SchlagerBlog

I’m pleased to announce the publication today of Milestone Documents in World History, the latest installment in our Milestone Documents series of reference sets. This 4-volume, 1,900-page set covers 125 essential primary documents from ancient history to the present. As with all of our Milestone Documents sets, the entries here combine the full text of the document with an in-depth, analytical essay by a historian that places the document in its historical context, explains what the text says and means, and describes the impact. If you want to see an example from the set, read our entry on the Haiti Constitution of 1801.

We’ve heard many times from librarians and history teachers alike how difficult it is to find good, authoritative resources on world history, so we think our new set will find a warm welcome in libraries around the country, whether they are school, public, or academic ones. Also, once again we offer a complete set of teacher activity guides for educators who are using the set; these are correlated to the National Standards for World History.

Finally, remember that all of our sets come with free online access (via Salem History) for an entire school or campus, and that access includes remote access from a student’s dorm room or home. As ever, it’s the best deal in reference publishing. If you want to order the set, just visit Salem’s Web site or call toll-free 1-800-221-1592.

I’m happy to announce that we have lowered the prices for most of our iPhone and iPod Touch applications. Our Lincoln and Obama apps are now just $.99, and our Presidential Speeches–Pro app is now only $4.99, an incredible bargain for an app that includes 90 famous presidential speeches in history PLUS our award-winning document analysis. For any social studies teachers whose classrooms have iPod Touches, I hope you’ll check out our apps and consider using them in the classroom. Our apps include the full text of important document texts, plus glossaries that define strange/unfamiliar references. And, of course, the 3 apps listed here also contain our expert analysis of each document.

We do still have a few more apps to launch later this year, probably in the fall. Chief among them will be our Supreme Court documents app, which we hope think will be a terrifically useful tool for teachers and students and a fun app for history buffs.

Last week several of us were lamenting how we never dress up any more; our office dress is always casual, since we don’t receive customers and rarely meet clients or partners. And then it came to us: why not institute a formal day at the office? Thus was born Formal Friday at Schlager Group. I think it’s funny and warped and appropriately off-beat. Our only advantage as a small company is to be nimble and flexible and able to turn on a dime. And that can extend to the way we dress, no?

In any case, here is a photo from our first Formal Friday. Our two offsite employees and our interns are missing, but the rest of the gang is here. Three guesses which one is the middle-aged male boss.

With the world’s attention focused on Haiti in the wake of the January 12 earthquake, we are making available for a limited period of time an entry from our forthcoming reference set Milestone Documents in World History: “Constitution of Haiti (1801).” This article discusses the history of Haiti, the slave revolt that became a revolution, and the creation of a constitution in 1801 that is a landmark on many levels. Although the constitution didn’t have a long life as a governing document, it was tremendously important, as it “launched the process of overthrowing European colonial rule in the Americas–rule that extended back some three centuries to the decades after Christopher Columbus’s historic voyage to the New World.” Read more.

Happy new year, everyone. Like many people I’ve talked to, I looked forward to catching my breath over the holidays–resting, reflecting, and planning. Alas, there was a wee gap between that vision and my reality. The final days of December were spent in a frenzy of work to get Milestone Documents in World History off to the printer. And now, back in the office this week, I have barely blinked, only to find that somehow it’s already Thursday afternoon. How did that happen? Oy.

In any event, we’ve had a good start to the year. This month, two key library industry publications have given awards to Milestone Documents of American Leaders: Booklist (via their Editor’s Choice award) and Choice (via their Outstanding Academic Title award). This gives us a 1,000 batting percentage with our publications as it relates to this pair of awards: our first two titles have each won both awards. Thank you to the Booklist and Choice awards committees for this recognition!

In addition to our forthcoming Milestone Documents reference sets in 2010 (World History in February, African American History in May, and World Religions in October),  we are tremendously excited about the upcoming launch of the redesigned MilestoneDocuments.com. We’re aiming for a February release, and I hope to be able to offer some screen shots of the new design/layout in the near future.

Also on our horizon this year is a new series of teacher materials based on our Milestone Documents content. We’ve assembled a killer group of educators to help us conceptualize this series. Again, stay tuned for news about that endeavor.

As a publisher focusing on history materials, we are always on the lookout for news items that point back to some of the primary documents we feature in our reference sets. An upcoming movie that is getting a lot of attention is Clint Eastwood’s Invictus, about Nelson Mandela urging the South African rugby team to win a championship and help unify the nation in the wake of the end of apartheid. Mandela is, of course, a titanic figure on the world stage from the latter part of the twentieth century. In my mind (and I’m hardly alone in this), his achievement in leading South Africa away from a bloodbath of revenge and reprisal following his release from prison and election to the presidency is nothing short of astonishing. It’s no surprise, then, that his 1994 inaugural address is included in our forthcoming Milestone Documents in World History. The address is a microcosm of the mindset that Mandela brought to his task as president: healing, forgiveness, building toward the future.

“The time for the healing of wounds has come. The moment to bridge the chasms that divide us has come. The time to build is upon us.”

In his analysis of Mandela’s inaugural address, our contributor Christopher Saunders draws some interesting parallels between Mandela’s address and Barack Obama’s inaugural address. As Chris notes: “When Obama delivered his inaugural address, many commentators in South Africa referred it to a ‘Mandela moment’ and reminded their readers of Mandela’s speech.” Readers who want to study our complete analysis of Mandela’s inaugural address can do so upon publication in a few weeks, provided their library purchases the set. If that’s not the case, readers will be able to download the analysis at MilestoneDocuments.com.

