SPARC at Ten

The Library Journal Academic Newswire (18 January, 2007) has an overview of the first decade of SPARC: SPARC at Ten: A Decade Later, Organization Still Aims to Be Part of The Solution

What a difference a decade makes. In 2007, SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) celebrates its tenth anniversary, now with an expansive mission to work not only on behalf of libraries but for the welfare of the higher education community at large, and for individual researchers and the public. "It's pretty amazing to me to look back and see how far we've come to with the organization," SPARC Executive Director Heather Joseph, who replaced Rick Johnson in 2005, told the LJ Academic Newswire. "We began with real community-based, grass-roots efforts, like alternative journals. We still do that kind of work but we've branched out more into things like our advocacy program. Today, we spend so much more time talking with policy makers about how to create an overall better climate. The day-to-day work very little resembles what we were doing when SPARC first started.". . . .More