Well, the fall semester madness has begun and, with it, our plans for OA Week are taking shape! We decided to expand OA Week into OA Month, this year, simply because this allows us greater flexibility in planning, plus we want to do more on each of the three Mason campuses.

We are hosting four main events, one in each week of October. The first and third weeks, I'll be giving a talk at two different campuses on the publishing process, with a focus on Open Access journals. The purpose is to offer graduate students (and maybe junior faculty) library support and guidance in publishing. There are some fabulous online modules other university libraries have put together on this topic that I plan to share, in addition to my own spin.

The second week we are focusing on Open Data. We invited Dr. Amy Friedlander, with NSF, to come talk about this important initiative. We also invited a couple of Mason faculty to share their own research using OD. Excitement about this panel is building!

The last week of October, we are hosting a reception in honor and recognition of all faculty and grad students who have published in, edited, and/or host an OA journal. This was a recommendation by an OA proponent from this wiki last year (can't remember who--sorry!). Our liaison librarians sent out a query to their faculty asking for lists of OA activities. We'll put a bibliography together to share at the reception and online. I'm hopeful faculty will respond.

We may also stream the World Bank kick-off event at the library. We've invited some departments to help sponsor this event to encourage student/faculty participation. Haven't heard back, yet.

And, of course, we'll be decorating George in his annual OA garb. What would International OA Week be without a decked out George!

Good luck to everyone as we collaboratively celebrate and educate OA!