SchlagerBlog

Over at the Milestone Documents blog, the Doc of the Day is one of the most famous speeches in American history: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Pearl Harbor” speech. The photo here is of FDR signing the declaration of war against Japan, which he did a short while after delivering his address to Congress on December 8, 1941.

Today is a good day to revisit the press release we published last year at this time, “Five Things You Should Know about FDR’s Pearl Harbor Speech.” It’s a great tool for teachers and students, and in fact I should remind readers that we are offering a free 36 x 24 poster of these “Five Things” to any school or library that purchases Milestone Documents in American History. If you’ve previously purchased the title, not to worry: just call our distributor, Salem Press, and we’ll send along a poster anyway. The number is 800-221-1592.

The newest issue of Curriculum Connections, which is published as a supplement to School Library Journal, has an interesting interview with the historian Howard Zinn. Many of you will know him as the author of A People’s History of the United States, which has become a standard history textbook (or textbook alternative) in much of the country. Famous for his left-leaning politics and his work to popularize the stories of minorities, women, the powerless, etc., Zinn is a lightning rod for criticism. His Wikipedia page offers a useful window into his life, his work, and the controversy that surrounds him. Although I won’t venture any comment here about Zinn’s work, I like what Douglas Brinkley said about him on the Book TV “In Depth” program that I recently blogged about (and I paraphrase): If you only read his book and no others, you would be left with an unbalanced view of American history. But he is a terrific writer and historian who knows how to craft engaging, compelling narratives.

On another topic, I have been enthusiastically watching the PBS series “Spain…On the Road Again.” Part travelogue and part cooking show, it features Mario Batali and Gwyneth Paltrow (along with the New York Times writer Mark Bittman and the Spanish actress Claudia Bassols) as they travel around the country, sampling regional Spanish cuisine, seeing the sights, and having fun. The show is heaven for a hispanophile like myself, and you won’t be surprised to learn that I just ordered the companion book.  Who knew that Gwyneth Paltrow was fluent in Spanish? She speaks the language beautifully. Mario Batali is likewise fluent, although his accent leaves something to be desired. (For the record: I speak Spanish horribly.) It all makes me long to visit the country again, if not to live there again (as I did for a while in college).

Back to American history for a moment: Over at the Milestone Documents blog, we’ve launched a new category called “Spotlight.” From time to time we’ll focus on famous historial persons and tell you where to find information about them–and their primary sources–on the Web. It should provide an entertaining snapshot of some of the content that will find its way into our forthcoming Milestone Documents of American Leaders. Our first Spotlight post is on Andrew Jackson.

Over on his Digital Reference blog, Stephen Francoeur has written an interesting post titled “Reference e-books wishlist.” The post comes in response to a call by Sue Polanka on her No Shelf Required blog for librarians to comment on what they would like to see from electronic reference publishers. For the most part, Francoeur’s suggestions are not new, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t worth reading or contemplating. Quite the contrary. From gateway standardization to open Web “findability” to accessible user interfaces, these items are ones that I’m sure all reference publishers are working on and thinking about. I myself am passionate about figuring out how to make our content visible on the open Web; if users could see that we offered a terrific analysis of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address and were alerted to the options for finding that analysis–for free through Salem History, if their library owns it, or for a small fee on our upcoming direct-to-consumer site (www.MilestoneDocuments.com)–then think how many more people would find their way to the content that we worked so hard to develop! It seems so simple, but alas that magical day isn’t here yet. However, I’m convinced that it’s not far off.

Since we are a tiny publisher that already relies on other publishers’ electronic platforms to ensure digital delivery of our content,  I have no problem with the call for someone to begin aggregating the digital resources of many different publishers on one platform. Gale, to name one, already does this to some extent with its Gale Virtual Reference Library, but for the most part the other heavyweights in the industry have preferred to carve out their own platforms rather than combine forces to offer a single unified platform. The reason is obvious: A publisher that offers its content on its own platform gets to keep all the revenue; a publisher that puts its content on someone else’s platform has to give up a big chunk of that revenue. Sure, the publisher that chooses an already built platform is saved the (considerable) expense of building its own, but is that enough to compensate for the reduced revenue year after year in the future? Not necessarily.

