Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing; The Guardian, December 26, 2025

 Ben Martynoga, The Guardian; Defunding fungi: US’s living library of ‘vital ecosystem engineers’ is in danger of closing

"Inside a large greenhouse at the University of Kansas, Professor Liz Koziol and Dr Terra Lubin tend rows of sudan grass in individual plastic pots. The roots of each straggly plant harbor a specific strain of invisible soil fungus. The shelves of a nearby cold room are stacked high with thousands of plastic bags and vials containing fungal spores harvested from these plants, then carefully preserved by the researchers.

The samples in this seemingly unremarkable room are part of the International Collection of Vesicular Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (INVAM), the world’s largest living library of soil fungi. Four decades in the making, it could cease to exist within a year due to federal budget cuts.

For leading mycologist Toby Kiers, this would be catastrophic. “INVAM represents a library of hundreds of millions of years of evolution,” said Kiers, executive director of the Society for Protection of Underground Networks (Spun). “Ending INVAM for scientists is like closing the Louvre for artists."

Professor analyzing decades of data to determine patent value; University of Kansas, 8/30/16

University of Kansas; Professor analyzing decades of data to determine patent value:

"For more than two centuries, patents have been considered a key governmental policy tool for economic innovation. And for just as long numerous assumptions have been made about what they mean to an innovation’s value, where the most important ones are litigated and numerous other questions. A University of Kansas law professor is part of a project that is providing definitive answers to these and other patent questions for policy makers through a unique, big-data approach.

Andrew Torrance, the Earl B. Schurtz Research Professor at the University of Kansas School of Law, and colleagues have developed an approach to analyze mountains of detailed U.S. patent data from 1976 to the present day. One application of their research, commissioned by Canada's Ministry of Innovation, has been a comprehensive analysis of how patents having either Canadian inventors or owners compare with those without such connections. One of their most striking findings is that patents listing at least one Canadian inventor are more than 15 percent more valuable, on average, than other patents."

After University of Kansas Approves Open Access, SPARC Pushes for More; Library Journal, 8/13/09

Norman Oder via Library Journal; After University of Kansas Approves Open Access, SPARC Pushes for More:

"First public university in U.S. to adopt OA; will use KU Scholar Works:

In June, the University of Kansas, Lawrence, became the first public university in the United States to adopt an open access (OA) regarding scholarly research, and SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) is offering resources to encourage other universities to take the plunge.

Under the faculty-initiated policy, faculty members will send digital copies of their articles to KU ScholarWorks, created in 2005, which houses more than 4400 articles. Professors can seek a waiver via a process to developed by a Senate task force in the coming academic year...

“Granting the university the right to deposit a copy of scholarly journal articles in an open digital repository extends the reach of the scholarship, providing the widest possible audience and increasing its possible impact,” said Lorraine J. Haricombe, dean of libraries.

SPARC effortNoting that many faculty members and administrators remain unfamiliar with OA, SPARC now offers a suite of web-based tools concerning issues like copyright, journal sustainability, disciplinary differences, and author rights.

Publicly available tools include the SPARC guide to implementing a campus open-access policy; background on the Harvard University Faculty of Arts and Sciences policy (passed in February 2008), the first in which U.S. faculty voted unanimously for OA as a default; and videos from the SPARC-ACRL forum on the Harvard policy.

Also available by request are two documents based on previous OA campaigns: “Campus open-access policy ‘Choice Points’,” which concerns policy options and recommended steps; and “Responses to common misconceptions about campus open-access policies.”

A group of expert advisers is also available as a resource. “It has become increasingly clear to me that the many efforts on university campuses to draft, promote, and implement open-access policies can benefit from the experiences of others who have been through the process,” said Stuart Shieber, Director of Harvard’s Office of Scholarly Communication."

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6676597.html