Carolyn Henderson Allen, dean of University of Arkansas Libraries since 2000, has been elected to SPARC's steering committee for a three year term beginning January 2016.

SPARC, short for Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, is a global organization working to open up scholarly communication. SPARC helps institutions and individuals pursue policies and practices that advance Open Access, Open Data, and Open Education. The University of Arkansas has been a member of SPARC since its founding in 1998.

Before coming to Arkansas, Allen served as deputy director of University Libraries at the University of Florida, while also serving as director for support services and director of collection management. Allen was the associate university librarian for administrative services at the University of Southern California, library personnel officer at Stanford University, and a librarian at the University of Tennessee.

A natural fit for this active, international organization, Allen's activities on SPARC's steering committee work well with projects already underway at University of Arkansas. Her Open Access initiatives include leading a task force, co-chaired by Luti Salisbury and Micah Hale, that oversaw the creation of the university's first Open Access Policy and its adoption through faculty and student governance.

Allen also recently created a campus-wide Open Educational Resources committee. Chaired by Lora Lennertz, the committee is working to make open-source textbooks more readily available to instructors and their students, often at considerable savings.

Other activities underway include staffing a Scholarly Communications Office to oversee the university's institutional repository and drive open access initiatives across campus, and establishing a Digital Services Unit to make unique collections owned by the University Libraries available to researchers worldwide. Next up, look for more information on the university's Open Data initiative – Allen is working with everyone from biologists and physicists to sociologists and engineers, to organize and make available our research data.