Teddie Potter and Liz Weinfurter

00:02 My name is Teddy Potter. I am 60 years old and today's date is September 14th, 2017. We're at the University of Minnesota. And I know my interviewee Liz find weinfurter. I'm she's a colleague of mine at the University.

00:19 And my name is Liz weinfurter. I am 38 today is September 14th, 2017. A location is University of Minnesota and Minneapolis. And Teddy had my interview. He is my colleague at the University of Minnesota.

00:36 Okay, great. Well, so I'm really really happy to be here today to be able to talk to you and just kind of revisit some of the things for my relationship. So I first met you in August of 2013. I was 9 months pregnant with my first child and we met in your office at the University of Minnesota because you wanted to talk about an idea and my role is the librarian liaison to the school of nursing at the University of Minnesota. And I've been part of the Health Sciences Library at the University of Minnesota in this liaison role since 2005. I worked a lot with a school of nursing worked a lot with Partnerships of Faculty. But this was something that was that was different than you with something. I hadn't encountered before so and you told me

01:26 Wonderful story and what led to this idea that you had and I remember it being amazing then and now with with many years of contacts, I'd love to hear it again talking about your background that led you to this site. Are you had and so yeah, if you could tell me the story told me wonderful and Liz you use remember our meeting is 2013 and I want to say that I've had my eyes on you since I came to the university in 2011. I believe the librarian services are an amazing partner in the whole field of scholarship. And so as our liaison with the school nursing I watched you and I watched the way that you interacted with people not in the shadows, but you were your full partner and so I know I had an inkling then I would be working with you even at a greater level.

02:16 Isola idea I really came about in northern Minnesota. I was driving back from a trip up north. I remember I was lonely road no other cars and there was I was listening to NPR and they had a section on the new and emerging area of open-access the theoretical underpinnings of open-access and you often times CD movies where the light changes and it's kind of like an aha moment in the music comes on. I felt like that was one of the moments for me. When when I heard this NPR session because I thought oh my gosh, this is an amazing Game Changer and it's a game-changer that I had always wished and hoped would happen because it's stupid and challenged some of the barriers that I see we have in scholarship in the academy.

03:13 So I heard that presentation and I start began to start to think about the area of partnership studies that my researches in yet. No one's doing it's not disseminate that there isn't a way to get that out. Either wasn't a journal there weren't conferences at so there weren't people ways for people to use that information or to be sharing and building that the knowledge field of of partnership. And so I once I heard about this Open Access movement at all lizards the person I tidied to pull forward and you we met in my office and the rest is history. I can you talk more about partnership studies and how your journey to becoming that being your area of research and how the field has developed it emerged.

04:05 Sure. I am a nurse and I nursed in the hospitals in the 1980s and encountered a hierarchical structures that I felt were very impressive and I'm very demeaning. I remember times where Physicians would say. What do you think is going on and I would say and then they turn and they did use that as their idea and tell somebody that they had thought about her that they came up with this solution. If I say if I said anyting sometimes I would see written in a chartered consulta is sort of smugly consulted with Doctor Potter. Why wasn't a doctor at that point in time. I bet it was it was a hand way of putting me in my place. But the real icing on the cake was when I went in to see a patient and clip the toenails of this person. Who is this.

05:04 And I went out and I read the the order in the order for me to follow us nurse to remove toenails from bed. And I just thought I cannot take this anymore. This is not collaborative. This is not a partnership. This is an oppressive system in my abilities of my intellectual capacity is being demeaned and marginalized by this structure. So I stepped outside of the hospital setting and I'm at the same time right around ladies like picked up a book of Pi. I'm an author by the name or scholar by the name of freon Eisler called The Chalice and the blade and I thought this is amazing. This explains my experience in healthcare and gives me a template of how it might be transformed where we Flash Forward and went through the 80s and 90s various different career changes and then got to be eventually going back for my PhD went to the California Institute.

06:04 Studies was there for orientation and the director said we're so excited. We just hired a new faculty member by the name of Rihanna eissler. I thought oh my gosh, this is wonderful. So I had her is a professor and then I work with her closely and she ended up being the chair of my dissertation committee and we are on my dissertation committee and I used her theories to talk about these hierarchical structures in healthcare and how they limit the full potential of all the professionals and Healthcare.

