ALA Midwinter roundup
It was an odd ALA Midwinter meeting in Denver this past weekend. Attendance was down sharply, and as a result the traffic on the convention floor was quite lackluster–especially in the nether regions of the floor where some of the smaller presses had their booths. This included Salem Press, which is where our titles are showcased. Traffic was a little better in the center of the floor at the big booths–Gale, ProQuest, EBSCO, and so forth. Now that EBSCO has purchased Salem, they might have better proximity to the hub at future conferences.
Leaving aside the issue of traffic, these conventions have evolved into a place where vendors do business with other vendors, while showing off their products to librarians on the side. Librarians no longer make purchases on the convention floor, so one of the original justifications for vendors to exhibit their products has all but disappeared. It’s not hard to see why some vendors are choosing not to exhibit at some of these conventions.
For me, it was still a very useful conference, as I had excellent discussions with Salem about our partnership and the promotion of our upcoming titles. I was disappointed that Milestone Documents in American History did not make the RUSA list of oustanding reference sources, but I feel certain that our future titles will be strong candidates for this award. It was fun to run into Lee Lerner at the convention, in between his ski outings.
Two items to comment on with regard to the Milestone Documents Blog. First, the American Historical Association Blog has taken notice of our historians’ roundup of Obama’s inaugural address. Second, this morning we posted the full text of Obama’s recent executive orders regarding the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and “ensuring lawful interrogations.”
March 1st, 2009 at 3:20 pm
Dear Neil,
Please pardon my delay in responding to your post, I’ve been traveling the past three weeks. and vexed by technical difficulties with our blog and website.
First off, I think Milestone Docs not being on the RUSA list is a great oversight. I have put hands and eyes on at least four books on that list (including our own), and now as a fellow RUSA winner perhaps I now have the “street creds” to say that your book was vastly superior to many on the list. In fact, I know of none on the list that are its equal.
Your content was fabulous, the copyediting superb, the design nearly flawless.
All I can think happened is what happened with a book we wrote two years ago titled Essential Primary Sources: Medicine, Health and Bioethics. We poured our heart and best scholarly efforts into that book — and had hopes it might make the RUSA list. We were greatly disappointed when the awards were announced.
A few weeks afterwards, the person who nominated the book wrote us and shared some comments from the RUSA deliberations. While everyone raved about the book, they disqualified it because the book’s essential content was “primary sources.”
If this is the case, then I respectfully think that RUSA should more clearly articulate such standards. More to the point, if this is the reason “primary source books” are overlooked, then RUSA should reconsider any such standard because the essential content of such books is often not the primary source itself (most of the primary sources are available via NARA or other sources), but rather the corpus of the selections and expert commentary that explains and puts each source into context.
Congratulations on the other awards for Milestone Docs — and keep up the excellent work!
Brenda and I hope to share a bottle of wine with you soon in an effort to drown our common editorial tribulations and woes.
Cheers,
Lee
March 1st, 2009 at 5:29 pm
Thanks for your kind words about Milestone Docs in American History, Lee. It would indeed be interesting to know whether the awards committee frowned on our “primary sources” content or whether it just didn’t think our title deserved the award. It has been a challenge to convey that our Milestone Docs titles are built on extensive original analysis; many librarians haven’t quite grasped that fact, no matter how often we emphasize it. So it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that an awards committee was similarly confused. Since I wasn’t there to hear the RUSA awards committee discuss our title, I can only speculate. We’ll certainly follow in coming years if we are lucky enough to have future titles nominated for the award.