Lessons From the Open Library of Humanities

Authors

  • Martin Paul Eve Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Paula Clemente Vega Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of London
  • Caroline Edwards Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck, University of London

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10327

Keywords:

open access, publishing, business models, humanities, sustainability

Abstract

The Open Library of Humanities was launched almost half a decade ago with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In this article, we outline the problems we set out to address and the lessons we learned. Specifically, we note that, as we hypothesized, academic libraries are not necessarily classical economic actors; that implementing consortial funding models requires much marketing labour; that there are substantial governance and administrative overheads in our model; that there are complex tax and VAT considerations for consortial arrangements; and that diverse revenue sources remain critical to our success.

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Published

2020-03-26

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Eve, M. P., Vega, P. C., & Edwards, C. (2020). Lessons From the Open Library of Humanities. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of the Association of European Research Libraries, 30(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10327