UTA Employee Spotlight: Leah McCurdy

Expanding the way knowledge is shared is what Leah McCurdy looks to achieve in her new role as Director of Open Partnerships and Services at UTA Libraries. 

Leah stated that the Open Partnerships and Services department is working to change the model of traditional academic libraries connecting more people with information. 

In traditional academic publishing, researchers, often with the help of librarians, publish scholarly information and research outcomes in an established manner, such as with physical books or journal articles behind paywalls. 

However, at OPS, staff members work to create partnerships and seek out opportunities to increase access to open access scholarly materials for faculty and students. These opportunities can include publishing scholarly works in a digital format with open licenses to make it available to a larger audience. 

"One of the goals at OPS is to continue the great services we already have in place. We already have a great institutional repository, called the UTA Research Commons, that supports our faculty and students," Leah said. "We have 10 open-access journals, some pathways for digital projects and partnerships in the libraries, and a great course reserve system. We are already doing great things." 

Before joining the library staff, Leah spent six years teaching art history and archaeology as a Senior Lecturer here at UTA. Her experience as a faculty member and a grad student led her to make a career change because she wants to educate people about open access, OPS's services, and how they can help them during their time at the university. 

With the solid foundation already in place at OPS, another goal Leah has is to grow the department so that it can serve more people. Some of these steps include expanding on what is offered in the Research Commons-, and strengthening relationships with the graduate school to better educate graduating researchers about the importance of open access for the future of scholarly publishing.  

If you want to learn more about the Open Partnerships and Services Department, more information can be found online at https://libraries.uta.edu/about/dept/ops.  

Information about the UTA Research Commons can be found at https://rc.library.uta.edu/uta-ir/