Yesterday the National Monograph Strategy Roadmap was published on the Jisc website.
You can find out more about the roadmap and the ideas in the Jisc blog post that accompanies the report.
In this post I want to briefly explore some of the things that have been happening while the report was waiting to be published.
The roadmap marks the beginning of the real work of the strategy: Working with the community to explore, develop and implement the various ideas that emerged from the first phase of the project.
Of course, one of the mantras of the NMS has been that the strategy will be a set of doable, pragmatic and collaborative solutions that the various communities interested and working in this space can work together on.
This is not a strategy that sits on a shelf unread; its a strategy that attempts to sign post the possible ways forward for addressing the challenges faced by the scholarly monograph.
What’s currently happening
So, with that in mind I thought it was worth briefly outlining some of the concrete things that are currently happening, or being planned to take forward the monograph strategy:
- Funding of a project to build on the Copac Collections Management Tool to develop the project into a national service, and explore its potential as the monographs knowledgebase. Work will begin in October 2014 for approx., 12 months with community engagement via the CCM community/steering group.
- Establishment of a small steering group to explore the potential of a UK shared print service, building on the monographs knowledgebase. This group of library directors, British Library, SCONUL, RLUK and Jisc met in early September and have agreed a number of next steps, including a shared print service pilot focusing on copyright/national library collections. SCONUL, RLUK and Jisc will be developing the plan and proposal for this work over the next couple of months, with an aim for the project to start in late 2014/early 2015.
- Drafting an invitation to tender for a landscape, requirements and options analysis for the development of a shared publishing platform for UK higher and further education institutions. This is likely to begin in late Nov. 2014 and complete in Feb. 2015. It is also likely to tie in with wider sector interest and initiatives, such as OAPEN.
These are the priority areas being taken forward currently. However, over the next couple of months work will begin on scoping a national monographs license, and the progression of the other core ideas of the strategy.
If you are interested in any of these, or would like to find out how you can get involved, feel free to drop me a line or leave a comment at the bottom of this post.