4 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 302 — 2021 To cite this article: Ruttenberg, Judy. “Introduction.” Research Library Issues, no. 302 (2021): 3–4. https://doi.org/10.29242/rli.302.1
3 Association of Research Libraries Research Library Issues 302 — 2021 Introduction Judy Ruttenberg, Association of Research Libraries This year has been dominated by discussions of infrastructure—social, technical, and physical. Concerns over the sustainability of scholarly infrastructure are complex and urgent for research library leaders, with issues of openness, inclusivity, and, of course, financing in the forefront of many conversations. Research libraries are engaged in institutional policies to strengthen scholarly infrastructure, in public policy considerations including but not limited to funding, and with the research and learning community as it navigates a diverse and often fragile landscape of infrastructures to do its work. This issue of Research Library Issues takes a look at three important requirements for scholarly infrastructure from the perspective of openness, inclusivity, and sustainability: (1) Maria Gould and Maria Praetzellis examine how consolidation in the publishing industry encompassing platforms and services, as well as content, has inspired advances and commitments to open infrastructure, specifically persistent identifiers (PIDs) (2) Jonathan Lazar presents a study of higher education’s surge-readiness for online services, as necessitated by COVID-19, with respect to digital accessibility for people with disabilities and (3) I look at developments in sharing data and information about the cost and financing of scholarly infrastructures in order for individual institutions to plan and commit to sustaining those infrastructures. © Judy Ruttenberg This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
