College & Research Libraries News vol. 85, no. 4 (April 2023) C&RL News April 2023 173 Scholarly Communication Meg Wacha, Michael Kirby, jean amaral, Elizabeth Jardine, Meagan Lacy, and Catherine Lyons What’s missing? The role of community colleges in building a more inclusive institutional repository landscape In 2003, the executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information, Clifford A. Lynch, declared institutional repositories “essential infrastructure for scholarship in the digital age.”1 More than twenty years later, many colleges and universities do not maintain an institutional repository (IR), and their students and faculty do not have access to one. Community colleges—the original open access institutions2—are integral to the higher education ecosystem, educating 31% of undergraduates in the United States.3 However, only a handful of these institutions have an IR. At the time of publication, a mere ten com- munity colleges were listed in either the Directory of Open Access Repositories (DOAR) or the Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR). The precise number of community college communities with access to an IR is unknown and certainly higher than ten, but uptake is low. As a result, the rich intellectual outputs generated at these institutions are not openly shared. Repositories provide community col- lege communities with the ability to read content they would not otherwise have access to, but to fulfill the original purposes of open access to “share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich,” it’s imperative that the faculty and students at commu- nity colleges are recognized as contributors to the scholarly communications landscape and empowered to disseminate their works, via repositories, to the larger knowledge ecosystem.4 If the academic research landscape in the United States is going to join the wave of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in higher education, academic librarians and other scholarly communications professionals must recognize the contributions of community college fac- ulty scholars, including the need to preserve and distribute their work via IRs. While com- munity college faculty make up almost 19% of all faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions, these instructors and professors teach a disproportionately higher number of students in comparison to their colleagues at four-year institutions.5 In 2015–2016, 49% of all students who completed a bachelor’s degree had been enrolled at a two-year public college at some point in the previous ten years.6 Community college students are more ethnically diverse than undergraduates at four-year colleges, primarily in having fewer white students (47% versus 53%) and more Hispanic students (27% vs. 18%).7 And contrary to popular thought, community college graduates in 2021 were twice as likely to graduate from an academic program rather than a vocational one.8 While community college faculty are less Meg Wacha is the University Scholarly Communications Librarian at the CUNY Central Office of Library Services, email: megan.wacha@gmail.com. Michael Kirby is the Reader Services Librarian at CUNY Kingsborough Community College, email: michael.kirby@kbcc.cuny.edu. jean amaral is the Open Knowledge Librarian at CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College, email: jamaral@bmcc.cuny.edu. Elizabeth Jardine is the Metadata Librarian at CUNY LaGuardia Community College, email: ejardine@lagcc.cuny.edu. Meagan Lacy is the Chief Librarian at CUNY Guttkmcuman Community College, email: meagan.lacy@ guttman.cuny.edu. Catherine Lyons is the Head of Reference and Library Technology at CUNY Hostos Community College, email: clyons@hostos.cuny.edu. © Meg Wacha, Michael Kirby, jean amaral, Elizabeth Jardine, Meagan Lacy, and Catherine Lyons mailto:megan.wacha@gmail.com mailto:michael.kirby@kbcc.cuny.edu mailto:jamaral@bmcc.cuny.edu mailto:ejardine@lagcc.cuny.edu mailto:meagan.lacy@guttman.cuny.edu mailto:meagan.lacy@guttman.cuny.edu mailto:clyons@hostos.cuny.edu April 2023 174C&RL News ethnically diverse than faculty at four-year schools, there is greater representation of female versus male faculty at community colleges—55% versus 50%.9 The percentage of public community colleges with a tenure system is 58%,10 and while smaller than the percentage of four year colleges, it is still a significant number with close to 550 community colleges in this category.11 The purpose of IRs at community colleges is no different than at four-year colleges: they organize, preserve, and showcase the intellectual life of an institution. The typical mission of community colleges is focused on teaching—to provide access to education to local students. Thus IRs possess the unique potential to expand access to the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and open educational resources (OER). In showcasing a college’s innova- tive, student-centered and culturally responsive pedagogy, these collections work to improve student learning experiences beyond the college and, as a result, raise its profile. The IR is key in sharing instructional materials, especially when openly licensed, ranging from syllabi to assignments to topic presentations and overviews. With the OER community’s focus on creating equitable, inclusive materials, where many commercial publishers have fallen short, an IR provides the opportunity to share materials created through an anti-racist,12 culturally relevant/sustaining,13,14 trauma-informed lens.15 An increasing number of faculty also engage students in creating OER. Given the diversity of the student body at most