Committee Refreshes Pub101 to Support Community

Published on April 12th, 2023

Estimated reading time for this article: 3 minutes.

Written by Karen Lauritsen, OEN publishing director



This spring, Pub101 will be in its fifth year! 

Pub101 is the Open Education Network’s (OEN) informal orientation to open textbook publishing. It is both a freely available curriculum and a seven-week synchronous experience for the OEN extended community. 


Pub101 Snapshot

Pub101 is designed for librarians, instructional designers and others who are interested in learning more about managing open textbook projects and programs. It's open to everyone in the OEN, and consortia are welcome to extend this invitation to their institutions. In fact, many participants join us from consortial institutions, making Pub101 their first direct experience with the OEN community and sometimes open education more broadly.  

During the synchronous Pub101 sessions, experienced practitioners introduce common open textbook publishing considerations, and highlight the many community-created resources and templates that are available in the curriculum. 

This year Pub101 sessions began April 6, offering a curriculum that has been extensively revised by our Pub101 Committee. It focuses on what librarians and others supporting faculty authors need most to get the work done in constrained environments while maintaining their wellbeing.


Pub101 Backstory

In many ways, Pub101 began at the pre-conference, Opening the Classroom: Publishing Open Educational Resources, co-sponsored with BCcampus and held at the Library Publishing Forum in Vancouver in 2019. 

At that event, the hands-on workshop offered project management techniques for supporting open textbook publishing. Working at tables with experienced open textbook project managers, attendees developed strategies for setting expectations with authors, guiding textbook development, creating project timelines, and supporting editing, design and production based on local capacity.

During this time, the OEN was also engaged in ongoing publishing pilots and partnerships with Pressbooks and Scribe, which led to the development of related training and documentation.
 
Pub101 has evolved from these various efforts. More broadly, it is a reflection of the open education community’s growing experience in creating open textbooks and a commitment to sharing what we’ve learned to support others. 


Community Driven

In 2021, we drafted a charter to form the Pub101 Committee. The Pub101 Committee is responsible for developing and maintaining a community-driven, iterative Pub101 experience and curriculum. It oversees the entire Pub101 experience, including the Canvas curriculum and facilitated sessions. Current members include:

  • Heather Caprette, Cleveland State University
  • Angelique Carson, Washington Research Library Consortium (WRLC) 
  • Phoebe Daurio, Open Oregon Educational Resources
  • Amanda Hurford, Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI)
  • Amanda Larson*, The Ohio State University
  • Christina Trunnell, Montana State University

*Amanda Larson is chair of the committee. In addition, Carla Myers at Miami University served as co-chair during the inaugural committee. 

The Pub101 Committee meets regularly to discuss the curriculum, review feedback from past participants, and revise content to reflect the needs of today’s practitioners. We talk about how difficult it is to define publishing in our current era, and work to offer balanced recommendations for people in diverse institutional environments. Now more than ever, we aim to offer strategic options for making education more equitable, while acknowledging that many of us are struggling with significant time and financial constraints.


Shared Abundance

The synchronous Pub101 experience features stories from colleagues who have worked on open textbook publishing projects. The emphasis is on what to anticipate when starting a project or program, and how to set things up for success (and less stress!). These informal, conversational presentations are facilitated by Pub101 Committee members and this year feature:

  • Karen Bjork, Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Abbey Elder, Iowa State University
  • Jacqueline Frank, Montana State University
  • Gabby Hernandez, University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley
  • Amanda C. Larson, The Ohio State University 
  • Carla Myers, Miami University
  • Sunyeen "Sunny" Pai, Kapi‘olani Community College 
  • Christina Trunnell, Montana State University

In addition, all Pub101 participants are invited to contribute to the conversation. Invariably, there is so much collective knowledge within the group.


Pub101 Feedback

Through the years, Pub101 has been a popular opportunity to get to know one another and the issues in open publishing. Typically more than 100 people register, and the birds-eye view of the open publishing landscape resonates with participants. 

  • This was exactly the type of training I was looking for. 
  • How thoughtful many of the speakers were about capacity and reflection and self-care. I wasn't expecting that, but I really needed to hear it. 
  • I really liked it all - while we don't have a publishing service and no capacity for such in the near future, I learned so much about possibilities and what we might aspire to.

For those who want to build on the community we create in Pub101, we offer options to strengthen our connections at the closing of the seven-week series.


Related Resources

You can access the openly licensed Pub101 curriculum on Canvas, and watch recorded sessions on YouTube.




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