Today in the mail I received a nice card and note from Soeren Kern, who contributed numerous chapters to the World Encyclopedia of Political Systems and Parties. Soeren works as an analyst at the Real Instituto Elcano in Madrid, a foundation devoted to the study of international relations and to Spain’s role in the world. The REI does very interesting work, although perhaps I’m biased, what with my degree in history and Ibero-American studies and my fondness for Spain (I spent a semester in college in Madrid). Among the policy articles on REI’s site at present is Soeren’s examination of the relationship between the United States and Latin America, which is a good read.
Salem Press has launched a fun new promotion called “Reference Is Cool.” See the details at https://salempress.com/Store/cool/cool.htm. The site offers testimonials from librarians about “cool” things that have happened in their libraries, links to interesting sites, and smart lapel pins with the “Reference Is Cool” logo on them. Salem is known for series such as Masterplots, Great Lives, and Great Events in History.
There are numerous librarian blogs around, and some of them have lots of good tidbits about the industry. One that I like is at http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/. It’s run by J. Baumgart at Harvard. While reading through that blog this week, I found lots of interesting posts, including references to a new Wikipedia-like project called Digital Universe, which was founded by an early Wikipedia employee. Another posting referenced the new Google Librarian newsletter.
Today’s New York Times has a story about a new Amazon.com program offering author blogs. It’s called Amazon Connect, and it’s goal is, in the end, to sell more books. Apparently it aims to achieve this by helping readers feel more connected to and interested in authors. Some of those interviewed in the story admitted that they weren’t sure exactly what they hoped to achieve with their blogs, but that they thought it would be a good idea to give the concept a try. That vague approach is not dissimilar to my own with this blog. Like the authors interviewed by the NYT, I am not certain where this blog might lead us. I am using it to ruminate in a public forum on the ins and outs of the reference publishing business, and I hope that our staff as well as our contributors and clients find it useful. But will that translate into new business opportunities for us?
The new issue of Library Journal, which I’ll be routing to staff today, has several interesting items. It’s the annual “Architecture” issue and thus includes a listing of all new and renovated library building projects completed in 2005. Marcia will note the new library building completed at Middlebury College to the tune of $40 million. There is a provocative article by several academics about what they see as the outrageous price of some academic journals; they have come up with a price index that they will post online and hope to pressure certain journal publishers to bring their prices down. Finally, there is an article discussing the “handbook” in contemporary reference publishing.
During the two days of meetings that Leah and I attended at Thomson Gale this week, our colleagues there were kind enough to pass along the “Best Reference Source” nomination list from the RUSA awards committee. The committee meets at every ALA Midwinter conference to discuss the nominees from the previous year and then announces its final list of best reference sources for the year. The meetings are held in long, open sessions throughout the conference, and apparently it’s quite interesting to hear what the committee likes and doesn’t like about specific sources. This year I look forward to attending some of these sessions, because one of our titles is up for an award: The International Directory of Business Biographies. We’ll cross our fingers and hope for good news!
I’m in Detroit for 2 days of meetings with our various editors at Thomson Gale; Leah will join me tonight. As I arrived here today, I was met with temperatures in the 20s, snow on the ground (and more coming tonight), and that gray, depressing sky that I remember so well from my years of living in Detroit and Chicago. I’ll take our weather in South Florida any day, even if they are accompanied by those nasty hurricanes!
One of the topics of conversation today was the reading-level software product supplied by Lexile. Click here to see their site. This is an interesting product and one we need to investigate, especially as we do more products aimed at middle-school readers.
Few things are more gratifying than seeing positive reviews of our work. The new issue of School Library Journal has a glowing review of the Encyclopedia of the Ancient Greek World. Among other things, the reviewer calls it “a fact-filled, accessible revision of the excellent 1995 edition,” and she also makes note of the “high quality” photos, maps, and illustrations that we added to the volume. All credit is due to the author, Lisa Brody, who did a fantastic job on the revision and was helpful at every turn. And Jayne did a great job with the photos and illustrations, allaying my initial fears about whether we would be able to afford high-quality photos on our low budget. Click here to see the full review via SLJ’s online site.
