Reference publishing news from LJ Online
Although the title is slightly misleading, Cheryl LaGuardia’s recent blog post over at LibraryJournal.com is very positive. In the post, LaGuardia notes that Salem Press offers free access to the online version of its print titles, either through Salem History or Salem Health, whichever is applicable. What’s misleading is that the online access does not apply just to backlist titles but in fact to frontlist ones as well. Regardless, this “print plus online” offer is true for the 2 sets (with more forthcoming) that we’ve published and that are distributed by Salem: Milestone Documents in American History and Milestone Documents of American Leaders (referred to as “American History” and “American Leaders” in the article). We are thrilled with–and agree with–LaGuardia’s assessment of the program:
“So what does this Salem program translate as? A REALLY BIG DEAL. Kudos to Salem for doing something remarkable – that I hope other publishers will fall in with.”
Meanwhile, LJ.com also has an interesting interview with Eric Calaluca of Paratext, the publisher of Reference Universe (and, like Schlager Group, based in Texas). Reference Universe is an online database that indexes subject encyclopedias from many different publishers at the article level. This is hugely valuable product, because it allows users to find relevant encyclopedia articles when they are searching for information on a given topic. As I have previously blogged about, the whole issue of “reference discoverability” has been a major liability for reference publishers for decades now, and Calaluca rightly points the finger in part at publishers themselves for “not doing enough to educate” librarians about their products. I wish there were a free product that was availabe to 100% of libraries, perhaps one created by a consortium of reference publishers. Fat chance, that. But in any event, let’s hope Reference Universe continues to thrive, since it’s really the only discoverability tool there is for print reference titles.