Virginia Commonwealth University’s AI in Education
2026 Library Publishing Showcase Week: Responding to the Community
AI in Education: Teaching, Learning, and Thinking with Machines, edited by Mary Strawderman
Published by VCU Libraries
This resource is a unique, multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed collection on generative AI in education, featuring contributions from K-12 teachers, academics, students, and administrators. Together, the pieces draw on a humanities framework to examine various dimensions of AI’s impact on education while questioning its broader implications and constraints.
The intended impact is to provide practical knowledge for immediate use and stimulate discussion. The authors have disseminated their work by collectively presenting at an “unconference” and a regional research consortium. They have also been invited to speak at a “critical conversations” series based around the coming wave of AI.
Working with a library publisher
The collection’s editorial board and the VCU Humanities Research Center, Digital Technology in Education working group members, worked closely with Katharine Miller, Scholarly Communications Librarian, and Karen Bjork, Head, Digital Libraries and Publishing from VCU Libraries, to publish the collection via VCU Scholars Compass.
One of our working group members, who often publishes research briefs for their center through the institutional repository, VCU Scholars Compass, suggested that we publish through VCU Libraries. I looked at other library publications and eventually met with Katharine and Karen to learn more about how it would work.
Opportunities for working with a library publisher
Library publishing allowed us to publish the collection as a free, accessible resource without paywalls or open-access fees. We wanted to broadly disseminate our resource and felt VCU Scholars Compass was a great fit. Because this was a fully formed, multidisciplinary collection, publishing elsewhere would have likely been difficult and may have required a special issue or book process with additional hurdles and delays.
Another reason we went this route was due to the collection’s multimodality; the authors included videos, audio files, and many supplementary resources with their pieces. The library accommodates nontraditional formats and contributions/voices, which made it possible to house the supplementary, audio, and video materials in one location.
The support we received from Katharine and Karen was invaluable as they worked closely with us on the collection’s formatting, ADA accessibility, and many other components.
Advice for colleagues considering working with libraries to publish
Publishing through the library can increase discoverability and impact through open access and Google Scholar indexing. It is a great format for nontraditional works, such as teaching resources, student and practitioner perspectives, collections, policy briefs, conference proceedings, multimodal works, books, and more, without the fees, paywalls, or restrictions of most standard publishing avenues. Scholars Compass can also host journals or sequential issues of a collection, which may be ideal for working groups, hands-on class projects, or organizations/chapters that want to release work in an ongoing series.