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Options for making previously published material available

08 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Kevin Hawkins in Accessibility, Journal publishing

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Editor’s note: This is the second guest post by Kevin Hawkins. His first talked about the process of starting a library publishing program; this one covers options for delivering back content of journals (or other materials) when you become the publisher. This second post is also part of our series on accessibility. 

If your library publishing program will absorb any established journals or series of books or technical reports, you will probably want to make previously published content available online in addition to any new content you publish. So what are your options? Below I’ll use the term “back issues” as if we’re talking about a journal, but everything I say could as easily apply to books or technical reports.

The easiest solution would be to create a searchable collection in HathiTrust of these back issues (see this example). Note that you don’t have to be affiliated with a HathiTrust member institution to create a collection; individuals can create collections using guest accounts through the University of Michigan. If the back issues aren’t yet in HathiTrust, you may be able to find a partner institution willing to digitize and submit the issues for you. Your back issues are probably still protected by copyright, so you’ll need to have the rightsholder fill out a permissions agreement authorizing HathiTrust to make the full text viewable. Then you can link to the collection of back issues from the website where you’ll publish new content.

There are, however, some disadvantages to doing this. First, you won’t be able to allow users to search across back issues and new issues in a single interface. Second, HathiTrust’s search functionality uses the OCR text created after scanning, which can contain errors in recognition of the original and which is difficult for visually impaired users to read using assistive technology. Third, a HathiTrust collection provides no index of authors or article titles; a user would need to look at each issues table of contents if a fulltext search is insufficient.

There are many vendors that will scan printed matter and deliver those scans as individual page images or multipage PDF files (as you choose).  More libraries are equipped to deliver PDF files to users, and that format has the advantage of allowing OCR text to be embedded to allow for fulltext searching. While Adobe Acrobat has built-in OCR capability, many vendors will not only create the OCR for you but even offer OCR correction as an additional service. And some can even create PDF/UA (“universal accessibility”) files, ensuring they can be read with assistive technology.

Unfortunately, none of this provides an automatic index of authors or article titles. A vendor might be able to create this for you as well, or you could create one on your own as a byproduct of XML encoding of the content. Who would do the XML encoding? Probably a vendor, though you might try creating your own using the PKP XML Parsing Service. This could be especially useful if use the XML Galley Plugin (a standard component of OJS) for new issues since you could potentially have old and new issues all in the same XML format.

In any case, when working with a vendor, it is best for your contract to specify the quality standard you expect, such as acceptable error rate on scanning pages, acceptable error rate on OCR, and file validation. But if you do this, you’ll want to actually evaluate the digitized content that you receive (likely by sampling random pages) and be prepared to reject content not meeting the standard for the vendor to fix without charge.

As you can see, there are a number of ways you might proceed. Perhaps you have other ideas? If so, please add comments!

Accessible Futures for libraries

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Melanie Schlosser in Accessibility

≈ 1 Comment

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Sarah Kennedy, and the latest post in our series about accessibility issues in library publishing. 

Hello again, readers. I’m Sarah Kennedy, Librarian for Agriculture, Natural Resources, Design, and Extension at West Virginia University’s Evansdale Library, writing another guest blog post on the topic of accessibility in libraries. This is a follow-up to my first blog post (Accessibility: A Role for Libraries) in which I discussed some of my thoughts after I attended a wonderful summer seminar on Access/ibility in Digital Publishing at WVU.

Accessible Future workshop

To further my education in these matters, I recently attended a 2-day workshop organized by the Building an Accessible Future for the Humanities Project. This workshop, called “Accessible Future,” (link to agenda) is one of five 2-day workshops during which participants learn about technologies, design standards, and accessibility issues associated with the use of digital environments. This was the last in the five part series, hosted at the University of California Los Angeles.

I thought that the workshop was absolutely fabulous. If the series continues in the future, I would highly recommend that anyone who has even a passing interest in accessibility applies to attend. I will say that, although the workshop had a humanities leaning, I found that the general principles were very broad-based and applicable to any library setting. So, if you have an interest in accessibility in libraries generally, this is a great opportunity to expand your knowledge base and also meet some of the preeminent scholars and activists within this area of study.