I was amused at Francoeur’s call for publishers to stop offering print reference. We’ve been hearing about the death of print reference for some time now, and it’s true that academic libraries in particular have been huge adopters of electronic reference. At the same time, so many libraries–including academic ones–continue to purchase print reference (even when an electronic version is available) that it’s impossible for most publishers to consider jettisoning print sources anytime in the near future. Is this a chicken-and-egg problem? If librarians would stop buying print reference, publishers would certainly stop offering it (and most would probably be happy to do so). And if publishers stopped offering print, then libraries would be forced to choose electronic sources. But for now, there is too much at stake for publishers to go cold turkey on this. And what about the patrons who prefer or need print? (They do exist.)

Nevertheless, Francoeur’s wish list is a good one, and I’m heartened by the fact that these same suggestions tend to crop up more and more in discussions between publishers and librarians. That can only mean that there is a growing consensus around these issues, and that kind of consensus usually presages genuine progress.

Booklist Online has posted a roundup of the “Future of Electronic Reference Publishing” panel discussion at the ALA convention in Anaheim. It appears to have been an interesting session, with input from executives from several big publishers of both print and electronic products: Gale Cengage, Sage, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and Oxford University Press. As if their own recent publications (see here and here for examples) weren’t proof enough, it’s clear that these publishers recognize that their future success depends heavily on electronic publishing. I think that’s true for every reference publisher, no matter how large or small.

The American Library Association Web site has a brief video selection from the “Speaking Technically” discussion that took place in Anaheim last month. Among the database publishers represented on this panel were Gale Cengage, Alexander Street Press, Greenwood, Ebrary, EBSCO, and ProQuest. The video posted at the ALA site includes a portion of the question-and-answer session. At one point, the panelists were asked about enabling folksonomies in their database products; that is, allowing users to tag articles. Although this kind of “social tagging” is seen as a positive aspect of Web 2.0 publishing, most of the panelists expressed reservations about this, and for good reason, I think. Stephen Rhind-Tutt of Alexander Street Press talked about his company’s interest in creating an academic video database and about one major hurdle: the difficulty of creating effective search strategies for video content. (By the way, check out some of the articles/presentations by Rhind-Tutt available at the Alexander Street site.) Another topic of discussion was the age-old one of ensuring that library patrons are aware of the electronic databases that their library offers and know how to find and use them. As Jim Draper of Gale Cengage remarked (and I paraphrase), it’s heartbreaking when you build a product and no one uses it. This issue has bedeviled reference publishers since forever; print products have long been “invisible” to many library users. One fortunate thing about electronic publishing is that it gives us tools to ensure that users know where and how to find our content.

I only learned today that Matthew J. Bruccoli, a renowned F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar and one of the founders of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, the classic reference series from Gale, passed away in early June. (Michael Rogers, in his Library Journal article about Bruccoli’s death, called the DLB “hands down the greatest literary reference work ever produced.”) Here is the New York Times obituary about Bruccoli.

When I was employed at Gale, I occasionally had the pleasure of working with the manuscript of one or another of the DLB volumes (which eventually grew into a multitude of some 400). I was always struck by the quality of the text and illustrations alike; reading an article about some important author, you were also treated to photographs of hand-written manuscript pages, book covers, and letters. In other words, the volumes offered a good deal of illuminating primary sources in addition to document analysis–just the kind of thing we are doing with our Milestone Documents series, only in a more focused way.

In recent years Bruccoli argued passionately that the decline in print reference as a library staple was harmful to libraries and to the civilization at large. (Here’s an old blog post I wrote about one such Bruccoli missive.) He obviously loved books, libraries, literature, and history, and his life’s work seems to have reflected these interests to the very end. I’m sorry I never knew him.