06:37 And then I rewrote the history of nursing to look at how people of challenge that hierarchy through history and how we need to be doing that in modern times as it's amazing. So we'll talk a little bit about her journal and how kind of we started. So at that time the libraries had been very interested in open access any mention the open-access movement, which is a difference model of journals generally journals are subscription-based and cost a lot of money and other similar scholarship to journals are not compensated for that and then the University's off another employed by need to buy access to the Turtles back. So that's been the model that's that's been in place for a long time. Everything Open Access Journal is that the the scholarship would be available to anyone without a subscription and there's different ways that the turtles all can be funded summer funded with

07:37 Inauthor pays a fee to have something published once it's accepted. There's other kinds of passport models, but University libraries have been very interested in challenging this this model of as he's a domination in terms of Z the publishing world that people had access to these so they've been idea other than kind of stood around in our heads and at the time that this idea came up and the timing of it all is really kind of amazing to see how it came together. But one of our associate number to The Librarians had been wanting to get feed libraries into the business of having a platform that could support Scholars that wanted to create a journal so we were the first so we were it was on the edge of the university has Varsity hadn't committed to a platform yet, but we just kind of carried on with our planning and

08:32 I'm trying to remember how this first it took maybe we talked in the fall of 2013 and our first issue was published in the fall of 2014. Right and a big part of it was assembling the right Talent. So I want to make sure that I lift up and celebrate all the people that are involved and it was really starting that the ground zero of how do you create a journal? How who do you want to have be part of the team? Who is it necessary which voices are necessary to be at the table. What is the weather going to be the policies? What types of articles are you going to accept? What are going to be the parameters around your the types of work that you published and so because we had our wonderful production and Liz weinfurter IU or key, but we also have a copy editor by the name and Marty Lewis hunstiger was been very involved and actually doing and polishing all our work that comes to

09:32 High School to a high degree our current managing editor editor is Heidi Bruce and I she doesn't live it to work at the University of them even live in Minnesota and she's out on org Island and Washington but does a beautiful job is our managing editor. We have a design editor who has consistently throughout the whole process helped us have the best visual appearance for the journal. Her name is Raja to sing. I'm the executive editor and then our editor-in-chief is Rihanna a slur that there was that that we build this work around. So it's that depth and breadth of talent that it made the journal possible and we really walk our talk and then it's a full partnership. Everyone has the is invited to come forward with the full ideas with their full power to veto something that would be harmful or not in line with our vision in our mission. It is a a group of people committed to getting

10:32 Idea of collaboration and partnership out into the broader world and I'm excited to say that as of today we have over in our two and a half years roughly and we've had over 18,000 downloads of our articles in over a hundred forty different nations around the globe. And as I look at the global impact, these are often times areas where people wouldn't have access to print journals. So the way the publishing World works right now as you said to have a subscription is a very high price. The only time I can there's a lower rate of subscription is if I'm a member of an organization and then I get the journal because I'm a member of the oncology nursing Society or something like that. So how many people on the outside don't have access to the the new knowledge this being generated? So, how can we expect best practices or a healthcare to advance?

11:32 If people don't have access to the new practices are the best practices if I don't have access to a journal through my I don't belong to a university or getting University if my Hospital doesn't have subscriptions it cost me $25 a day per article to have access to an article as a single article. So if I'm trying to scan get a scan of the literature, what's the best pet practice for preventing Falls or the best practice for the opioid crisis? There's no way you can do that as a private citizen. So there's a whole group of people locked out of the participation in knowledge generation and knowledge use and that in this these days of challenging times is just not acceptable.

12:22 Yeah, and it's it's such a challenging something libraries have always been very aware of because we are the ones we're the ones who are responsible for selecting the journals and paying for the journals and you know working in an academic Health Center. This is something I called her all the time with people were graduating and then go out to the community and if they're in rural Minnesota or in a place that doesn't have as many resources that were used to so many resources here at the University. So now they're out in practice and they don't have access to this information that they were they can I put in school. So it's been something that we really have no other problem in our trying and it's a a large problem well and it flies in the face of our land grant Mission do University of Minnesota is a land grant institution, which means that it is part of the exchange of having the privilege to use this piece of land in Minnesota was a notch.