After I returned from the workshop, I presented summaries of the workshop sessions as well as some of my own key takeaways (link to Google slides) to my colleagues in a 1.5 hour brown bag lunch session. In the interest of brevity, I will here extract some of the highlights that I think will be most useful/applicable.

A “Modest Workflow” for accessibility testing

For the following list, I would like to credit Dr. Jeremy Boggs, Design Architect at the University of Virginia Library’s Scholars’ Lab. In session #6, which focused on integrating accessibility testing into the workflows of projects and workplaces, Jeremy provided his truly awesome “Modest Workflow” for things that he does to test accessibility on a web page. His Modest Workflow, in no particular order, is copied below:

  • Validate the HTML and CSS. Are there validation errors?
  • Look at the page in a variety of browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari
  • Disable CSS. Is content still displayed in a readable and ordered way? Do actionable links or icons or content remain, or disappear?
  • Disable JavaScript. Does your site still work? Do actionable links or icons or content remain, or disappear?
  • Disable images, audio, and video. Is the content still available, understandable and usable? Do any important controls or information disappear?
  • Unplug the mouse or use the keyboard. Is it possible to use the keyboard to navigate the page? Is it obvious where they keyboard focus current is?
  • Test the web page through WebAIM.
  • Test the web page through an Accessibility audit in Google Chrome.
  • Test the web page through pa11y.
  • View source and read the page’s code.
  • Listen to the page in a screen reader.
  • Ask people to use the page. Does the content and its presentation make sense to them? Does it work for them?

Not familiar with some of the tools mentioned above? No worries – many of us at the workshop weren’t either! That’s why Jeremy also provided an “Accessibility Toolkit” with links to his favorite tools. Check them out:

  • WebAIM – Web accessibility evaluation tool
  • pa11y – another Web accessibility evaluation tool
  • Accessibility audit in Google Chrome
  • For a tried and true screen reading program, try JAWS
  • Another screen reader option is Google ChromeVox, a screen reader for Chrome
  • There are also a variety of Web developer tools in the browser, which allow you to inspect the markup and styles for a page, among a host of other development features.
    • Developer tools in Chrome
    • Developer tools in Firefox. Also see Firebug tools for Firefox.
    • Developer tools in Internet Explorer
    • Developer tools in Opera
    • Safari for Developers

Bringing accessibility home

I think that the other session with really valuable takeaways was session #11, in which all of the attendees brainstormed their ideas for how they might return to their home institutions to advocate for accessibility. Here is the list of ideas, which I arranged thematically. I encourage all readers to take these ideas back to their respective institutions and to host either formal or informal conversations about what steps – great or small – you might take to improve accessibility where you are! I would encourage you to think about these ideas from a multimodal standpoint, to include the written, aural, visual, gestural, spatial, and tactile modes of interacting with our surroundings.

Instruction

  • Incorporate accessibility testing into all course design.
  • Host in-class discussions addressing accessibility concerns. (For the librarians and information science folks reading this post, we may think especially about encouraging these conversations in library and information science graduate programs.)
  • Consider inserting an accessibility statement in your teaching philosophy and/or syllabi.
  • Explore the development of accessibility badges, certificate programs, or continuing education courses.
  • Use your student evaluation forms to encourage your students to reflect on your class and how accessible they found it to be.

Facilities and Public Services

  • Conduct an accessibility audit of your facilities and public services.
  • If you spot an accessibility problem no campus, report it to the appropriate authority. (Here at WVU, we would submit a web form to our Facilities department, notifying them of any issues that could limit an individual’s access to a building or dorm.)

Organizational Culture and Institutional Support

  • Form an Accessibility Committee at your library (or department) to discuss accessibility concerns and propose improvements.
  • Encourage library administration and hiring committees to address accessibility as part of future job descriptions, especially for instructors/instructional designers and web developers.
  • Create incentives within the structures of the university to reward those who address accessibility concerns (for example, in merit reviews).
  • Create incentives at the institutional level, as in professional development opportunities (e.g. attendance at workshops like Accessible Future!)

