Working for free and Open Access

University Library librarians, data specialists, and support staff “work for free.” Their days are spent preparing datasets, organizing materials, and ensuring publications are open access. While they do, in fact, get compensated for their efforts, their work toward free is vital to ensuring students, faculty, staff, and the public can get valuable research, data, and studies without excessive costs. 

In honor of 2024 International Open Access Week Oct. 21-27, University Library faculty and staff celebrate this ever-expanding effort to make research, datasets, and other educational materials freely accessible and available. 

Specialists in the library spend their time digging into the archives, making university history available; identifying and labeling open access resources; helping instructors find, use, and publish open access materials; and adding created works and author profiles to our digital repository. The list goes on and on.  

Meet a few library staff working for free:

 With my compliments. As a librarian in the Metadata Services department, my colleagues and I identify and label open access resources to ensure that this status displays prominently in our user discovery systems.  

Chris Dieckman, metadata and cataloging librarian

There’s no cost to you! I help researchers and instructors find, use, and/or publish open access materials to lower barriers for students and researchers who want to learn.  

Abbey Elder, Open Access and scholarly communication librarian

My expertise and knowledge are gratis. No charge for facts from our files – I’m here to unlock them for everyone. I spend my days digging into the archives, making history open and free and Open Access.  

Olivia Garrison, research and instruction archivist

It’s on us! Open Access means free to the end user. We help fund a variety of OA endeavors to get ISU research to the world and support publications used daily by faculty, students, and staff.  

Matt Mick, procurement specialist

I've been promoting Open Access and free for 10 years. The ISU Digital Repository team has added 114,000 works and created 1,200 author profiles. I love working with authors to make their work publicly available and more accessible to everyone.  

Lorrie Smith, digital repository assistant

I prep datasets for publication on Data Share, the ISU Open Access data repository, which is free for faculty, researchers, and students!  This work makes your research data more accessible, better preserved, and compliant with changing publishing requirements.  

Katie Wampole, research data curator