13:22 Station to further the knowledge and that the advancement of the people in Minnesota and in our region, but so we're funded we obtain grandson and I assure her so are some of the large Federal organizations Ravens grandson in house and and then we would do our work of our research it goes to a journal and then people that were trying to serve don't have access to that information. So that's a problem. That doesn't that feels as though we're not fully living up to our ability to get this knowledge into the hands of the people the people in agriculture the people in healthcare the people in education who need this too neat who need to know the latest research in these fields and not only do they need to know the research the researchers need to know what their knowledge is. What are they finding when they apply these these practices do they have suggestions that need to come back to the university do

14:22 Are they finding that they have in the field knowledge that needs to be looked at and studied. So an open-access process allows for that to happen and we were very intentional when we set the journal have to have articles we publish which are from the scholars and then we have voices from the community which are people out in the community who can share back their insights from using the knowledge that we wanted it to be a salon or a place of gathering of a meeting of the minds. So knowledge is used and rapidly transformed and challenged and attitude and that it doesn't sit in the shelf and Ivory Tower.

15:07 Yeah, I think that's amazing. And that's something that I was going to just talk about is the different types of Articles be published. And so you mentioned the scholarly articles because this is the first Journal that is part of the scholarly field so that but then it's accessible to people outside of scholarly Realms and the Community Voices is a really great part of that and could you talk a little more about the other interesting type of thing that we publish sure we ran Eisler is well-connected. She's an internationally-known scholar and met a historian and she's been at this word for a very long time and she has incredible contacts. So we always have an interview of her with somebody who is well-known. We launched our journal with a interview with Desmond Tutu and we've had an interview with Peter sangay and other leaders in various Fields across the across the area we publish so the Articles at the interviews we have a guest editor.

16:07 I'm as the journal has been emerging we've found that there are times when I seen comes forward and we space the whole Journal issue on a seen this one coming up in October Zone the environment, but the one my last winter was securing democracy following the election and how democracy moves forward so we offered his base it on us a scene. We are the voices for the community, but I also wanted this to truly be an interdisciplinary Journal so that the disciplines come together and talk together we learn from one one another the way the academy generally works is I pick up a nursing a publisher nursing Journal I subscribe to a nursing Journal. I read the nursing journal editor, but I'm not reading forestry or I'm not reading I'm necessarily social sciences or geography and geology or women's studies. And this is a meeting place of those various people doing some a

17:07 Effect of partnership work and so I wanted all of the voices to be able to be present and by Voices, I mean the I want the seats at the table filled. I wanted them filled with diverse representation. So that means that we always have a a cover art and we asked the artist to do a statement to write a brief statement of why does there a piece of art? Are there photography of partnership? Why did why did they feel that carry that message? We've now added some spoken word pieces. So we have somebody who does some rap work on my head doesn't get the rap message about some partnership themes. I'm still looking for a dancer that we could do a video clip from I would love to have perhaps some jazz musicians or I am I

17:59 Other folks said that maybe want to contribute in that way, but there's room for everyone to be part of this conversation. It truly is interdisciplinary and somebody say I will Teddy your nurse what the heck does this have to do with a nursing? Everything is nursing. Everything is Health Care everything is healing and so I want to read an article about community policing and how could we transform our model of policing so that it really is based in deep and collaborative relationships with the communities. I want to know about how people are working to protect our forest because our environment is so essential in being able to have human health and Animal Health if we have environmental health. I want to know about what people are doing to advance the options for girls and women in Nations where I met a bear patriarchal what is going on, how can we further that work?

18:59 And you had talked before about the team that we have and I think that's something that to me has been such a amazing privilege to be part of this team because when we started I mean as I mentioned before this is something I've never done before I had never started a journal and we had the ideas and but I think that when we pulled this team together with a different expertise it became clear like okay, I don't know how to do this by myself, but there's things that I have expertise in his library in you. I know how to set up a journal in what a good Journal should look like and what the process they should be. I love to organize things getting this artwork slow down was really good and then we had the expertise of our design editor really help us think about how should this look and so does this amazing Synergy between these different expertise up just made us able to do something that we couldn't have done individually and it wasn't like is that a top-down thing? It was all

19:59 What's together making this happen? Absolutely at the University, I coordinate the doctor of nursing practice and health Innovation and Leadership preparing tomorrow's leaders. And we do talk about Innovation Innovation doesn't occur and you'll is Orrin me Teddy Innovation occurs when you and I come together and have this shirt space and the in the whatever come is one to be innervated or born or brought into this world comes in the meeting space between us and so that was our vision for the journal. But as you say it's the way we operate and that's deeply grounded in Partnership. And so I want to really just take a moment to describe a little bit of coke about cultural transformation Theory and what are Journal talks about? So cultural transformation was Siri was a develop Iran ice or a social theorist. She has a very fascinating history of her own of how she came to be asking these questions.

