An OA mandate for the OSU library faculty

The OSU Library faculty recently adopted an OA mandate, which is pretty cool.  You can read about it here: http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/dspace/handle/1957/10850 and what a few others are saying about it:

• Peter Suber: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/03/oa-mandate-for-library-faculty-of-osu.html
• Steven Harnad: http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/548-Planets-1st-Library-Faculty-Green-OA-Mandate-7th-US-Mandate,-68th-Worldwide.html

I think that this is important on a number of levels.

1. Symbolically, it’s important.  It’s very difficult for the library to go to faculty on campus and ask them to contribute content to the IR, when in fact, the Library faculty itself is not regularly submitting to the IR.  This changes that — and hopefully — will act as a catalysis for other departments on campus to follow the Library faculty’s lead.
2. As tenured faculty, the research (both papers and presentations) our librarians generate represent an important contribution to the scholarly community. As researchers and scholars, preserving our content and making it freely accessible to future researchers is indeed one of our primary responsibilities as faculty.
3. This was really a faculty initiated endeavor, that has a great back story, but I won’t include it here right now.  But suffice it to say, a good number of people at OSU deserve a lot of credit for making this happen, chief among those being Michael Boock and Janet Webster — who have worked tirelessly from the beginning to advertise, grow and advocate for the IR in the library.  And for the faculty as well, for stepping up and making this a reality. 
4. Finally, it’s just one more example of that Beaver ingenuity and can do’edness.  🙂

–TR