Fulcrum as a Publishing Platform for Open Access Books
This video presents a new platform for Open Access ebooks, Fulcrum (https://fulcrum.org/) developed at the University of Michigan. It is particularly geared toward the publication of long-form digital scholarship and supports restricted access as well as open access publications.
Published
Video Transcript
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digital capability that we haven't had before.
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more accessible.
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know that my reader will hear what I'm talking
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about allows me to make my writing more like my teaching.
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convey the movement and the choreography
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and so that makes a huge difference for us.
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that we've published with authors.
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Now we have a way to organize and display
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all of their digital materials together
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and to make them accessible with visually impaired
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and hearing impaired users and people
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who use assistive technology
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and to also let them do more complicated things
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that they wouldn't be able to do
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just with a general website,
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so having things like 3D models,
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interactive maps, interactive timelines
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and those sorts of things that tie directly into
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their book and relate back to their book.
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through Fulcrum access our data and use it.
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They can access it directly in Fulcrum,
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they can download, it's an extremely important,
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powerful research tool for the museum
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that our colleagues all over the world
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can go online, go to my edition of Fulcrum
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relating to my research, access that data,
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use it, publish with it, produce new knowledge.
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I mean this is exactly what the mission
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of our museum is.
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because I work on the performing arts
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and so we always want to readers
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to have access to visual material,
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whether that's photographs or performance programs
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or actual video of the performances
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that we're analyzing, so having the digital platform
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is really wonderful because we can upload
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our own material that's not already accessible
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and we can also link to materials.
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Now that we have so many videos
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circulating on the internet,
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it's very helpful for readers to know
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which video is the right one to watch
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and also because I work across different languages
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a lot of videos are only searchable
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if you type in Chinese characters
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and so being able to link directly
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to those videos is really essential
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for readers who can only read or type in English.
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has allowed me to think as I'm writing
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about what music I want my reader to hear
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and then embed it in the book.
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For me what Fulcrum has meant is
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that as I'm writing I can think
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in terms of audio, I can think
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about what I need my reader to notice
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and hear instead of thinking about
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what I need to write that will clarify
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the sound of the music without them hearing it,
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so being able to make that assumption
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about what's available to my reader
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helps me tell the story in a more natural way.
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I don't think I'm going back from here.
Director, University of Michigan Press
I am Director of University of Michigan Press and Associate University Librarian for Publishing at University of Michigan, based in the USA
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This is an interesting project. The captions for the visually impared go a long way toward making this content universally accessible too.