SchlagerBlog

Today is, of course, election day. The readers of this blog will note that like most corporate bloggers, I have kept my personal political views under wraps. I suppose I buy into the argument that you don’t want to alienate any customers; thus, leave politics out of the equation. However, others have taken a different view. One blogger whose work I always read is Tim O’Reilly, the founder and head of O’Reilly Media. For those of you who don’t know O’Reilly Media, they have staked out a dominant presence in technical publishing and have become an innovator in community-building related to technology, publishing, and Web communication. Although I have not yet had the opportunity to attend one of their Tools of Change for Publishing conferences, I have recently joined their TOC social community. XML publishing tools, Web 2.0 strategies, digital publishing–since these topics are at the heart of so many of our own company’s efforts, I’m very glad to have an organization like O’Reilly leading the way.

Last week, interestingly enough, Tim O’Reilly wrote an impassioned blog post explaining why he was voting for Obama.  What followed, apparently, was a cascade of comments on his blog post, with a number of commenters criticizing his decision to make his allegience plain. Yesterday he responded with further thoughts, explaining his decision and relating it to the larger issue of trying to use the Web for things that matter, such as faciliating discussion about important issues to the tech community–and the world at large.

My take on it? Bravo, Tim. And I say that not merely because I agree with his position and am likewise supporting Obama. Rather, I think he has shown leadership on this issue in the same way that his company has shown leadership on so many items that matter to the publishing community. It’s the kind of leadership that most of us hope to see in our next president–regardless of who is elected. For those of us who run companies, the challenge shouldn’t be to hide our every political viewpoint at the risk of offending someone, but rather to become fully engaged in the issues of our day and to address them. There is such a thing as intelligent disagreement. We can have frank discussions about important topics, even politics, without resorting to boycotts and scorched-earth pronouncements and needless attacks on those who disagree with us. As much as anything, I believe this is what Barack Obama represents for our country–a way out of the poisonous muck of the recent past and toward an atmosphere where our country can get on with the task of discussing, and addressing, the huge challenges that we face.

I find myself wondering what his inaugural address will be like. Talk about raised expectations. Talk about a milestone document.

In the wake of our smashing success with the free Constitution poster offer, we are running a new promotion: Purchase Milestone Documents in American History and receive a free poster about Franklin Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor speech. The poster will be shipped in time for classroom discussion related to Pearl Harbor Day in December. As great as the poster is, of course, the real value here is the content in MDAH, which includes the 4-volume print set as well as free online access to the content via Salem History through 2011. In addition to the engaging, accessible expert analysis of the Pearl Harbor speech, the set offers in-depth analysis of several other key FDR documents: his first inaugural address, his critical 1936 campaign address at Madison Square Garden, his “Four Freedoms” message to Congress in 1941, and several executive orders and legislative acts (e.g., the Social Security Act) that occurred during his presidency. To purchase the set and receive the free poster, call Salem Press at 800-221-1592.

I’m often asked why we have chosen to focus our publishing efforts on primary sources. The obvious reason, of course, is that these sources help us better understand the key events and people in any given period. It’s one thing, for example, to learn that about the federal government’s role in kicking American Indians off their land in the 1800s and “removing” them to reservations; it’s quite another to read a president’s own words justifying such actions–Andrew Jackson, in 1830, in his Indian removal speech. Likewise, it’s one thing to learn that Abraham Lincoln was a gifted orator who wrote his own words (unlike virtually every modern president); it’s quite another to read his Gettysburg Address or second inaugural speech and see for yourself the force of his ideas and the poetry in his writing.

The benefit of using primary sources to teach and learn history is, of course, the reason that they are at the heart of history education. And yet we all know the tired refrain from generation after generation of students: “history is boring!” All those infernal dates and names. Still, with a good and knowledgeable teacher, history becomes instantly compelling and alluring. Yesterday I was watching C-Span’s Book TV coverage, specifically the In Depth program. The guests yesterday were two prominent historians, Richard Norton Smith and Douglas Brinkley. With each question, the pair treated viewers to countless historical anecdotes, touching on events and people and themes in American history in ways that were consistently funny and engrossing and interesting. Who knew, for instance, that Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs are apparently captivating, so much so that many people have wondered if they weren’t in fact written by Mark Twain?

This, too, is something that we’ve tried to capture in our publishing efforts: the skill of a historian making a primary document come alive with smart and accessible analysis. You can see this focus in our encyclopedias (”The accompanying text is clear and intelligent, making the documents themselves appear more accessible and alive,” said Booklist about Milestone Documents in American History), our e-newsletter for history educators, and our Milestone Documents blog (featuring our “team of experts” blogging about primary sources). We consider ourselves lucky to be working in this arena, and we have just scratched the surface of finding ways to assist students, teachers, and librarians.

