Looking Back and Embracing a New Chapter: Reflections from CB Community Liaison, Julia Stone

I am so grateful for my time as Community Liaison for CollectionBuilder. Recently, I accepted a position as a tenure-track Open Scholarship Librarian at Portland State University (PSU) and I will begin this new role in May 2024. In this post, I will reflect upon my journey with the CollectionBuilder team and share what I am looking forward to next in my career.

My time as a member of the CollectionBuilder team has been full of growth, learning, and collaboration. I had the privilege of spearheading initiatives that fostered innovation and engagement within the CB community, from launching the CB Blog and the CollectionBuilder Slack and Google Group to facilitating workshops and providing training sessions to digital humanities and information professionals.

Additional highlights from my journey as CB Community Liaison have included:

• Working with the CB team and our instructor awardees as part of the CB Curriculum Development Program to incorporate CB in the classroom

• Creating the CollectionBuilder Examples Collection to demonstrate a variety of use cases for the CB framework and showcase CB projects from around the world

• Writing technical documentation to enhance and expand our learning materials, including the step-by-step walkthroughs for CB-SHEETS, CB-GH, and CB-CSV

• Teaching and working with a cohort of ten MLIS students as part of the CB LIS Student Program to help them create CB projects

Beyond learning the ins-and-outs of CollectionBuilder and teaching users from around the world, I also got to delve further into static web technologies and learn about other open-source frameworks, including Learn-Static and Oral History as Data. Getting hands-on experience building digital projects using open-source frameworks has not only helped me hone my technical and web development skills but has also enriched my understanding of the intersection between digital technologies, scholarly communication, and open educational resources. I can definitely see myself incorporating static web technologies in Open Educational Resource (OER) development and open pedagogical practices in my future career.

In my new role at PSU, I will be tasked with managing an open textbook program, overseeing an open access publishing fund, and contributing to the management of PSU’s institutional repository, PDXScholar. I am passionate about advancing open education efforts and fostering a culture of accessibility and innovation, so this role will be a perfect fit for my career goals. I am also excited to be working in the city I live in! Beyond getting involved with various open initiatives at PSU, I also look forward to engaging with Open Oregon, the Open Education Network, and remaining active in the Orbis Cascade Alliance’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Standing Group.

As I prepare to embark on this new chapter, I am filled with gratitude for the experiences and relationships forged through the CollectionBuilder community. All of my experiences in this role have helped shape me into the librarian I am today. I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who has been part of my journey so far. Your support and willingness to collaborate have been invaluable, and I am looking forward to the future!

-Julia Stone