Charleston Conference

The focus of the Charleston Conference is on acquisition for research and academic libraries, particularly serials and academic books. It also covers library infrastructure topics, such as vendor systems and library technology.^[2][6] The conference is one of the only major library conferences in the United States that is independent from a large professional or trade organization.^[2]

Each conference tends to have a focus topic, such as open access publishing^[7] or the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on collections management.^[8][9] Presentations and discussions can address a broad range of issues that affect scholarly publishing and librarianship, including electronic collections, remote learning, diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, open research, publishers agreements, workflow technologies, data analytics, standards,^[8] copyright law, the U.S. government appropriations process, the impact of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)'s 2022 Nelson Memo,^[10] intellectual freedom, disinformation, and legal challenges against libraries.^[9]

The conference is associated with the publication Against the Grain, which began as a newsletter for conference attendees in 1989.^[11] Against the Grain has become a periodical for librarians, dealing with a broad range of topics in librarianship including American copyright law.^[12]

As of 2000, the Conference published papers from the conference in the form of the Charleston Conference Proceedings.^[13][14]