ATGthePodcast 327 - A Conversation with Steve Smith, AI Gateway and MCP Pilot Advisory for Scholarly Publishers

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Russell Michalak, Library Director, Goldey-Beacom College, and Founding Partner, Inclusive Knowledge Solutions. Russell has been immersed in libraries throughout his life. His mother was a librarian, and he kept coming back to librarianship despite an initial rebellion to pursue a library career. He has worked in libraries of all different sizes, budgets and resources over the last 20 years. He also has a background in history and says history is important to study as it is present now in everything we do and provides context for current events, government, and politics and also helps when working with people to have an understanding of where people come from and learning empathy for how people come to different places.  In this conversation, Russell talks with Michael about a birthday gift he received at 10 years old that helped shape his career, the evolution of Goldey-Beacom College, and the challenges and innovations in library culture there. He also shares insights on how he sees the role of AI in libraries, the importance of building relationships between libraries and faculty, and the need for AI literacy among students. He says the democratization of access to AI tools and fostering a positive library culture are both very important. Social Media: The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/B4a4jz1Gg_U LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/russellmichalak/ Twitter: Keywords: #AILiteracy #AIInLibraries #Access #LibraryCulture #LibraryInnovation #GenAI #LibraryResources #ProblemSolvers #InformationProfessionals #InformationScience #AcademicLibraries #FutureOfLibraries #HistoryMatters #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #PublishingIssues #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Orland Hoeber, Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science, at University of Regina; Founder, Dilex Search. Orland says from an early age, he has always been interested in problem solving, trying to make sense of things and understand how things worked. He gravitated towards computing slowly, starting off in science-based disciplines and a degree in mathematics. He moved away from mathematics, which he says was strict and precise with structured rules, to computer science for an outlet to leverage his creativity, which opened the opportunity for doing creative problem solving, and he earned his graduate degrees in computer science. In this interview, Orland talks with Michael about searching, the library reference desk, and searching within GenAI. He has done research into human-computer interaction, specifically searching, and has recently launched a new search tool, Dilex, for saving searches between desktop and mobile devices. He says there is a gap between what a user needs and what is being provided, and for the last eight to ten years, he has been working in the realm of digital libraries helping people find information in libraries when their search tasks are complex in nature.  The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/jtq-yM7DIX4 Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/orland-hoeber/ Twitter: Keywords: #DigitalLibraries #DigitalTransformation #KnowledgeManagement #ComputerScience #GenAI #LibraryResources #AcademicResearch #ProblemSolvers #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #PublishingIssues #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Steve Smith, AI Gateway and MCP Pilot Advisory for Scholarly Publishers. Steve has enjoyed a wide-ranging academic publishing career, with half spent in book publishing and half spent in journal publishing, and has held senior roles at AIP Publishing, Frontiers, the American Psychological Association, and Wiley.  But, before Steve began his unexpected career in publishing, he studied philosophy at McGill University, earned a PhD in mathematical logic; and he refers to himself as a "frustrated philosopher." In this conversation, Steve shares his journey into academic publishing, his insights on the evolution of publishing, particularly in the context of AI and digital transformation, emphasizing the need for publishers to adapt to new technologies and changing reader expectations. He talks with Michael about the importance of structured knowledge and metadata in the age of AI, arguing that the future of publishing lies in moving beyond traditional formats to embrace knowledge as a service. The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/zY6rK5GhYA0 Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/sdsmith2/ Keywords: #DigitalTransformation #KnowledgeManagement #AcademicIntegrity #PublishingIntegrity #metadata #AIInPublishing #FutureOfPublishing #PublishingStrategy #ScholarlyPublishing #LibraryResources #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #PublishingIssues #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Ben Lee, Assistant Professor, University of Washington Information School. Ben initially trained as an astrophysicist with a PhD in Human Computer Interaction, but he isn't out there looking for asteroids these days. He is currently an editor for Digital Humanities Quarterly and teaches an MLIS course. He says moving from telescope pipelines and understanding all the questions around how astronomers make catalogs of stars and celestial objects out of images isn't too dissimilar from questions around OCRing large-scale document collections.  