My trip to Anaheim for the ALA Annual Convention went smoothly. The weather was excellent (I had forgotten what it was like to eat outside in total comfort in the evening), and my business meetings were, as always, very useful. I spent a lot of time with our friends and partners at Salem Press, and those interactions merely reinforced my sense that Salem is in a good flow right now. They are releasing lots of desirable new products, including digital ones, and they have devised some rather groundbreaking sales offerings for those products. And, of course, they are working with some great young publishing companies to distribute compelling new titles.

Due to a conflict with my flight schedule, I missed the one discussion group that I had really wanted to attend: “The Future of Electronic Publishing,” moderated by Sue Polanka of Wright State University and author of the No Shelf Required blog. A summary of the discussion will apparently be available in the near future.

The Tools of Change for Publishing blog (part of the incredible O’Reilly empire) has a helpful recap of the convention, at least as it relates to issues of interest to publishers. Among other things, librarians are urging publishers to make sure that their resources can be found via Google and that their Web sites offer detailed product information, including reviews, which are critical for purchasing decisions.

I’m thankful the convention didn’t happen this past weekend; I would have been heartbroken to have missed the jaw-dropping day-long Wimbledon final between Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, which by general consensus was one of the greatest tennis matches of all time. I don’t have any trips planned over the next month, which is a good thing, as there is plenty here to keep me busy–including our move to a new office space and continued work on Milestone Documents of American Leaders and our new digital history offerings.

It’s fun to see our first title (Milestone Documents of American History) begin to make its way into libraries around the country. The Duggin Library Blog at Hanover College notes that the college has acquired our title (and accompanying online database) and has plans to acquire the next 4 titles in the series as well. Meanwhile, it’s been interesting to watch our WorldCat page to see the growing list of libraries that have purchased the title; this is far from a complete list, as many libraries do not link their holdings to WorldCat. Nevertheless, it does provide an interesting snapshot. It’s rather breathtaking to realize how different the reference industry operated when I joined it a couple of decades ago, back before there was an Internet to speak of. These days, librarians are working hard to reach out to their patrons via a wide range of Internet tools, from blogs to Facebook pages to Second Life.

Speaking of Internet tools, we are working feverishly to get our MilestoneDocuments.com companion site up and running; one of the fun aspects we are going to incorporate is a group blog. You’ll be hearing lots more about this later in the summer with the official launch of the site.

As we head into June, I’m reminded that the annual meeting of the American Library Association is coming up at the end of the month. This year’s convention is in Anaheim; apparently the convention center is directly across from Disneyland. I doubt I’ll have time to make my first visit to that park, but you never know.

In any event, I once again invite any librarians who are attending the convention to e-mail me if you’d like to hear more about our Milestone Documents series or about our publishing efforts in general. For my part, I love to hear librarians talk about their institutions, their patrons, the kinds of reference books and databases they are purchasing, pet peeves, and so forth. There are always some great discussion meetings too; one to look forward to this year is called “The Future of Electronic Reference Publishing: A View from the Top.” The meeting will be moderated by Sue Polanka (chair of the editorial board of Reference Books Bulletin and author of the No Shelf Required blog) and will feature input from executives of several big reference companies (emphasis on “big,” which thus disqualifies us!), including Gale Cengage, Oxford University Press, Sage, and Encyclopaedia Britannica.

William Badke, a librarian at Trinity Western University, has recently written an article for Online about the “elephant in the room” of the publishing industry (his phrase): Wikipedia. His argument is well reasoned and articulate. Essentially, he remarks that the current attitude of publishers, librarians, and academics toward Wikipedia is tatamount to ignoring the elephant in the room. Millions of students and other researchers routinely use it now, regardless of exhortations not to do so. What’s more, he says, there is much to like about Wikipedia. The challenge is in finding a way to acknowledge and use what is good about it while also helping researchers find their way to more authoritative, trusted sources–whether those sources are free or subscription-based. Although many of my publishing peers would prefer that Wikipedia just went away, I agree with Badke–Wikipedia is here to stay, and we better figure out an honest way to relate to it if we want to retain credibility with students. In reference publishing, that means focusing on those aspects where Wikipedia falls short–authority, accuracy, and editing. I believe there is room for both models in today’s (and tomorrow’s) information industry.