Hachette to raise ebook prices for libraries by 220% — paidContent
Who would do this to ordinary consumers? And what consumers would tolerate it? Ugh.
(via arlpolicynotes)
Deevy Bishop, How To Bury Your Academic Writing, BishopBlog.
And speaking of tagging, check out this extremely interesting post regarding academic writing and the need for tags in order to register on the impact factor radar. The author focuses on Google Scholar, and attempts to figure out how and why some articles show up through the service and some don’t, and whether or not its metrics are accurate.
From YA Pride: 2012 LGBT YA by the numbers — in which I crunch some 2012 numbers and make pie charts.
I find this headline hilarious, but applaud anything that means more people are reading. These are lovely and at least they have something to do with the actual contents of the books and are not this because I mean C’MON. YAY READING.
I’ve actually never read anything by the Brontës, I should fix that. I like this edition of Jane Eyre.
(via To Lure ‘Twilight’ Fans, Classic Books Get Bold Looks - NYTimes.com)
These covers are a lot prettier than those heinous Twilight-based covers they gave P&P, Wuthering Heights, and Jane Eyre a few days ago. Black with bright red flowers and whatever.
Call for Papers - Librarians and Social Justice
CFP: Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond
In librarianship today, we encourage voices from our field to join conversations in other disciplines as well as in the broader culture. People who work in libraries and are sympathetic to or directly involved in social justice struggles have long embodied this idea, as they make use of their skills in the service of those causes. Following in the tradition of works such as Activism in American Librarianship, 1962-1973; Revolting Librarians; and Revolting Librarians Redux, this title will be a look into the projects and pursuits of activist librarianship in the early 21st century.
Call for Papers: Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond
TITLE: Informed Agitation: Library and Information Skills in Social Justice Movements and Beyond (An Edited Collection)
EDITOR: Melissa Morrone is a librarian at Brooklyn Public Library and has been involved in Radical Reference as well as other social justice groups.
BOOK ABSTRACT: In librarianship today, we encourage voices from our field to join conversations in other disciplines as well as in the broader culture. People who work in libraries and are sympathetic to or directly involved in social justice struggles have long embodied this idea, as they make use of their skills in the service of those causes. Following in the tradition of works such as Activism in American Librarianship, 1962-1973; Revolting Librarians; and Revolting Librarians Redux, this title will be a look into the projects and pursuits of activist librarianship in the early 21st century.
POSSIBLE TOPICS: Essays should describe specific activities undertaken by the library worker and how the work was received by fellow activists and/or the constituents of the project. Such activities may include:
- Programming and collection development that gives voice to underrepresented communities and subjects.
- Conducting community-based reference or other information services outside of any institutional affiliation.
- Setting up libraries or archives in political organizations and contexts.
- Doing research on behalf of social justice campaigns.
- Training people in technology and content creation with the goal of community empowerment.
- Other creative ways of using library and information skills to support activist causes, both inside and outside of conventional library settings.
Essays should also include analysis of the ways in which these activities are in sync with but may also challenge the “core values” of librarianship.
OBJECTIVE OF THE BOOK: This edited collection, to be published by Library Juice Press in June 2013 asks: How and to what end are people using their library skills in the service of wider social justice causes? What do these activities say about the future of library work, both inside and outside of traditional institutions?
TARGET AUDIENCES:
- People interested in going into librarianship who want an idea of nontraditional and activist areas in which librarians operate.
- Practicing library workers seeking inspiration for ways to combine their expertise with their political interests outside the library.
- Practicing library workers who want articulations of how their work fits into a broader context of power structures, politics, and social justice.
- Activists interested in collaborations with library workers and/or projects related to literature, information, education, and documentation in social movements.
- People in other fields who want to draw connections between their own work and social justice goals, and are looking for supportive literature.
SUBMISSION GUIDELINES: Please submit abstracts and proposals of up to 500 words to informed.agitation@gmail by July 15, 2012. Notifications will be sent by September 1. A first draft from 1,500-7,000 words will be due by November 15, and final manuscripts will be due by January 15, 2013.
Bolding is my own. Please pass this on to anyone you know might be interested! Submissions are due July 15!
James LaRue, “Navigating the Ebook Revolution”, American Libraries (5/23/2012).
This article is a little old, but it does offer some ideas on what librarians can and maybe should do (scroll to the bottom, “The Librarian”) in regards to the ebook and publishers dilemma. I agree that we shouldn’t sit around and wait for the next best deal to come along, especially when so many publishers are restricting libraries’ access to e-reader content already. We need to start a dialogue with publishers and make our voices heard. Patrons and librarians both are consumers of books.