20:59 About how do some cultures work well together in some cultures don't everything from the culture of a small intimate nuclear family to a large Nation. What is that and she became a mackerel historian to to really take the big bird's eye view of all these data points and then looking at these large data point she was able to say, oh my gosh. There's this pattern that anytime humans come together. They either come together what she calls towards or hinting towards domination or oriented towards partnership domination of partnership every classic characteristics. And once you understand them, you can spot it like this. I'm domination is very very rigid top-down hierarchical. I won that you stay in your place. You don't move it from your place and the leader's job is in many ways to use the power to keep things in the status quo stabilized.

21:59 You don't want to be disruptive. If you don't want voices from the lower levels communication only flows top down and never flows down up and the whole system is maintained by a great deal of Shame flame a shame blame and fear so that people are afraid to to say they're afraid to speak their afraid to think that I want to bring their idea for orderly critique for this doesn't work on their freedom. They basically and the messages you can be replaced. There's five other people waiting for your job. There's a lot of that fear tactic used a lot of scarcity talk and language used in Domination and we're certainly seeing some cultures move towards domination at this point in our history and others are choosing to move towards Partnerships of partnership. You have that everybody bringing their gifts their abilities to the table. There's mutual respect.

22:59 There's a recognition that I can't do this alone. I need my library and I need the person who's an expert at copy-editing. There isn't a you seek out communication. You want everybody to be bringing both ideas forward positive ideas for but things that I don't think this is going to work or I disagree because that makes the whole system stronger and it is not a flat organization. You still have a leaders. So if it's a family you still have parents if is a classroom you have a teacher if it's a business you have a president or CEO, but the rule instead of keeping everything contained and held down you use all your power and influence at all times to lift people up because the whole thing Rises as individuals rise, and so is that speaking of information that seeking of communication and feedback the wanted me wanting you to be driving as a librarian that you

23:59 Manacles are cut off and that you're free to create and in vision and dream the library for years to come. So applying that we applied to the journal but I also applied in my work was didn't I say that students? I'm preparing you for jobs that don't exist and remarkably. They still keep following me and they want to come and preparing them to think for the world is coming. I'm preparing them to the skills and abilities that will be leading the world that's coming creating the world is coming and I don't want to see them reactionary just responding to the way the world is I want them to Envision and lead us to a healthier place and that's what the journals about. It's about bringing those voices forward so that everyone whatever your expertise is, I don't care whatever discipline your from if you are committed to seeing a world where people work collab.

24:59 Where gifts are not a ranked and marginalized for people are not excluded and some people are in and some people are out. We will have this is what we're looking for. So we want people in the community who feel strong about that opened out doing work for a long time with marginalized communities or working with new models of the way things to work come forward. Look at our Journal this for Open Access look it up and see if you can participate we would love to have you Scholars if your work is moving and creating new models Innovative model. We want you. I don't think G is not a journal on my field. It isn't a journal in your field at the journal in everybody's field. It's a shared space of idea.

25:48 And I think it's it's worth kind of talking about our scholarly process cuz I think there's also a lot of misconceptions around what Open Access is Sao ordinal is a peer-reviewed journal and you can talk about the process in article goes through but the first similar to subscription-based journals except that people don't pay a subscription will like anything the internet has been just full of wonderful gift to humanity and some downsides for Humanity and one of the things in the whole area of open-access that has occurred or online publishing. I should say Open Access is a philosophy that sound and it works well and it really is supporting this idea shared knowledge online publishing has some downsize and one of them is predatory publishing in which people or Scholars are invited to publish and then once a piece has accepted to recharge very large sums of money to publish.