Another historic document that is in the news this week is the 1887 Dawes Severalty Act, which broke the final Native American land holdings into individual parcels and essentially completed the dispossession of native landholders. This week,  the U.S. government announced that it had agreed to pay $3.4 billion to settle a longstanding lawsuit over its mismanagement of Indian land trusts–mismanagement that goes back to the Dawes Act in 1887. Anyone studying the history of land struggles between the U.S. government and American Indians should examine the Dawes Act. The full text can be read at MilestoneDocuments.com, and readers can also download our expert analysis for immediate access as well.

This kind of current events tie-in is soon going to get a major boost from us. As we move closer to the relaunch of the dramatically overhauled MilestoneDocuments.com, we’ll be starting a new continuous updating effort that will help readers stay up to date with historic documents in the news as well as new ones that are appearing. This effort will bring a fresh, continually updated face to our Web site and give educators a useful new tool with which to help students explore and understand the past.

I’m happy to announce that additional Milestone Documents articles are now available individually from Amazon.com. We’ve been selling articles from Milestone Documents in American History on Amazon (as well as on MilestoneDocuments.com) for about year, but this week we have begun to load articles from the companion set, Milestone Documents of American Leaders. Thus, you can download articles that explain and analyze the primary documents of figures ranging from John Adams to George W. Bush to Susan B. Anthony to Frederick Douglass–and 100 more. Each article sells for $6.99 and carries the brand name “DocNotes,” so an easy way to find an article is to search for “DocNotes” plus the person’s name.

Although we will continue to build our deluxe, comprehensive reference sets (and users are still urged to check their library before buying an individual DocNotes article), offering our content by the article in places like Amazon and MilestoneDocuments.com is important, too, because so many students and teachers are served by library systems that won’t have our sets. We really do want to offer users the ability to get our content in whatever place or technology suits them best–whether via the library or the Internet or their mobile phone. While we’ve only just begun to tap the potential of this “anytime, anywhere” model of content delivery, there is no doubt in my mind that it’s the wave of the future.

Once the redesign for MilestoneDocuments.com is launched in early 2010, users will be able to download the American Leaders articles from our site, too, along with articles from our forthcoming Milestone Documents in World History.

At the recent TCSS annual conference here in Dallas, I was intrigued by the number of educators whose schools were rolling out iPod Touch programs, either campus-wide or on a trial basis beginning with specific classes (or in the library). From what I gather, the goal is to facilitate “active” learning–to avoid the paradigm of students sitting passively by while a teacher lectures to them. This may include asking students to take notes with the device, or to interact with their fellow students and their teachers by using specific apps for the device. I did some online searching to see how widespread this movement is. While I didn’t find any research data on that front, I did find lots of sites where educators were discussing this concept. (See, for example, this and this.) I was also interested to see that the upcoming K12 Online Conference has at least 2 sessions devoted to the topic of iPod use in the classroom.

Of course, since we happen to have several new apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch aimed at history teachers and students, I’m intrigued primarily as a publisher (”How can we persuade educators to give our apps a try in their classrooms?”). But I’m also interested in the topic because I’m a big believer in the need for educators to find new and creative ways to motivate students and facilitate learning. Technology, obviously, is one of the best ways to do this, as I recently blogged about.

I will continue to research the topic of iPod adoption in schools and will report back here as I learn more.

Over the weekend, Apple gave quick approval to our newest apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch: Obama Speeches and Analysis and Lincoln Speeches and Analysis. Each app costs $1.99. In each case, we offer the full text of 4 iconic speeches along with complete expert commentary of the speeches by the Lincoln scholar Paul Finkelman (also the executive editor for our Milestone Documents series of reference books) and the presidential historian Chester Pach (writing about Obama). There are all sorts of cool features with these apps, from note-taking to highlighting to e-mailing to auto-scrolling. Learn more about them at the App store or in iTunes. Of course, both Lincoln and Obama are also included in our U.S. Presidential Speeches app (available in $.99 and $9.99 versions).

This past weekend, we showcased our Milestone Documents product line with an exhibit booth at the annual conference of the Texas Council for the Social Studies. It was an extremely rewarding experience for us, as we were able to meet hundreds of educators from around the state and introduce them to our materials. To celebrate the occasion, we gave away 3 Milestone Documents reference sets each day. I’m pleased to announce the winners here:

Day 1 winners

• Sarah Cook, Rockwall ISD
• Raff Saeed, Galena Park ISD
• Amanda Jimenez, Texas Tech University

Day 2 winners

• Margaret Eubanks, Goose Greek CSID
• Marilyn Wooldridge, Fort Worth ISD
• Alberto Guajardo, United ISD

Each one of these winners will receive the Milestone Docs reference set of their choice, which includes a 4-volume print set and free online access for their entire school via the Salem History platform.

In addition to the print winners, we gave away 50 iPhone apps for our new U.S. Presidential Speeches app. Half of the winners will receive the basic version, which includes the full text of 90 famous presidential speeches; the other half will receive the pro version, which also includes our award-winning expert analysis of each speech.

It was truly an exciting weekend for all of us here at Schlager Group, and we are already looking forward to next year’s TCSS conference in Houston.