One of our favorite periodicals is Social Education, a journal put out by the National Council for the Social Studies. Given that it contains a heavy emphasis on using primary sources to teach history (including a regular “Teaching with Documents” section), it’s probably no surprise that we pore over every issue. The September 2008 issue just arrived, and as always it has lots of good material. The cover story is about the writ of habeas corpus as it has been used (or suspended) over time in the United States. It has been suspended more than once, generally during wartime, and often only as it related to specific communities. The article focuses on the controversy surrounding enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay since 9-11. This leads inevitably to discussion about the use of torture (or “interrogation methods,” in official speak) at that facility. Although I generally try to steer clear of politics on this blog, I can state unequivocally that I am opposed to our use of torture against prisoners since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. I don’t see that as a Democrat v. Republican or liberal v. conservative issue, but certainly many people would differ. My own parents strongly disagree with me on this issue, so I’m well aware that the country is divided on the issue. I wonder how social studies teachers deal with this matter in the classroom these days?

Another article of interest is on the differing approaches to world history education. Written by Ross E. Dunn, director of World History Projects for the National Center for History in the Schools at UCLA, the article divides the approaches into two broad categories: 1) those who focus on patterns and connections over time, i.e. that transcend particular countries/civilizations, including proponents of so-called big history; and 2)  those who take a civilization-by-civilization approach. Dunn mentions some of the leading publications that have set the tone in both camps, and I was wondering if he would highlight the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, for which he served on the advisory board and which was clearly conceived under the “big history” banner. Alas, no. Our own upcoming world history publications (Milestone Documents in World History and Milestone Documents of World Leaders) fall somewhat outside this grouping, but the fact that we have aligned our content with the National History Standards (developed by the self-same NCHS at UCLA) perhaps tips our hand. In any case, this is an interesting article about a compelling topic. Educators might be interested in reading This Fleeting World, an introductory “big history” essay that Berkshire published. I’m not sure if it’s available for electronic download, but the print version seems to cost a reasonable $15.

Speaking of educators, we are putting the finishing touches on the October issue of our Milestone Documents newsletter. This issue focuses on the era of “expansion and reform” in American history, which means articles about the Monroe Doctrine, Andrew Jackson, the Second Bank of the U.S., and the Seneca Falls Convention. The issue should be ready by the end of this week; to sign up (it’s free), just visit this link.

Finally, I have to mention a wonderful e-mail exchange I had this week with Ellen Turner, a fifth-grade teacher in a public school in Buffalo, New York. Ellen had requested a copy of our Constitution poster, which I was happy to send her, and she won me over with her enthusiasm and energy. Most of our content is geared toward high school and lower undergraduate students and teachers. However, our posters can certainly be used even by teachers at lower levels, especially if they have the kind of passion that Ellen obviously does. Current events can make one fairly gloomy about the future of our country, but the presence of enthusiastic teachers in our schools certainly does brighten our prospects. Thanks, Ellen!

Today is Constitution Day here in the United States, and as you would expect from a publisher that focuses on primary source documents, we have several initiatives to tell you about. First, we are continuing to give away free Constitution posters to any library or school that requests one. To date, we’ve sent out nearly 900 posters, and we’ve in fact had to go back for a second printing on the posters. Even if you haven’t yet ordered a poster, not to worry: the posters are not dated and can be used well into the future, so don’t despair if you have missed this year’s Constitution Day. The best way to order is to call Salem Press at (800) 221-1592.

We’ve also made the Constitution the featured document of the month over at MilestoneDocuments.com. You can read the full text, check out essential quotes, and view a time line surrounding the Constitution’s creation for free; for $6.99 you can buy our expert analysis of the document. Written by John P. Kaminski, who heads the Center for the Study of the American Constitution at the University of Wisconsin, this essay illuminates how the Constitution came into being, why it was structured as it was, and what its impact has been.

On our Milestone Documents blog, the Constitution is today’s Doc of the Day. Our post offers a useful overview of the Constitution and its creation and importance, including some words about one of its primary faults.

Finally, I’d like to highlight another scholar who is focusing on the Constitution: Harvard Law School professor Laurence H. Tribe, who has written a new book: The Invisible Constitution. Judging from the description at the publisher’s site, it sounds like a fascinating book.

The upcoming issue (Aug. 15) of Library Journal has an article by Mirela Roncevic that includes her observations about the e-reference products she examined at the ALA convention in Anaheim in June. (The article is online here, but note that the video content doesn’t appear to be working.) Her perspective is a very positive one, and she has nice things to say about a number of publishers, including Salem. Of them, she says this: “The little publisher that could is taking a no-nonsense approach to keeping its key brands, Salem Health and Salem History, alive both on paper and online.” We’re thrilled to have our Milestone Documents content available on Salem History!

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.