Chefs’ Selections: The Best Books Read During 2015 Part 1
The beginning of the holiday season means it’s time for our annual list of our favorite books read during the year. Part 1 today, Part 2 tomorrow.
The Death of the Collection and the Necessity of Library-Publisher Collaboration: Young Librarians on the Future of Libraries
Applicants for a recent conference scholarship wrote essays that tended strongly to depict the traditional collection as dead and collaboration between librarians and publishers as essential to the library’s future. Do they herald a generational shift in mindset among librarians?
Guest Post: Richard Fisher on The Monograph: Keep On Keepin’ On*, Part Two
In Part Two, Richard Fisher looks at the past, the present and the future of monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences.
Guest Post: Richard Fisher on The Monograph: Keep On Keepin’ On*, Part One
Richard Fisher looks at the past, the present and the future of monograph publishing in the humanities and social sciences.
University Presses in Decline…Not so Fast
Alison Mudditt asks a group of experts: what are the unique contributions that university presses make to scholarship and scholarly communication?
Books, Glorious Books: Explorations in Open Access Monograph Publishing
A range of open access (OA) monograph experiments and studies are upon us, or are about to be, and it’s worth taking a look at what we know now and what we can expect to know in the next year […]
Notes on Publishing in an Emerging Economy
Well-intended government policy in an Eastern European nation is having unexpected results on school publishing, some of which are the precise opposite of what policymakers had hoped for. The problem is that those who draft policy have little imagination about how new programs will be taken up–and altered–in the marketplace.
Another Big Win for Google Books (and for Researchers)
Google wins in court (again) as the Second Circuit of Appeals rules that its mass book digitization program qualifies as fair use. But Google is a commercial entity! And their files might get hacked! And their library partners are even more susceptible to copyright pirates than Google is! Yes, said the court, but. . .
Guest Post: Alison Mudditt Interviews Geoffry Crossick on An Age of Challenge and Opportunity: The HEFCE Report on Monographs and Open Access
Alison Muddit interviews Goeffrey Crossick about his report on the future of open access monographs.
Guest Post: HighWire’s John Sack on Online Indexing of Scholarly Publications: Part 2, What Happens When Finding Everything is So Easy?
HighWire’s John Sack looks at the changes that search engine indexing has driven for discovery of research publications. Part 2 of a two part series covering Anurag Acharya’s recent ALPSP keynote address.
Arion Press and the Magic of Bookmaking
Anthony Bourdain visits San Francisco’s Arion Press to learn about the magic of making a book.
Proof of Concept, Proof of Program, and Proof of Scale in Scholarly Communication
New scholarly-communication initiatives have to do more than just demonstrate proof of concept: they have to demonstrate ongoing sustainability (what we might call “proof of program”) and the ability to create desirable products in the amounts needed (what we might call “proof of scale”). What do these look like when they’re achieved, and how are some recent initiatives doing?
Library Publishing Redux: An Unprecedented Example of a Scholar/Library/Publisher Partnership
A collaborative venture between Oxford University Press and the University of Utah’s J. Willard Marriott Library exemplifies a new approach to library publishing, one that could be replicated elsewhere with relative ease and that offers potentially huge benefits to scholarship.
What Is “Publishing” if Even a Library Can Do It?
Libraries increasingly provide a wide range of publishing activities, but are there some areas where libraries are not active? It appears that libraries are unlikely to play a large role in publishing that is based on end-user demand.
Looking to the Future of Narrative
The novelist Iain Pears has produce a book on an interactive app, noting that his work had come up against the limitations of the printed page. What are the implications of experiments in narrative form for other kinds of publishing?