Scholarly Communication & Digital Initiatives 


9

Scholarly Communication & Digital 
Initiatives 
Brad Ost, AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library, Chair

COMMITTEE MEMBERS

• Melissa Chim, General Theological Seminary
• Matthew Davis, Davidson College
• Ann McShane, Emory University, Chandler School of Theology
• Greg Murray, Princeton Theological Seminary
• Brad Ost, AUC Robert W. Woodruff Library
• Erica Pye, Abilene Christian University
• Christine Fruin, Atla Staff Liaison
• Christy Karpinski, Atla Staff Liaison 

YEAR IN REVIEW

The committee worked to “foster and advance” digital projects 
through the awarding of Digitization and OER grant monies this 
past academic year. A review of entries for the Digitization grant 
led to the awarding of just under $9,000 divided between two re-
cipients: St. Paul University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and The 
Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, Ukraine. St. Paul Universi-
ty will be digitizing audio-visual materials from the Inuit people 
(Capturing Inuit Cultural Heritage through Anthropological and 
Missionary Recordings in the Canadian North) and the Ukrainian 
Catholic University will digitize unique 17th and 18th century ma-
terial from the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood (Liturgical Literature 
of the Lviv Dormition Brotherhood). When completed the meta-
data from these projects will be added to the Atla Digital Library. 
Twenty-five hundred dollars in OER grant money was awarded to 
Ashland Theological Seminary to use in the creation of a multi-
media educational resource for its graduate course, The Story of 
the Christian Faith. Later in the academic year, the committee re-
opened OER grant applications for 2023. 

https://www.atla.com/about/scholarly-communication-committee/
https://www.atla.com/member-benefits/digitization-grant-program/
https://www.atla.com/member-benefits/atla-oer-grant-program/
https://www.atla.com/blog/atla-awards-digitization-grants-2/
https://dl.atla.com/
https://www.atla.com/blog/oer-grant-ashland-theological-seminary/
https://www.atla.com/blog/oer-grant-ashland-theological-seminary/


10    ANNUAL Y E ARBOOK

Additionally, those who were awarded grants for OER work 
spoke about their experience at the 2023 Atla Annual in a presen-
tation titled Atla Digitization Grantees Panel: How We Did It and 
What We Learned.

The committee also did work in the area of education begin-
ning the process of fleshing out a curriculum for an Atla Scholarly 
Communications course for Atla Learn. As that work continued 
the committee also arranged for Dr. Tanya Spilovoy to lead a ses-
sion titled Becoming the OER Advocate: Practical Tips and Tools for 
Campus Engagement. Dr. Spilovoy is the Director of Open Policy for 
the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and an 
instructor in SPARC’s Open Education Leadership program.

Refreshing and renewing the SCDI’s Libguides also kept the 
committee busy. The Digital Humanities in Religious Studies and 
Institutional Repositories libguides were upgraded to include cur-
rent information and links.

Finally, we collaborated with Theological Librarianship to craft 
a call for papers for a special forum on the ethical imperative of 
open access.

Many of these projects and topics were discussed in our in-per-
son committee meeting in Nashville, in October 2022.

Matthew Davis and Melissa Chim will end their terms this June, 
2023. To them we extend a huge thank you for all their wonderful 
work. 

https://learn.atla.com/
https://atla.libguides.com/digitalhumanities
https://atla.libguides.com/IR