Spurred by recent articles and events, I’ve been thinking about the future of newspapers. Newspaper circulations everywhere have been flat or in decline, and Knight-Ridder is up for sale. Observers tell us that people under 35 simply don’t read newspapers anymore; they get their news from TV or the Internet or (gulp) not at all. Newspapers have stayed profitable because of their long-time status as prime advertising space and in particular with classified ads, but these things too are migrating to the web. Newspapers in many cities are now seeing their classified ad business seriously dented by Craigslist, and Google apparently has come up with a new product that may pose an even bigger threat to traditional newspaper classifieds.
As someone who can’t bear to miss my morning paper (supplemented by lunchtime viewings of other papers online), I am horrified by the notion that newspapers may dinosaurs. In terms of reference publishing, one wonders what will happen if newspapers’ troubles filter down to the large periodical aggregators like ProQuest, InfoTrac, and NewsBank, which are standard holdings in all major library systems. I have a hard time believing that the unique and valuable content created by newspapers will ever go away, but I can picture there being significant consolidation in what in some ways has always been a localized industry. The radical transformation of the information industry shows no signs of slowing.
Everyone in the office is excited about assistant editor Beth Klein’s appearance on Jeopardy!, which will air on Friday, December 9. None of us are surprised that she made it on the show, given her encyclopedic knowledge of literature and pop culture (e.g., Saturday Night Live). Alas, viewers will apparently be unable to see Alex Trebek hugging Beth and singing, “Beth, you is my woman now.” For a fun video introduction by Beth about herself, click on http://www.jeopardy.com/showguide_thisweek.php.
All of us in the reference industry watch Wikipedia with interest. Many in the publishing community ridicule it because it allows any user anywhere to contribute to it, and there is very little editorial oversight. All of our clients ban it from use as a source. However, the concept behind it is quite compelling, and its incredible growth–not to mention its obvious ability to connect with the general public–makes it a fearsome “competitor.” And in browsing through it, I have often been amazed at its breadth and depth while taking all of its content with a large grain of salt. Many organizations, including ours, are brainstorming ways to make use of wikis as a tool in the future.
Today comes word of another unfortunate incident with Wikipedia’s content. See http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/12/05/wikipedia.rules.ap/index.html. I’ll be curious to see how Wikipedia continues to respond to problems such as this as they inevitably crop up.
I’m making plans to attend the ALA Midwinter convention in San Antonio, which runs January 20-25. (I won’t go for the entire time; likely the 21st-24th or some such.) In the next 2-3 weeks I’ll be touching base with various of our customers as well as some of our librarian advisers to try to set up meetings during the convention. I’ve been to several annual ALA conventions but never the Midwinter one, so this should be an interesting trip. Among other things, I belive that the RUSA awards for best reference sources are announced during Midwinter.
Welcome to the first Schlager blog! I plan to use this blog to share my thoughts about our business, our projects, our customers, and the reference industry in general. (I will try to spare you my boring thoughts about politics or society or culture–unless, of course, they relate directly to something we’re working on or want to work on.) SG staff members know that I love my tech gadgets but can hardly be called a “techie,” so you’ll have to bear with me as I learn how to communicate effectively and engagingly in this new format.
I am writing this blog on my screened-in patio. It’s a beautiful day here in South Florida–the kind of day that those of us who live here take for granted, but those in colder climates envy. After living here for less than 2 years, I’m still amazed at the weather, which is darn near perfect 95 percent of the time. (The other 5 percent, of course, is Hurricane Hell.) In any event, I’m using a brand new wireless broadband card to connect to the Internet here on the patio. This card is a small start in our drive this winter to better equip ourselves for future hurricanes and their aftermath–lack of power, no Internet connectivity, etc. The card can be used in any computer but is especially perfect for laptops. The connection speed is nothing to write home about, but it’s better than dial-up (usually) and, most importantly, can be used anywhere. If Verizon’s towers don’t fall down in a hurricane (they didn’t during Wilma), then we can use this card and others like it to access our email and keep our business running even if everything else goes down. They say we’re 10 years into a hurricane “peak era,” and that such eras usually last 20-30 years. We’ll continue to seek out ways to protect our ability to work in the midst of such storms.