Ben also talks with Michael about how his grandmother survived the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and the time he spent after college in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and in their archive, and digital questions led him to apply for a computer science program. He also talks with Michael about creating Newspaper Magazine, an archive of documentation of hundreds of millions of pages pertaining to survivors and victims of the Holocaust. Michael presented at the CNI Fall Conference on AI and Libraries, and says he believes fully open sciences is the best way forward and really our only way forward if we are to do this right. The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/sDOn4MMuVOk Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ Keyword #KnowledgePreservation #ProblemSolver #Access #Research #ResearchTools #LearningResources #EdTechTools #LibraryResources #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #PublishingIssues #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Zakayo Kjellstrom, Investigator, Swedish Agency for the Media, which "works to promote freedom of expression and diversity in the media market, where multiple voices are heard and consumers have access to a wide and accessible range of radio, television and news media."    Zakayo currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden. He first earned a bachelor's in cultural studies with a focus on digital culture, and then a master's in library science, both from Lunds University, where he also worked in the University Library for several years. In this conversation, Zakayo talks with Michael about having just completed his PhD on Shadow Libraries, and why we should be interested in academic piracy and black open access. He says shadow libraries "put the finger on the very issue of publishing in a very explicit way: this needs to circumvent very robust traditional infrastructures in order to get what's needed to do your job."     The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/j-nh0XXw2C8 Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zakayo-kjellstr%C3%B6m-5945221b9/ Twitter: Keyword #ShadowLibraries #Commons #BlackOpenAccess #AcademicPiracy #ParadoxOfLegitimacy #KnowledgePreservation #ProblemSolver #Access #Research #ResearchTools #LearningResources #EdTechTools #LibraryResources #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #PublishingIssues #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Jon Brassey, Founder, Trip Database. Jon says he doesn't consider himself to be an entrepreneur, but a problem solver, who created the Trip Database, a medical question-and-answer service for practitioners that has been running for almost 30 years and contains over 125 million clinical articles, systematic reviews, and medical guidelines. In this conversation, Jon talks with Michael about his background in biology and how he began his career working in R&D in a cytogenetics lab in a hospital in Bristol. He eventually ended up working for the NHS and the Gwent Medical Audit Advisory Group working to transform the audit group to a clinical effectiveness group with a role of health support, to help General Practitioners to be more evidence-based or more clinically effective, and to teach GP's searching skills and critical appraisal skills. He talks about his academic research into clinical question answering and seeing the need for a service to provide an outlet for these clinical questions, which led him to develop the Trip Database, an incredibly rich resource for high quality clinical research evidence for questions that are actually asked by practitioners about their patients, not just material taught in medical school, to help them make better decisions.   The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/CuE8TdMpG34 Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/tripdatabase/ Twitter: Keyword #TripDatabase #CriticalThinking #ProblemSolver #Research #DeepResearch #ResearchTools #EvidenceBasedMedicine #ClinicalGuidelines #ClinicalQuestions #MedicalLibrarian #HealthcareInnovation #MedicalResearch #LearningResources #EdTechTools #LibraryResources #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Gary Price, Editor, LJ's InfoDOCKET and ARL Day in Review. Gary, a very well-known figure across the scholarly publishing industry, is a librarian, consultant, researcher and speaker who regularly provides important and timely news, updates and information. In this conversation, he talks with Michael about his background including spending a lot of time in the library as a child, and how his mother was the first person to advise him to become a librarian, which he says is still the best advice he's ever received.  Gary talks about how his career has paralleled the internet as a research tool, how he feels a major issue is that while people in general have a positive feeling about librarians, not many understand what libraries and librarians do, the resources they offer, or that their skills are still very valuable, especially the role of curation. He believes the library and the librarian have a huge role in bringing together quality, credible, and timely information, making it a seamless package for the end user, often at the time of need, allowing them to use that collection as needed. He also gives his views on the Internet Archive, AI tools, and explains which tools he finds useful in his work.  The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/fC4tM3ll8uQ Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/gdp100/ Keyword #LibraryInnovation #InformationLiteracy #CriticalThinking #Research #DeepResearch #ResearchTools #LearningResources #EdTechTools #AIInLibaries #AITools #GenAI #LibraryAnalysis #LibraryValue #LibraryResources #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Allison Belan, Director for Strategic Innovation, Duke University Press. Allison has a background in English and Philosophy. In this conversation, she talks with Michael about her start in type setting, working on school newspapers and school literary magazines and then a school journal in college.  She talks about working as a project manager with a very small custom software consultancy that worked with a variety of corporations, like Wrangler Jeans and Blue Cross Blue Shield,  to build their first Business to Consumer (B2C) websites during the early days of the World Wide Web.  