Keara Mickelson, Digital Manager at Edinburgh University Press, reports on visiting University of North Carolina Press

Rationale for visit

Two years into a new role focused on metadata and discoverability, and at a midway point in our five-year strategic plan centring digital transformation at Edinburgh University Press (EUP), I applied for the AUPresses Week in Residence grant in order to learn from people and presses focussed on similar areas. In particular, I was interested in learning about metadata workflows and best practices for discoverability in the library and retail markets, as well as strategies for measuring success. Metadata experts often work behind the scenes of the scholarly information network, and getting the opportunity to meet US-based peer presses and librarians face-to-face was invaluable. I specifically chose University of North Carolina Press as my host because of its strong commitment to digital transformation, metadata management, open access, and active engagement with both local and global academic communities. Additionally, I was able to meet with a metadata specialist at nearby Duke University Press and metadata librarians from both UNC Chapel Hill and Duke.

Summary of experience

My home base for the week was Chapel Hill, where I met with press director John Sherer on Monday morning for an introduction to the press, its history, and its forward-looking digital strategy. John and office coordinator Hannah Varble were my main points of contact whilst planning the residency and facilitated many valuable introductions throughout the week. John’s introduction helped to contextualize UNC Press’s publishing activities and priorities. One thing that stood out to me was UNC Press’s commitment to serving their scholarly community, especially the UNC system of state colleges and universities. One of the ways in which they do this is through the Office of Scholarly Publishing Services (OSPS). I met with John McLeod, OSPS director, who spoke with me about the efforts made to grow the OSPS publishing programme. With little cost to the press, OSPS produces Open Educational Resources (OERs) for campuses in the community as well as a paid print edition and in doing so builds relationships and goodwill across campuses. By establishing the press as a service unit, not just a publisher, they’ve aligned themselves with institutional goals like affordability and educational access.

The centre of gravity of metadata operations and strategy at UNC Press is the marketing team, in particular Ellen C. Bush and Sebastian Biot, who kindly allowed me to shadow their work and ask many questions about how and why they are integrating metadata in their workflows. We had many conversations about the unique challenges of working in this area and shared ideas for how to measure the impact of good metadata. The opportunity to explore UNC Press’s internal workflows and systems architecture, and discuss the unique challenges in this area, was a good opportunity to benchmark our own efforts at Edinburgh, while also identifying potential new avenues for development and approaches to workflows. We discussed the challenges of systems overload when tracking many different processes, both internal and external. Metadata touches just about every team in a university press, and as a result this can lead to fragmentation of different elements and disjointed workflows. We discussed EUP’s systems transformation over the last year and compared notes on what worked for us and what didn’t.

I also had the chance to meet Kim Bryant, Director of EDP, and Michelle Wallen, Production Manager, to discuss their strategy for metadata management and accessibility. With the European Accessibility Act (EAA) coming into place this year and uncertainty about how regulations in the US and EU will be applied to e-books, it was very useful to get insight into another publisher’s work in this area.

I also visited Duke University Press, where I met Lee Willoughby-Harris, Books Metadata, Digital Systems, and Direct Marketing Manager, and explored how their metadata workflows and systems differ from our own. Duke UP’s sales operation differs from our own, and it was very interesting to get to see how direct-to-library sales affect the metadata workflows internally and with customers. Lee has a wealth of knowledge, with over a decade of experience in metadata management.

Another highlight of the week was engaging with metadata librarians from UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University libraries. As publishers, our goal is to create and maintain metadata that enhances the experience of our readers—so who better to offer guidance than the library professionals who work with that metadata daily. Abigail Wickes, ERM Librarian at Duke University, and Kurt Blythe, RDM Librarian at UNC Chapel Hill, were forthcoming with their challenges and their vision for the future of academic libraries and content discovery. Getting to see the metadata we are creating further down the lifecycle, especially through the eyes of librarians and end users, was a unique opportunity for development.

Lessons learned

Having exchanged ideas with press staff and librarians at two universities, I returned to Edinburgh with a doc full of notes and ideas for our own digital transformation and metadata workflows. It has been wonderful to continue these conversations at my home press and have built lasting connections.

A key takeaway was a reinforcement of the idea that metadata is central to discoverability and requires collaboration and buy-in from stakeholders both internal and external. From the publisher side, more effort needs to be made to harmonize systems and ensure that metadata contributors within the press are supporting one source of truth for each project. Additionally, dedicated metadata resource within presses is often spread thin and it’s important to keep on top of developments in ONIX and best practice. This requires continuous education and re-education for the metadata managers and for everyone who touches outgoing metadata. Downstream, from the library side, our end users must be able to discover and use academic content, requiring collaboration between publishers, aggregators, library management systems, and the librarians. Meetings with UNC and Duke librarians illuminated the hidden layers of publisher-library interaction and I came away with a better understanding of how metadata infrastructure operates, and the kinds of metadata formats that are most valuable to library acquisition teams. These insights are critical as we think about strengthening our own relationships with library partners.

Accessibility was another topic central to our discussions. It was promising to see UNC Press’s efforts in this area, despite an unknown future in US legislation, and its commitment to EU-based customers. Finding the right balance of meeting accessibility requirements and asking authors for image descriptions is a shared challenge as we all approach the EAA deadline.

Another key point that arose in virtually every meeting was the changing models of discovery and access of academic content. Academic publishers have reason to be wary of generative AI models as we navigate new waters in copyright and fair use. However, AI is now a fact of life and we need to be ready to keep up with these changes. The press and library staff I spoke with are grappling with how to use AI responsibly–for alt-text generation, metadata enhancement, and discoverability–while guarding against misinformation and misuse.

I was especially heartened by the collegiality of all of my fellow university press staff and university librarians. I am always impressed by the openness of people in this industry. Thank you to UNC Press for your warm welcome and especially to AUPresses for this opportunity.