2012 Charleston Conference

Knowledge Unlatched is an exciting and innovative publishing initiative that aims to set up an international library consortium to provide access to specialist scholarly books in the arts, humanities and social sciences. The international consortium will be in a position to aggregate demand for books and secure collective payments to bring titles to first digital publications. By paying publishers an upfront fee that covers origination costs in exchange for open access publication, participating libraries will find their monograph budgets going further and that their students and scholars have access to hugely increased numbers of titles. This sustainable business model will reduce risks to publishers and the financial obstacles in reaching readers will be removed.

Knowledge Unlatched is a not-for profit organization, established for the benefit of all stakeholders in the global scholarly communications ecosystem. The project has already received initial funding and support from a wide range of national and international library organizations and it is currently inviting libraries and publishers to take part. This includes a full- scale pilot scheme to indicate the way forward for development. Frances and Hazel will describe the project and present the benefits from the perspectives of both libraries and publishers.