SCOOP: Atla Opportunities in Scholarly Communication & Digital Initiatives

Started in 2017 as a task force focused on deepening the knowledge of scholarly communication concepts and sharing that knowledge with the greater Atla community, the now-named Scholarly Communication and Digital Initiatives Committee seeks to advance collaboration and good practice in scholarly communication and support the development of Atla member capacity in digital initiatives in theology and religious studies. The Committee endeavors to accomplish this goal through four areas of work as defined in its charge. Each of these four areas offers opportunities for engagement and learning for Atla members and others.

Read on to learn more about the Committee’s work and how you can get involved. 

Funding Opportunities 

OER Grant Program 

The goal of the Atla OER Grant Program is to encourage experimentation and innovation in finding new and potentially better and less costly ways to deliver learning materials to theological and religious studies students through open educational resources. Under this program, Atla will award grants to project teams from Atla member institutions who seek to greatly reduce or remove student course material costs through replacement of commercially available textbooks and ancillary materials. 

We are currently accepting applications for OER grants through January 7, 2022. For complete details on the program, including links to the application preview, which helps guide you in completing your application, and to access the application form itself, visit the OER Grant program website. 

Digitization Grant Program 

Atla has just announced a new grant program to support Atla’s member institutions in their efforts to digitize and describe their special collections and archives for wider access and use. Grants to support both new and continuing digitization projects are available. We encourage anyone considering applying for a digitization grant to request a pre-application consultation, especially if they are new to digitization work. Applications are due February 28, 2022. 

For full program details on this new program, including instructions on how to complete the application form and a link to the application form, please visit the Digitization Grant program website.  

Resources for Learning 

LibGuides 

The Committee and members of Atla staff have developed several LibGuides that are useful for learning more about various topics in scholarly communication and digital initiatives: 

• Copyright and Fair Use 
• Digital Humanities in Religious Studies 
• Digitizing Collections 
• Institutional Repositories 

Webinars 

Atla webinars are recorded and available for on demand viewing through the Atla website. Committee members, Atla staff, and outside speakers at the invitation of Atla, have offered several informative webinars the last few years that remain relevant and worth revisiting for expanding your knowledge on scholarly communication and digital initiatives topics: 

• Impact and Importance of Open Access Publishing for Theological Libraries 
• Creating and Implementing Open Educational Resources 
• Multimodal Scholarship and Publication 
• Special Topics in Copyright: Best Practices for Digitization Projects 

• Creating and Nurturing Your Digital Identity 
• Special Topics in Copyright: Showing Movies on Campus and in the Classroom 
• Advocating for Open Educational Resources in Your Library 
• All About Fair Use 
• Copyright Basics 

• Ensuring Credit for Publication: How to Get, Use, and Promote ORCID IDs 
• Digital Humanities and Libraries and Archives in Religious Studies 
• Open Educational Resources: From the Beginning 
• Copyright for Online Teaching 
• Open Access Myths 

• Demystifying Digital Humanities 
• Faculty Open Access Policies 

Discovery, Access, and Use of Digital Collections 

Digital Library Harvesting and Hosting 

The Atla Digital Library brings together in a singular, searchable platform digitized collections from libraries, religious institutions, and other organizations worldwide who collect and preserve texts, records, maps, photographs, recordings, and other materials. The items found in the Atla Digital Library are of importance to those with an interest in researching, studying, teaching, and otherwise searching for historical and archival content in religion and theology. 

There are two ways that libraries can participate in the Atla Digital library: harvesting of existing digital collections’ metadata and, now available, hosting of digital collections through the Atla Digital Library. Harvesting of metadata from existing collections is free for Atla member institutions; hosting of digital collections requires payment of a flat annual fee and a storage fee based on the size of the institution’s contributed collections. Both methods of participation offer an opportunity for participants to increase the access, discovery, and reuse of their rich and diverse collections in religion and theology. For more information, visit the Participate page of the Atla Digital Library. 

Exhibits 

The Atla Digital Library recently launched online exhibits. This past summer three pilot curators created online exhibitions showcasing items found in the Atla Digital Library and in other digital collections worldwide on topics of relevance to the community. We are seeking additional curators to create exhibits. Contact us for more information or if you wish to propose an exhibit. 

Training Opportunities 

The Committee organized a successful ACRL Scholarly Communication Roadshow event held in Chicago in February 2019. We are currently planning an ACRL Off-Roadshow event on open educational resources and affordability, which will be held online on March 9 and 11, 2022. During the two half-day sessions, participants will learn the basics of OERs, affordability, and inclusion; how to utilize existing library skills and tools to advance the use of OERs; and strategies for engaging campus partners to support the creation and adoption of OERs.  Details on registration will be announced very soon. Stay tuned to the Atla blog and future newsletters for more information.  

The SCOOP, Scholarly COmmunication and Open Publishing, is a monthly column published to inform Atla members of recent developments, new resources, or interesting stories from the realm of scholarly communication and open access publishing.