com- munity colleges, the IR then plays an invaluable role in providing access to materials created by marginalized community members, providing a platform for their voices. The community college faculty who teach almost half of all undergraduates may not have multi-million-dollar grants (though some do16) or a team of graduate students running lab experiments, but they are often experts in teaching, usually carrying a greater teaching load than colleagues at four-year schools. Most community college faculty teach a five-five load, with a lucky few, like the City University of New York (CUNY), teaching four-four.17 While community college faculty publish various types of research, their work around SoTL tends to be shared informally rather than in peer-reviewed journal articles. One study found that more than half of community college faculty surveyed produced three to five forms of un- published, SoTL scholarship in the three years prior to the study, including presentations to colleagues about new pedagogical techniques and developing assignments to teach the most challenging course material.18 Institutional repositories can provide the platform for ensuring that this less formal community college scholarship reaches a wide audience. With heavy teaching loads and limited time, community college faculty may choose to forego traditional publications for some of their scholarly work, and the IR plays an important role in providing access to this knowledge. For some community colleges, the dissemination of OER may be a primary objective of their IR. Following LOCKSS principles, preserving OER and other instructional materials in an IR, as well as through complementary reposi- tories (e.g., MERLOT, OER Commons, Humanities Commons), helps to ensure long-term access for both the local and global communities. Additionally, while community colleges often serve students seeking to transfer to four- year colleges, they also offer technical and trade programs that prepare students for direct employment. Such programs present opportunities to attract new kinds of content to IRs. For example, community colleges with programs in the culinary arts, apparel design, or car- pentry can contribute knowledge in fields typically not represented in traditional academia. April 2023 175C&RL News IRs also support myriad less traditional scholarly works, which can include presentations, blog posts, and faculty institutional publications, among other formats. To succeed in the current climate of shrinking library budgets, especially in the face of continuing enrollment declines, library leaders at community colleges may need to look to consortial agreements to initiate and grow an IR.19 In a 2021 Ithaka survey by Melissa Blankstein and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg, 45% of community college library leaders in- dicated they had experienced budget cuts.20 The resources required to support an IR are significant, but a repository meets multiple institutional and individual needs, paving a path to open when one is not otherwise available. Collaboration and consortial agreements can help defray costs. The academic libraries in Utah, for example, modeled this when they created a shared repository.21 When CUNY launched its institutional repository in 2015, it was determined that a platform controlled by the Central Office of Library Services and managed by coordinators at each of its campuses would best ensure the long-term success of the repository across its twenty-four colleges, including its seven community colleges. The ability to search across the institutions’ collections in a single repository is another benefit both for users, who can search using a single interface, and for creators, whose works reach an ever-broader audience. The futures of open access and institutional repositories are unknown, but they are at a juncture. Infrastructure conversations continue in response to mandates from the federal gov- ernment and funder coalitions, “transformative agreements” increasingly embed themselves within the budgets and strategy documents of well-resourced institutions, and the United States Repository Network has launched to support an “equitable and sustainable” research infrastructure.22 However, community colleges are not represented in these conversations and thus are absent from this vision of an open future. If the scholarly communications ecosystem is to shift, those shifts must include all who contribute to it. Notes 1. Clifford A. Lynch, “Institutional Repositories: Essential Infrastructure for Scholarship in the Digital Age,” ARL Bimonthly Report 226 (February 2003): 2–7, https://www.cni.org /wp-content/uploads/2003/02/arl-br-226-Lynch-IRs-2003.pdf. 2. According to a 2008 study conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, around 95% of community colleges have open access enrollment. This means they accept any student who applies, regardless of academic achievement. Stephen Provasnik and Michael Planty, “Community Colleges: Special Supplement to The Condition of Education 2008 (NCES 2008-033),” August 2008. 3. National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics: Table 306.50,” 2020, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_306.50.asp. 4. Leslie Chan, Darius Cuplinkskas, Michael Eisen, Fred Friend, Yana Genova, Jean- Claude Guédon, Melissa Hagemann, et al., “Budapest Open Access Declaration,” February 14, 2002. https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/. 5. National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics: Table 303.70,” 2021, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_303.70.asp. https://www.cni.