SPARC has officially launched one of our most exciting and anticipated education programs of the year: a campus roadshow that will bring SPARC staff to campuses across North America to educate and energize librarians, students, faculty and others to advance Open Access, Open Education and Open Data.
Last week, my colleague Nick Shockey and I kicked things off in California with a whirlwind series of events dubbed “OpenTourCali,” where in true tour fashion we stopped at five University of California campuses over five days to give presentations, hold discussions and meet with local leaders (we even made t-shirts!). Starting in Davis and ending in Irvine, the events drew participants from nine of the ten UC’s and inspired lively conversations and productive debates about how to create a more open system for sharing research, educational materials and digital data.
Slideshow: OpenTourCali (click full screen to view captions)
The main attraction of each tour stop was a presentation by Nick and I entitled “Raising the Impact of Research, Scholarship & Education Through Openness,” which provided issue overviews designed to be of interest to both newcomers and experienced advocates alike, along with practical tips for how members of the community could take action. Our slides from each presentation are posted below.
5/12 UC Davis [pptx] [announcement]
5/13 UCSF [pptx] [recording] [announcement]
5/14 UCLA [pptx] [recording] [announcement]
5/15 UCSB [pptx] [announcement]
5/16 UC Irvine [pptx] [announcement]
In addition to the formal presentations, each tour stop hosted an informal discussion group for members of the campus community, and each one had its own flavor. UCLA set a packed agenda that began with a breakfast with student leaders, a lunch with student editors of scholarly journals based on campus, and a poolside happy hour called “Open Drinks.” UC Santa Barbara hosted a highly engaging and productive student discussion, that included representatives from the local CALPIRG chapter. At UCSF, the audience of our presentation stuck around for nearly an hour afterwards for additional discussion and ideas. UC Davis’ roundtable produced a very interesting discussion about open licensing and reuse rights. And at UC Irvine, we were thrilled to meet with Larry Cooperman, a prominent leader in the Open Education movement who directs UCI OpenCourseWare and also serves as president of the international Open Education Consortium.
California was a fitting place to start our “roadshow” since it is home to numerous advances in the Open Access, Open Education and Open Data spaces. Last summer, the University of California adopted a groundbreaking system-wide Open Access policy that would cover 8,000 faculty and as many as 40,000 publications per year. Shortly thereafter, the California Community Colleges adopted an open licensing policy for all educational materials produced through grants or contracts with the Chancellor’s Office. The state legislature is currently considering legislation to expand public access to publicly funded research (AB 609), and in 2012 passed a legislation to support the creation of open textbooks.
SPARC looks forward to continuing our roadshow this fall. Follow our progress on Twitter at #SPARConCampus.
We’d like to say a special thanks to Sharon Farb from UCLA Libraries for being the ringleader and most enthusiastic supporter of OpenTourCali. We also thank event organizers Amy Studer and Allison Fish (UC Davis Libraries), Anneliese Taylor (UCSF Libraries), Dawn Setzer (UCLA Libraries), Sherri Barnes (UCSB Libraries) and Mitchell Brown (UCI Libraries).