Authors Alliance Partner Program (A2P2) [Product Review]

Abstract

The Authors Alliance Partner Program (A2P2; https://www.authorsalliance.org/a2p2-home/ ) is a recent addition to the educational content of the Authors Alliance. This nonprofit advocacy organization aims, "to advance the interests of authors who want to serve the public good by sharing their creations broadly." Their new initiative provides pret-a-porter instructional material with the express purpose of supporting the scaling of rights-related programming—a goal that distinguishes A2P2 from other well-established and deeply valuable copyright-focused resources. While copyright touches nearly all we do in libraries, outreach in this area often primarily falls to scholarly communication or copyright librarians. As Schmidt (2019) notes, “providing copyright information services in the library has become part of the standard operations of academic libraries in the U.S.” We must, consequently, train ourselves up and stay current on copyright issues, as well as instruct our peers and our communities on copyright- and author rights—related issues (Reeves 2015; Norris et al. 2019; Secker et al. 2019). We need to build resources on topics that are nuanced, evolving, and carry risk. These efforts take time, care, and confidence. For professionals who may well have varied and competing job responsibilities, time and confidence certainly may be at a premium (Charbonneau and Priehs 2014). While one could easily despair, there’s help to be had. Enter, A2P2.