Values Informing this Work

Our goal is to be part of a sustainable system for sharing knowledge that is fully aligned with our mission and values: providing open, inclusive, and equitable access — and opportunities for creation — to all creators and their audience. Our work on this is deeply informed by the professional and organizational values we hold as librarians and members of the JMU community. 

As we work towards contributing to a more equitable and inclusive scholarly landscape, we endorse the work of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) research agenda for scholarly communications. At the fore, we commit to embracing diversity and inclusion in our workforce, creating more representative and open collections, supporting technological infrastructure that is sustainable, and building more mission-aligned organizational and financial systems.

In order to align with our values and support a model of sustainable scholarship, the JMU Libraries commit to:

• Engaging with information vendors that emphasize open access, transparency in pricing, and financially viable business models
• Leveraging the collective bargaining power of consortia to enter deals that are in our best interest and achieve a common good for our peers in the state
• Educating researchers on best practices in making research openly available
• Supporting those practices by investing in systems that foster open scholarship and information sharing

Our values drive us to engage in a wide array of areas, including collections building, content creation, pedagogical practices, technology innovation and adoption, and whole-person care. A small sample of this work includes JMU Libraries’ expertise in open educational resources and pedagogy, author rights education, inclusive collections building and management, and instruction and research support.

Effective January 1, 2022 the JMU Libraries will not enter into contracts that contain confidentiality clauses of any kind or require the nondisclosure of license terms. If the Libraries and vendor are unable to come to an agreement regarding the removal of such clauses or terms from the license, then the Libraries will not license that content. The JMU Libraries, at its sole discretion, will openly share information contained in its licenses and agreements with interested parties. JMU Libraries is fully committed to the values of sustainability, openness, transparency, and fiscal stewardship, as detailed in our Sustainable Scholarship pages. It is the Libraries’ position that these clauses are incompatible with our core mission and values.

The JMU Libraries will maintain open, continuous dialogue with the JMU community so that there is a mutual understanding about values and needs. We believe this approach can provide JMU with a more sustainable model of scholarship while continuing to support our community in their pursuit of discovery and innovation.