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/02/arl-br-226-Lynch-IRs-2003.pdf https://www.cni.org/wp-content/uploads/2003/02/arl-br-226-Lynch-IRs-2003.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_306.50.asp https://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read/ https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_303.70.asp April 2023 176C&RL News 6. National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, “Two-Year Contributions to Four- Year Completions 2017,” March 29, 2017, https://nscresearchcenter.org/snapshotreport -twoyearcontributionfouryearcompletions26/. 7. National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics: Table 306.50,” 2020, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_306.50.asp. 8. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “College Enrollment and Work Activity of Recent High School and College Graduates Summary – 2021,” April 26, 2022, https://www.bls .gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm. 9. National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics: Table 314.30,” n.d., https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_314.30.asp. 10. National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics: Table 316.80,” 2021, https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_316.80.asp. 11. American Association of Community Colleges, “AACC Fast Facts 2022,” 2022, https://www.aacc.nche.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AACC_2022_Fact_Sheet -Rev-5-11-22.pdf. 12. Community College Consortium for OER, “Open for Antiracism Program,” n.d., https://www.cccoer.org/ofar/. 13. Ji Kim and Grace Pai, “Applied Math in Introductory Chemistry,” CUNY Academic Works, 2022, https://academicworks.cuny.edu/nc_oers/27. 14. jean amaral, “Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Reading and Reflection,” OER/ ZTC Course Redesign Seminar (Summer 2021), https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/oer-sum mer-2021/2021/05/31/culturally-sustaining-pedagogies-reading-and-reflection/. 15. Open Education Network, “Office Hours: Trauma Informed Pedagogy in Open Edu- cation,” 2022, YouTube video, 57:49, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqJ-5M-fkMM. 16. At the City University of New York, community college faculty regularly receive fed- eral funding to support their research and training activities. Research Foundation CUNY, “RFCUNY 2021 Award Statistics,” 2021, https://www.rfcuny.org/annualreport. 17. Rob Jenkins, “Community College FAQ: You Teach How Many Classes?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 25, 2016, https://www.chronicle.com/article /community-college-faq-you-teach-how-many-classes. 18. John M. Braxton, William R. Doyle, and Dawn Lyken-Segosebe, “Tweaking the Culture of the Community College,” New Directions for Community Colleges 171 (2015): 77–85, https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.20156. 19. Liam Knox, “Despite Hopes for a Rebound, Enrollment Falls Again,” Inside Higher Ed, October 20, 2022, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/10/20/enrollment -declines-continue-slower-rate. 20. Melissa Blankstein and Christine Wolff-Eisenberg, “Library Strategy and Collabo- ration Across the College Ecosystem,” Ithaka S+R (blog), September 9, 2021. https://doi .org/10.18665/sr.315922. 21. Karen Estlund and Anna Neatrour, “Utah Digital Repository Initiative: Building a Support System for Institutional Repositories,” D-Lib Magazine 13, no. 11/12 (2007), https://doi.org/10.1045/november2007-neatrour. 22. SPARC, “U.S. Repository Network Launches to Meet Critical Research Infrastruc- ture Need,” October 27, 2022, https://sparcopen.org/news/2022/u-s-repository-network -launches-to-meet-critical-research-infrastructure-need/. https://nscresearchcenter.org/snapshotreport-twoyearcontributionfouryearcompletions26/ https://nscresearchcenter.org/snapshotreport-twoyearcontributionfouryearcompletions26/ https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_306.50.asp https://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/hsgec.nr0.htm https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_314.30.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_316.80.asp https://www.aacc.nche.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AACC_2022_Fact_Sheet-Rev-5-11-22.pdf https://www.aacc.nche.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/AACC_2022_Fact_Sheet-Rev-5-11-22.pdf https://www.cccoer.org/ofar/ https://academicworks.cuny.edu/nc_oers/27 https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/oer-summer-2021/2021/05/31/culturally-sustaining-pedagogies-reading-and-reflection/ https://openlab.bmcc.cuny.edu/oer-summer-2021/2021/05/31/culturally-sustaining-pedagogies-reading-and-reflection/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqJ-5M-fkMM https://www.rfcuny.org/annualreport https://www.chronicle.com/article/community-college-faq-you-teach-how-many-classes https://www.chronicle.com/article/community-college-faq-you-teach-how-many-classes https://doi.org/10.1002/cc.20156 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/10/20/enrollment-declines-continue-slower-rate https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/10/20/enrollment-declines-continue-slower-rate https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.315922 https://doi.org/10.18665/sr.315922 https://doi.org/10.1045/november2007-neatrour https://sparcopen.org/news/2022/u-s-repository-network-launches-to-meet-critical-research-infrastructure-need/ https://sparcopen.org/news/2022/u-s-repository-network-launches-to-meet-critical-research-infrastructure-need/