than 13 projects of various sizes and orientations as part of an effort to strengthen the scholarly monograph publishing ecosystem in a time of increasing disruption. It has not always been obvious to onlookers if or how the projects funded by this experiment will ultimately connect, but a recent report from Simon Fraser University ("Reassembling Scholarly Communications: An Evaluation of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Monograph Initiative," May 2016) helps to clarify points of thematic alignment, overlap, and divergence among them. While many of the funded projects are explicitly based in university presses (with the goal of either enhancing existing monograph programs or developing digital capacity where little or none exists), three projects (those at Brown, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Illinois) are instead focused on developing digital publication capacity for faculty outside of the traditional press framework. The "You Set the Scene" session brings together members from each of these three projects to investigate unique and complementary dimensions of their work. The audience will learn about developing project outcomes and encouraged to participate in discussion related to large-scale shifts in structural and cultural approaches to faculty-led digital scholarship production and publication.