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.

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.

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.

Booklist continues to bring good news our way. Today comes word that the publication has starred its review of Milestone Documents of American Leaders, calling it “highly recommended for high school libraries” and an “excellent choice” for academic and public libraries as well. This review, like the interview with me for their “Bookmakers” feature, appears in the October 15 print issue; it’s available online here. For a roundup of what other reviewers have been saying about American Leaders, click here.

Recently I had the good fortune to be interviewed by Mary Ellen Quinn of Booklist magazine for that publication’s “Bookmakers” section. That interview has just appeared in the magazine’s October 15 issue; it’s available online here.

The interview covers a lot of ground, from my founding of the company in 1997 to the launch of our reference imprint in 2007 to our creation of MilestoneDocuments.com to our new iPhone apps. We are working on multiple fronts to make our content available and attractive to students and teachers and history buffs wherever and however they want it, and I’m grateful to Mary Ellen and Booklist for giving me the chance to talk about our efforts.

Those readers who get the print version of the magazine will also see a full-page advertisement for our newest reference set, Milestone Documents of American Leaders, as well as a very positive review of that set (more on that in a separate blog post in the next day or so).