Academic Interests

Commons Groups

HC
MSU
HASTAC
STEMEDPLUS

Recent Commons Activity

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HASTAC

About

Bonnie Russell (MLIS, Wayne State University) is the Product Manager for Knowledge Commons, Associate Director for Mesh Research, and Digital Strategist for HuMetricsHSS. She has extensive experience in technical project management, UX design, QA testing, technical documentation and training, and metadata management.

Ms. Russell has been active working with digital humanities scholars since 2012, helping scholars shape projects and identify technology needs and is a core faculty member in Digital Humanities at MSU (DH@MSU). In case you were wondering, her loves include cats, bats, dinosaurs, and Godzilla.

Note: The School of Information Science at Wayne State University interviewed me for their alumni spotlight feature. I’m thrilled to be included. The College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University covered the release of our OER, Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication in February 2023.

Education

MLIS, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

BA, Film Studies, minor in Theatre, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI

Blog Posts

KCWorks

Publications

Articles
Burton, Kath, Cocks, Catherine, and Russell, Bonnie. ‘Recognizing and Harnessing the Transformational Power of Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for Publicly-engaged Scholars’. Information Services & Use. 6 Nov. 2023 : 1 – 6.

Open Educational Resource
Publishing Values-based Scholarly Communication by Kath Burton, Catherine Cocks, and Bonnie Russell

Book Chapter
HuMetricsHSS, Russell, B., Weber, P., Kennison, R., Sacchi, S., Thornton Dill, B., Rhody, J., Agate, N., & Long, C. P. (2025). Enacting Values: Libraries as Catalysts for Change. In Making Values-Based Decisions in the Academic Library (p. 304). Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), American Library Association. https://doi.org/10.17613/3p6eg-n9k67

Reports
Barboza, C., Bayeck, R., Drayer, A., Frank, J., Galson, G., Hricko, M., Hu, R., Russell, B., Tang, L., & Guerra, W. (2023). Digital Library Accessibility Policy and Practice Guidelines: A Guide by the Digital Accessibility Working Group.

Blog Posts
The HumetricsHSS Initiative. (2025, June 16). Is federal funding still a viable research assessment indicator in the age of Trump? Impact of Social Sciences – Maximizing the impact of academic research.

Building the Commons
Trailer: From Pilot to Platform – A new series about project management on the Commons

Platypus, the Humanities Commons Team Blog
Five Years by the Numbers – a deep dive into the growth of the HC community

Commons Highlights
A new series highlighting groups, sites, and organizations that make the Commons their home. We’re asking users who have created vibrant and thriving communities on how they did it, and the lessons they have learned.
Dr. Kendra Preston Leonard
The Global Digital Humanities Symposium
The Composers of Color Resource Project
The Open Access Books Network

Projects

Events: 
MSU Commons: An Introduction, October 13, 2021 (workshop)
Online Communities and Transformative Justice CORE Deposit Party, March 30, 2021

Design and Build

Video:
MSU Commons: Intro to Profiles — Script and video build, Michigan State University
MSU Commons: Intro to CORE — Script, voiceover, and video build, Michigan State University
Introducing MSU Commons — Script, voiceover, and video build, Michigan State University

Manifold:
Walking the Talk: Toward a Values-Aligned Academy – HuMetricsHSS

Web:
AI Controversies article collection
Commons Help & Support, Michigan State University
HuMetricsHSS, Michigan State University
WayneOpen.org, Wayne State University Press (video explaining the project)

Upcoming Talks and Conferences

October 2025 – Open Education Conference, Lightning Talk: “Connecting, Sharing, and Discovering: Knowledge Commons for Researchers, Educators, and OER Creators”

Previous Talks and Conferences:

July 2025 – INSciTS, “Creating the Next-Generation Multidisciplinary Repository” – Larissa Babak, Bonnie Russell, Stephanie Vasko

April 4, 2025 – CELJ Virtual Conference “Open Dialogues,” Panel: Scholarly Communications Platforms Editors Need to Know About

April 8, 2025 – Global Digital Humanities Symposium, Michigan State University, “Designing A Modern and Globally Accessible Open-Access Repository” – Larissa Babak, Bonnie Russell, Ian Scott, Stephanie E. Vasko

October 7-8, 2024 – TriangleSCI, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC

August 16, 2023 – Reclaim Community Chat – The Federated Commons (recording)

July 24-26, 2023 – INSciTS 2023

July 13, 2023 – WPCampus: Building a large-scale, decentralized academic social network with WordPress and ActivityPub

June 14, 2023 – Digital Humanities Summer Institute: Project Management in the Humanities

June 12, 2023 – Digital Humanities Summer Institute: Open/Social/Digital Humanities Pedagogy, Training, and Mentorship

August 17, 2022 – NISO Roundtable: “Building Support for Non-Traditional Scholarly Outputs”

September 22, 2021 – WPCampus Panel: “Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic”

Memberships

American Library Association

Association of College and Research Libraries

Michigan Academic Library Association (MiALA)

Digital Accessibility Group, Digital Library Federation – Policy and Workflows Committee

Michigan OER Network

Former memberships:

NASIG – Member of the NASIG Open Initiatives Committee, 2021-2022

Association of University Presses – Chair, Digital Publishing Committee – 2019-2020

Bonnie Russell

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@bonnie

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