Libraries Cut E-Book Deal With Penguin
Library patrons are book buyers. Hopefully this opportunity will help all publishers see why they should make e-books available to all libraries.
E-books in library has certainly been a tumultuous affair so far. In a recent American Libraries article on the DoJ antitrust lawsuit, it stated that perhaps librarians should start pushing for direct contracts.
(Source: thelifeguardlibrarian)
Harvard vs. Yale: Open Access Publishing
Earlier this week, Yale university student, Emmanuel Quartey, posted a video interview with the school’s librarian, Susan Gibbons, in which he asked her about open-access publishing. Her response was far more ambivalent than the Harvard faculty council’s. Though she noted that open-access journals are more accessible, she worried that asking younger faculty to publish in open-access (presumably less prestigious) journals could jeopardize their chances to attain tenure. In essence, prestige would stay put but tenure would move away from younger Yale professors. So, the library would continue to support both open and closed-access journals. You can read her full answer below or check out the video interview above
![laphamsquarterly:
LOVE the Art of the Novella series from Melville House. LOVE.
theatlantic:
The Return of the Novella, the Original #Longread
Publishers like short stories, and they love novels. But when a writer submits a mid-length work that falls somewhere between two genres, booksellers balk and editors narrow their eyes. This is the domain of the novella, an unfairly neglected literary art form that’s been practiced for centuries by celebrated writers—from Charles Dickens to Jane Smiley to Alain Mabanckou—yet faces an ongoing struggle for commercial viability. “For me, the word denotes a lesser genre,” literary agent Karolina Sutton told The Guardian in 2011. “If you pitch a book to a bookseller as a novel, you’re likely to get more orders than if you call it a novella.”
Mid-length works suffer from a koan-like criticism: They’re too short and they’re also too long. Novellas hog too much space to appear in magazines and literary journals, but they’re usually too slight to release as books. If a reader’s going to spend 16 bucks, the notion goes, he wants to take home a Franzen-size tome—not a slim volume he can slip in a jacket pocket. […]
Now the beleaguered genre, at long last, has found a worthy and consistent champion: Melville House Publishing, whose “Art of the Novella” series is an ongoing celebration of the form. The Brooklyn-based press offers 47—and counting—novellas from writers like Cervantes, Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf. Specifically drawing attention to the novella’s brevity, diversity, and lineage of distinguished practitioners, the series is the first of its kind.
Each sleek, modernist edition comes suited in a monochrome cover with French flaps. There are no blurb quotes, no graphics or illustrations. Just the author’s name, the title, and on the back, a pull quote. At nine dollars each, they’re a steal.
Read more. [Image: Melville House]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2zrm8v3ub1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
LOVE the Art of the Novella series from Melville House. LOVE.
The Return of the Novella, the Original #Longread
Publishers like short stories, and they love novels. But when a writer submits a mid-length work that falls somewhere between two genres, booksellers balk and editors narrow their eyes. This is the domain of the novella, an unfairly neglected literary art form that’s been practiced for centuries by celebrated writers—from Charles Dickens to Jane Smiley to Alain Mabanckou—yet faces an ongoing struggle for commercial viability. “For me, the word denotes a lesser genre,” literary agent Karolina Sutton told The Guardian in 2011. “If you pitch a book to a bookseller as a novel, you’re likely to get more orders than if you call it a novella.”
Mid-length works suffer from a koan-like criticism: They’re too short and they’re also too long. Novellas hog too much space to appear in magazines and literary journals, but they’re usually too slight to release as books. If a reader’s going to spend 16 bucks, the notion goes, he wants to take home a Franzen-size tome—not a slim volume he can slip in a jacket pocket. […]
Now the beleaguered genre, at long last, has found a worthy and consistent champion: Melville House Publishing, whose “Art of the Novella” series is an ongoing celebration of the form. The Brooklyn-based press offers 47—and counting—novellas from writers like Cervantes, Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov, Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf. Specifically drawing attention to the novella’s brevity, diversity, and lineage of distinguished practitioners, the series is the first of its kind.
Each sleek, modernist edition comes suited in a monochrome cover with French flaps. There are no blurb quotes, no graphics or illustrations. Just the author’s name, the title, and on the back, a pull quote. At nine dollars each, they’re a steal.
Read more. [Image: Melville House]