26:48 And as a special young scholars are trying to establish their career. It's very tempting to say we'll all pay for me and $5,000 or $500 several times to be able to get up a publishing play history so that I can get a job in the field. And this is the Predators know that and they look for people and so I'm just some rules if I'm around predatory publishing if everybody says, it's the person writing you emailing you generally if there's typos and their emails. It's a pretty good sign that they're not a reputable publisher. If they say you're the greatest thing that ever existed and everybody knows about you. I would say that there's huge red flags around that type of language if they say I leave seat read your articles and it has nothing to do with your work. There's a problem. They haven't read your articles and also some of them say, we will let you know within twenty-four hours if you are accepted will you cannot do

27:48 Rigorous pure review process in 24 hours. So there's some key indicators when that form of online publishing is predatory this form of online publishing. We have been very firm that is going to be very rigorous and we follow high standards on that. We do do a double blind meaning that the reviewer does not know the author and the author does not know the reviewer. We also make sure that we're looking for extras in the field or people in the field or review papers that are have have come through our our submission process. And we do take time is not 24 hours. We take lots of time and we will send it back and we will we will reject papers that are not appropriate for the journal or don't reflect the standards that we have committed ourselves too. And I think that there's no there's no fees for authors to submit. There's no fees for anyone to read it and really though you can't run a journal with no money.

28:48 Peso with the time we all donate our time for this and the university libraries have provided the platformer funding for that. So we're very lucky to have those sorts of resources that we can do this and make it the free for authors and accessible to everyone and we can do that without the support of our partnership to you manage with the library so and the leadership at the library system or at the University system that says this is the form of scholarship to ship that we believe in we believe in inviting the communities to participate and be part of the vision of co-creating knowledge and using knowledge. I'm very grateful that our leaders are progressive and understand that. Have there been one or two pieces that we've published that are particularly memorable for you or resonated with you.

29:35 Oh, that's like saying which child you had best one was about community policing because it's just such a timely topic and to have new or younger Scholars from not Minnesota there from a different part of the country begin to do some work on. What would it look like if we really flip the model of policing from a domination system top-down communication only flows one way too, but you're really talking with the people you're serving you in the people you're perhaps arresting that there's just some different type of relationship is so that sticks in my mind is a very important seed of a contribution of could we re Envision this field or

30:35 Institution that it is is struggling right now another pieces. We've published recently some lovely. I work around transition Town movement, which is given the climate change environment and given the way we've been living in on sustainable ways. Can we envision what community means how we would live together how we would use resources together how we would you space collaboratively and those have been really hopeful messages again to do think that we don't have to necessarily deal with the model. We've been given and we don't necessarily have to run around put Band-Aids on a hemorrhage as I've been saying we can begin to Envision. What would what would a different Society look like not utopian certainly ground and in the in the dirt of a complex society

31:35 He is but can we really think this through and Nala something new? I think that you had mentioned when you're talking about. How is this related to nursing Institute? Everything is all related. And that's kind of how I felt about it to know when we first started talking about it was couple weeks away from giving birth to my first child and we were we publish the journal for real. I was very early pregnant with my second child and it just to me is all related in this is the this is the world that we're leaving for everyone in for a kids. And I found that through my library work to you in such surprising ways that I've been working with a school of nursing since 2005 and it it all together. It's not this is my job and this is why I work with and then there's the rest of my life. It just all is as part of the same thing and everything for you to each other and it's just such an invigorating thing to be part of a mean that the working with the Midwifery program just really shaped how I

32:35 Approached being pregnant and it was a PhD student who had worked with extensively who ended up being the one to deliver. My second child is everything and I'm just so Grateful Dead part of it. But then when you're at working at Peak when you're part of a partner having your working at Peak you are able to bring your highest work forward. So would you share the library recently one, right? Yeah. So the the metal from from library Services employee, but the library is were awarded the Oscars of the the library world so isn't a metal that recognize a contribution of the University of Minnesota libraries to the community and I think you know, this is one example of the way that we really engaged with the the community and it just one example, there's so many other ways cuz it's such a big community that touches in so many ways so many places so I see you tonight.

33:35 We live in it and it's really it's amazing and libraries all over the place are or doing things like that. So I'm like domination which leads to scarcity of partnership leads to abundance and when you're in Partnerships with one another it's not a point of saying no or suffering or we're doing with less. It's really able to make everything flourish and certainly the library system in a beautiful job flourishing with this partnership model the relative together, and that's the one thing about it. I'll thank you so much for talking today. This is really fun to kind of walk through these things and talk about things. We don't talk about for thanking you.