She appreciated the newly acquired technology and business skills of this job, but missed publishing. In 2004, She joined Duke University Press as assistant production manager for journals. She details the evolution of her roles over the years at Duke, to her current role as Director for Strategic Innovation and Services which includes managing the technology operations and business systems of the Press and, as Allison says, keeping an eye on what's going on in the broader industry and when something transformative about operations or business needs to happen, ringing the bell at the press with the need to get up to speed and work to begin adopting new initiatives, like AI and accessibility among other things, and supporting and aligning with strategy.  The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/Yxhhqfse_Gc LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/allisoncbelan/ Keyword #DukeUniversityPress #PublishingLeadership #PublishingInnovation #DigitalPublishing #DigitalScholarship #DigitalStrategy #TechAndPublishing #Accessibility #HigherEd #LibraryInnovation #InformationLiteracy #CriticalThinking #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #LearningResources #EdTechTools #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

Today's episode features guest host Michael Upshall (guest editor, Charleston Briefings) who talks with Helen Bischoff, Coordinator of Liaison Services, University of Kentucky Libraries. In this conversation, Helen talks about her early experiences of working as a High School English teacher in Kentucky. She reflects on how overcrowding in the school caused her to leave her classroom during her planning period to allow other teachers to share that space, and how she spent that time in the school library instead, getting to know the librarians and observing them teaching in a library classroom. These librarians encouraged her to go to library school.  She first worked at a community college library and then several institutions before joining Kentucky University Libraries where she currently coordinates a team-based liaison model across the UK libraries, holding meetings, and providing resources and consultations across a variety of disciplines like teaching and learning, research services, scholarly communication work, and outreach and engagement with the community on campus and beyond. Helen also talks with Michael about how she engages with her students using a technique called active learning.  The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/yQvBQRPmlak Social Media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mupshall/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/helen-bischoff/ Keyword #LiaisonLibrarian #UKLibraries #LibraryScience #ActiveLearning #InstructionalDesign #DigitalScholarship #HigherEd #LibraryLeadership #LibraryInnovation #PracticalLibrarianship #Library Resources #InformationLiteracy #LibraryInstruction #LibraryCollaboration #CriticalThinking #InformationProfessionals #AcademicLibraries #LearningResources #EdTechTools #career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts

The following interview is part of the 2025 Charleston Conference Leadership Interview Series. In this series, we sit down with leaders and innovators who are making a real difference in scholarly publishing, libraries, and the broader information world. Each conversation is a chance to hear firsthand how these decision makers tackle new challenges, rethink traditional models, and collaborate across sectors. Today's episode features the next conversation from the 2025 Charleston Conference Leadership Interview Series.  Heather Staines, Senior Consultant, Delta Think, and a Conference Director, talks with Frances Pinter, Director, Academic Relations, Central European University Press, and founder, SUPRR. Frances was born in Venezuela to Hungarian parents and lived on four continents by the time she was 20 years old, which she believes greatly influenced the international approach and outlook that she has held throughout her career. Frances has been a prolific figure, and a trail blazer, in Academic Publishing for over 50 years, working with companies of all different sizes and business cultures around the world. She is currently working to help Ukrainian publishers through SUPRR (Supporting Ukrainian Publishing Resilience and Recovery) which she founded. In this conversation, Frances talks with Heather about starting her own publishing company at a very young age while working on her PhD in international relations, and the importance of working with young authors and meeting people at a young age who challenged conventional wisdom, which stayed with her throughout her career. She also talks about her work in networking a computer system with Apple, why serving on industry committees is very important and the knowledge you can gain from being active in this capacity, and the story of how she won a contract against many big players to digitize the Winston Churchill archives. Frances also tells how she was influenced by an experience with a hands-on open access project in Africa that led to her founding of Knowledge Unlatched in 2012, which was acquired by Annual Reviews in 2025. Lastly, she talks with Heather about the role that librarians have played in her professional life.  The video of this interview can be found here: https://youtu.be/0XGbG5yY4y0 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heatherstaines/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/frances-pinter-6091252/ Keywords: #CharlestonConference #AgainstTheGrain #KatinaMagazine #AnnualReviews #LeadershipInLibraries #InnovationInLibraries #TeamWork #Team #ConferenceEvolution #LibraryCommunity #Librarianship #ProfessionalDevelopment #LibrarianJourney #LibraryEducation #InformationAccess #LibraryCommunity #libraries #librarians #libraryCareer #librarySchool #LibraryLove #academic #AcademicPublishing #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication  #learning #learnon #information #leaders #leadership #2024ChsConf ##career #scholcomm #ScholarlyCommunication #libraries #librarianship #LibraryNeeds #LibraryLove #ScholarlyPublishing #AcademicPublishing #publishing #LibrariesAndPublishers #podcasts