Outreach

  • Connect with the relevant campus office, local community groups, organizations, and student groups to address and work to resolve campus accessibility concerns.
  • Organize presentations to the stakeholders in your community, showing them the steps you have taken to address accessibility at your institution and providing ideas and tips that they may implement at their own departments.
  • Partner with your ASL (American Sign Language) program to determine whether you can add captions to multimedia material.
  • Partner with your Office of Disability Services to hire students who can then be trained to provide accessibility audits and enhancements. Design a program that is a win-win arrangement, providing a vital service to campus and also providing students with valuable experience that they may list on their resumes.

Accessible journal publishing, Part 1: HTML

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

Posted by Melanie Schlosser in Accessibility, Journal publishing

≈ 3 Comments

Now that we have our high-level musings on accessible publishing in libraries out of the way (check out the ‘accessibility’ category to see the previous posts on the topic), I think it’s time to start talking about the nitty-gritty. Sure, we all agree that providing accessible digital content is good, but how do we do it? It should be pretty obvious by now that I’m not an expert on the subject, but I’ve learned a few things that I’d like to share. I’m starting off with what I know best – publishing in HTML – but I’m hoping to also write about accessible publishing in PDF form, as well as accessibility in retrospective journal digitization projects.

Some background

Much of my experience with making web content accessible comes from working with Disability Studies Quarterly (DSQ).  DSQ was the first journal to partner with OSU Libraries’ Publishing Program, and as a result, it has been strongly influential in how our program has developed. Because of the field of study, accessibility was front-and-center from day one: the journal content had to be accessible to readers, and the journal platform had to be accessible to authors, reviewers, and editors. Unfortunately, I wasn’t around for the initial work with Open Journal Systems, so I don’t know what the conversations about platform accessibility looked like. If we were to adopt a new publishing platform today, I would ask the director of OSU’s Web Accessibility Center (in the Disability Services Office of Student Life) to check it out, so maybe that’s what happened.

Choosing a format

What I do know is that, to avoid the accessibility problems you tend to find in PDFs (more about that in a future post), we decided to take on the labor-intensive task of converting DSQ articles into HTML for publication. Continue reading →

WVU’s Access/ibility in Digital Publishing 2015 Summer Seminar: A library perspective

21 Monday Sep 2015

Posted by susanlynnivey in Accessibility, Events, Thoughts

≈ 1 Comment

Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of posts about accessibility. The first two posts were Access/ibility in Digital Publishing: Summer Seminar at WVU (Melanie Schlosser) and Accessibility: A Role for Libraries (Sarah Kennedy). 

Hello, readers. I’m Susan Ivey, Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of Mississippi, and guest blogger today on Lib Pub as part of the series about the “Access/ibility in Digital Publishing” seminar that took place last July at West Virginia University. Let me first apologize for my delayed post. There have been a lot of conferences, seminars, and presentations in my world since then, and I count myself lucky that the West Virginia Summer Seminar was first on my dance card, because it’s really influenced the way I’ve been thinking about my work. This also seemed like the perfect opportunity to reflect on my time at the Access/ibility seminar, as I’m currently flying over the beautiful West Virginia Mountains.

Much like Sarah Kennedy, previous guest blogger in this series, my interest in the seminar was related to a current project that my Web Services Librarian and I are undertaking, which involves re-envisioning our digital collections website (the top level website that brings the user into our content management system, which houses our digitized and born digital archives and special collections objects). We currently use an out-of-the-box webpage provided by our proprietary content management system, and we have found that this has proven quite unfriendly for a variety of our users. Though my Web Librarian is educated in web accessibility issues, I myself have little background. I knew the West Virginia Seminar would be a great way to educate myself for this project, and also to educate myself in general, as the web (and thus accessibility) plays such a large part in what we do today as librarians.

Access vs. Accessibility

As the other bloggers in this series have mentioned, one main takeaway from the seminar was differentiating between access and accessibility. Continue reading →

Accessibility: A role for libraries

20 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Melanie Schlosser in Accessibility, Events, Thoughts

≈ 3 Comments

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Sarah Kennedy, and a continuation of the discussion about the Access/ibility in Digital Publishing seminar at WVU this past July. Read Melanie’s first post here.

