PKP’s 25th Anniversary interview series celebrates the history of the Project and those involved – Part 3 features Lynn Copeland, former SFU Dean of Libraries for 12 years (1998 – 2010).
For a quarter of a century, community partnerships have been key in PKP’s work towards making research a global public good. Getting into the stories behind these relationships, we asked some of our partners to share what drives these connections. We are grateful to Lynn Copeland and those who know her for taking the time to share these stories.
Let’s start with an introduction. PKP’s Kevin Stranack shares an inside story about Lynn, PKP, and SFU.
Lynn was a true leader in library technological innovation and collaboration. As the Dean of Libraries at SFU, she led the creation of the reSearcher open source software suite, which provided some of the earliest applications for electronic resource management, link resolving, citation management, and federated searching.
Those applications were widely used at SFU, across BC, and internationally. She had the foresight to welcome PKP to the SFU Library when John Willinsky was looking for a long-term, sustainable home for his open source, open access research project.
Lynn’s vision and commitment to open source development made SFU the obvious choice, where it remains today.
What have some of SFU Library’s milestones been in this area?
It’s hard to give an exact date because it was an evolving process. The very earliest correspondence in the ‘60s of the yet-to-arrive Head Librarian Don Baird talks about automation.
In some sense it has always been a part of SFU Library’s role, in supporting research and providing opportunities for and highlighting scholarly activities of SFU researchers, sponsoring talks, and writing about interesting work for example.
But in terms of the increasing possibilities for libraries to play a role in the digital dissemination of information, I would say we were very early adopters, even before I arrived at SFU in 1991.
Although it’s fair to say beginnings were always fuzzy or gradual, a number of events might be considered milestones. It’s also important from my perspective to consider research support hand-in-hand with dissemination and scholarly publishing.
It could be that it’s my memory that is fuzzy, because I am hard pressed to put specific dates on anything, but key accomplishments from my viewpoint were the beginning of various digitization ventures such as SFU theses, PKP of course, and the dissemination of journals through various commercial online entities (following the dissemination of citations through local and commercial systems).
I think it’s fair to say (though others may well disagree) that PKP wouldn’t have existed without the rapacious model of the commercial vendors. At SFU Library the PKP partnership went hand-in-hand with other digitization efforts, particularly with Multicultural Canada’s digitization of the Chinese Times and other important resources, and the regularization of the digitization of SFU’s theses.
What was your first memorable encounter with PKP, before the partnership?
Another important milestone (at SFU) was a conference I and several other Canadians attended at OCLC (formerly known as the Online Computer Library Centre), where the entire focus was US-centered.
We gathered over wine and pizza at the end, and vowed to develop an online Canadian journal system. Of course we quickly discovered there were a number of similar initiatives underway in Canada, notably PKP and Érudit.
It’s hard to say exactly when after that, but I certainly remember hearing John Willinsky discuss his vision at various library conferences, being struck by his vision, and wanting to be a part of it.
Where did that first spark of interest come from regarding forming an alliance with PKP?
I’m tempted to say overweening ambition. However, to be honest it was a gradual process that grew from a recognition of common goals in supporting research dissemination.
How has this relationship been important to achieving SFU Library’s mission?
In terms of the period to 2010 (when I worked there) digital efforts to support the research mission of SFU had always been key components of SFU Library’s mission and PKP fits into that like a glove.
Can you describe a time when community relationships helped SFU Library overcome a challenge in the movement for open source and open access?
The Multicultural Canada project and its success in identifying materials within various communities, and successful fundraising, would not have been possible without key relationships, for example with the Chinese and South Asian communities.
I can’t speak for the present situation, but in general SFU Library (and other Libraries) have the capability for managing and sustaining large projects in a way that is sometimes difficult for individual faculty members.
What have you learned about the nature of community in scholarly publishing?
One of the very rewarding things about being involved in PKP and other projects was meeting many dedicated scholars, and being part of a community that overcame challenges by working together.
Also, I would like to emphasize how much the success of SFU Library’s contribution to PKP depended on the work of a team of highly accomplished individuals. It’s fair to say without them we could not have achieved what we did.
Although I’m not directly involved any more, it really is thrilling to read about how work in this area continues to flourish, with libraries playing a key role.
We often learn something about ourselves and our relationships when we take a different perspective.
To celebrate Lynn’s contributions, we asked PKP’s Co-Scientific Director, John Willinsky, about his memories of Lynn.
In 2005, when the PKP partnership with the SFU Library and the Canadian Center for Studies in Publishing was formed, Lynn began a wonderful tradition of holding a meeting just prior to the winter holiday in December, in her home in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver, not far from the ocean nor from where I was living at the time.
Brian Owen, Rowly Lorimer, Lynn, and I would meet in the afternoon. There’d be plenty of Lynn’s terrific Christmas baking set out in her historic and festively decorated home. Without an agenda, we’d soon get down to discussing over tea, perhaps a grant proposal, or a new release, or a new hire, as part of our plans for PKP for the coming year.
Lynn would always be informed and incisive about the best strategies to take with the universities in these plans. As Dean of Libraries, she certainly knew SFU, but she had no less of a grasp of the situation at UBC, where I was then a prof, as well as at many other Canadian institutions, where our efforts were focused.
I can still recall leaving those meetings — sometimes in snow, sometimes in rain — with a warm feeling over how fortunate it was that this work was being supported (and fed) by such good hearts and minds. In fact, that part of Lynn’s tradition hasn’t changed all that much, even as the project has gone virtual and global, what with the part played by food in the PKP Mattermost Coffee Chats channel.
