As I prepare to attend the 2023 Music Librarian Association Conference in St. Louis, I find myself excitedly browsing through the draft schedule, planning how to juggle my time in order to hear from as many of my music research colleagues as possible.Conferences such as this one, which pull from many different communities, offer opportunity to expand creativity by exploring ideas with people outside local communication channels (Rogers, 2003). I am thankful for the opportunity to connect with others and learn about ideas or practices they have implemented that I might perceive as new, and consider how I might adopt those innovations as I seek to identify and solve problems in my own scholarly and creative work.
The Emerging Technologies and Services Committee (ETSC) Tech Hub will provide opportunities for attendees to explore a variety of innovations of potential use in identifying and solving problems. In response to MLA community feedback, this session will build on past years’ Tech Hub presentations and is planned to include topics and platforms facilitating data sonification for beginners, open research practices, music therapy and evidence synthesis, and digital music score platforms, among others.
One of the platforms which will be provided for participant exploration is Pressbooks, an online platform intended to support the creation, adaptation and sharing of content. Attendees will have a hands-on opportunity to experiment with the platform via the OpenOKState program, the Oklahoma State University Libraries’ initiative supporting integration of open practices into research, teaching and learning at Oklahoma State University. A quick search of the term ‘music’ in the Pressbooks Directory returns at least 74 books whose authors have intentionally created and licensed them for use and customization by other scholars and instructors. During the ETSC Pressbooks session, participants will learn how they might adapt, customize, or even create similar resources of their own.
The Pressbooks session presentation is supported in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services in support of a project using open research practices to explore open educational resources (OER) and lifelong learning. The goal of the project is to develop a replicable, reliable method to assess the efficacy of OER on lifelong learning competencies. Anticipated project deliverables include a toolkit applicable to multiple contexts which faculty can easily implement to measure the efficacy of OER on developing lifelong learning competencies in their own courses. A second deliverable will be an openly available book on research methodology focused on librarians conducting research. The entire project, including its final deliverables, has been intentionally implemented using open research practices.
An understanding of open research practices begins with an operational definition of research, itself. The Open Lifelong Learning project has defined research as a systematic investigation whose goal is identifying and/or solving problems. The term systematic refers to the intentionality with which the investigation is planned and implemented, and the goal leaves room for continued curiosity as well as provision of solutions as acceptable outcomes. ‘Open’ refers to transparent processes and practices through which the project is strengthened by the input of others’ expertise and experiences.
One aspect of open processes has to do with the point at which the research is shared with others. Rather than waiting until the research has been completed and the project deliverables finalized to share their work, the Open Lifelong Learning team has presented at scholarly conferences throughout the research process. The intent of this transparency has been to seed ideas for a wide range of research projects, as well as to invite the unique expertise of other scholars. For example, a close study of empirical research into OER surfaces an emphasis on quantitative research investigating the impact of OER on outcomes such as DFW rates or grades. While these findings are useful, the field will benefit from research using a broader range of methodologies to explore a variety of outcomes. Another challenge has to do with the dispositions, skills, and subject matter understanding of individual researchers. As the Open Lifelong Learning team opened their work for input from others at scholarly conferences, questions were surfaced and answered by scholars and experts outside disciplines represented by the researchers. The outcome of this democratized approach to the scholarly conversation is a survey instrument which has been strengthened through intradisciplinary interrogation. It will also be interesting to note to what extent interest in the final project is influenced by others’ interaction with the process overall.
The Pressbooks platform helps facilitate the open research process implemented by the Open Lifelong Learning team. Since both the process and the product embed ideas of contextual customization, the usability and discoverability of Pressbooks made use of the platform a logical choice. While open research practices can certainly take place independent of the Pressbooks platform, we hope those who are curious about its potential are able to come try it out during the MLA 2023 TechHub session.