Greetings, readers. I am acting as a guest blogger today to contribute some thoughts on the recent summer seminar on Access/ibility in Digital Publishing at WVU, which I was fortunate enough to attend along with Melanie and about 20 other scholars. By way of introduction, I am the Librarian for Agriculture, Natural Resources, Design, and Extension at West Virginia University’s Evansdale Library. I attended the seminar in part because I am co-chairing a task force that is charged with re-thinking WVU Libraries’ digital presence in the 21st century, and I would like to educate myself on how we may build in accessibility from the ground up as we design new services and re-vision old ones. I also wanted to attend because I am generally interested in the topic, and yet I feel I know very little about it. I did not study accessibility concerns in any depth when I was in graduate school (2011-2012), and since that time my self-education has consisted mostly of occasional readings and conversations.

Like Melanie, I am definitely still trying to assimilate all that I learned from the other attendees. I was very grateful that, while librarians were certainly in the minority of attendees, the library was never very far from any of our thoughts during the seminar. First of all, it was really great to have the seminar located in the library space. I think just walking through the stacks each morning on our way to our meeting room served as a reminder to all attendees that the library as an institution has a great role to play in accessibility concerns. Also, kudos to Cheryl Ball and the other librarians in the room who pointed out opportunities for partnerships between librarians, faculty, and campus technology staff and also for addressing concerns that are perhaps unique to the library context.

Having said all that, I will provide a quick summary of my major take-aways from the seminar: Continue reading →

Access/ibility in Digital Publishing: Summer Seminar at WVU

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by Melanie Schlosser in Accessibility, Events, Thoughts

≈ 2 Comments

West Virginia mountains, blue sky and clouds

West Virginia mountains. Image by flickr user arvisbest, licensed under CC BY.

Last week I attended an interesting seminar on digital publishing at West Virginia University. It was organized by Cheryl Ball, the long-time editor of Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, and sponsored by the Department of English and the WVU Libraries. Among other things, the seminar was meant to inform work on the new Vega Academic Publishing System, an open source software platform that will support publication of media-rich scholarly work.There were about 20 attendees, including scholars of rhetoric and disability studies, publishers and librarians. Over four days, in a loose, unconference-y format, we pooled our collective knowledge about publishing, Open Access, access for individuals with disabilities, and digital preservation and sustainability. We shared projects and theories, taught each other practical skills, and identified areas where more attention is needed.

I wore a lot of hats during the seminar: librarian, open access advocate, digital publisher, and journal editor. The closest I came to ‘presenting’ something, however, was an overview of library publishing. I shared my understanding of how publishing in libraries came about, what its goals are, and what it tends to look like. Given the focus of the seminar, I also included my thoughts on the accessibility challenges of library-published content – namely that we often rely on open source and out-of-the-box publishing platforms and tend to publish in PDF. Library publishing is a very small subset of the scholarly publishing world, but I think it makes a nice case study, because it so closely resembles a lot of journal publishing in the humanities and social sciences – shoestring operations relying heavily on volunteer labor. I also chimed in periodically throughout the week on OA and archiving-related issues, and asked lots of pragmatic, librarian-style questions.

I’m still trying to assimilate what I learned into a set of useful takeaways that I can share. One thing I can say for sure is that, even within the constraints of platform and resources, there are things we can do to make the work we publish more accessible if we make it a priority. I will also say that I think that the library publishing community needs to take a closer look at accessibility as an issue that impacts everything we do. In two years of participating in the Library Publishing Coalition, I don’t recall seeing it brought up in any venue. The seminar group is putting together proposals for an edited volume and a handbook that should serve as resources for those working in this space. In the meantime, I will be thinking about ways to promote dialogue within the community of library publishers. I would like to see – for example – a workshop at next year’s Library Publishing Forum or an LPC webinar, so if you are interested in working on either of those things, let me know. Closer to home, I’ve invited the other librarians who attended the seminar to guest post on this blog with their reflections and takeaways, so stay tuned!

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