Against the Grain V34#5 November, 2022 Full Issue

Controlled

Lending: Ready for a

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN

If Rumors Were Horses

Thankgoodness for the cooler fall weather in South Carolina. At press time, we’re enjoying a crisp change in temperatures and low(er) humidity that’s a welcome change from the dog days of summer! We have lots of news items to discuss, so let’s get started!

Charleston Conference News and Updates

We’re taking a new approach to “hybrid” this year with a parallel event — the in-person conference will be held November 1 – 4, followed by a virtual conference November 14 – 18. There’s still time to register for the virtual conference! Be sure to join us online for all of the same great content from the in-person week plus exclusive, virtual-only sessions and networking events. Visit https://chsconf. cadmore.media/ to see our agenda and to register! We’re pleased to be working with Cadmore Media to bring the agenda and virtual event platform to life — thanks to their team for all their support and for sponsoring the conference!

REGULAR COLUMNS

INTERVIEWS

PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Guest Edited by Meg White (Director of Vendor Partnerships, the Charleston Hub) and Todd Carpenter (Executive Director, NISO) Begins on

Help your patrons get up to speed quickly on emerging topics

The ACS In Focus primers are designed to introduce scientists to new topics within a four to six hour read-time. Patrons can self-serve on content to expand their knowledge, providing a foundation for novel, multidisciplinary research.

Openness and Choice: A Natural Partnership

GOBI now supports the Knowledge Unlatched Open Access (OA) e-books funding model

Knowledge Unlatched (KU) is committed to supporting the development of the OA infrastructure and making scholarly content available to everyone. This partnership builds upon GOBI’s longtime commitment to providing choice and highlights the importance of an open community that values and supports the needs of libraries.

How does it work?

More than 20

Access

on the Open Research Library platform are available for pledging in GOBI from May – December

Once the eCollection has reached a set pledge threshold determined by KU, it will become freely available to all readers worldwide from the start of the next year

By participating in this model, libraries can:

support investment in OA content and workflows

help make quality OA e-books more easily available to libraries around the world

benefit from de-duplication, visibility of OA e-books in GOBI and a single point of invoicing and customer service

with

Against the Grain (ISSN: 1043-2094) (USPS: 012-618), Copyright 2022 by the name Against the Grain, LLC is published six times a year in February, April, June, September, November, and December/ January by Against the Grain, LLC. Business and Editorial Offices: PO Box 799, 1712 Thompson Ave., Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. Accounting and Circulation Offices: same. Subscribe online at https://www.charleston-hub.com/membership-options/

Editor:

Katina Strauch (Retired, College of Charleston)

Associate Editors: Cris Ferguson (Murray State)

Tom Gilson (Retired, College of Charleston)

Matthew Ismail (Charleston Hub)

Research Editors:

Judy Luther (Informed Strategies)

Assistants to the Editor:

Ileana Jacks

Toni Nix (Just Right Group, LLC)

International Editor:

Rossana Morriello (Politecnico di Torino)

Contributing Editors:

Glenda Alvin (Tennessee State University)

Deni Auclair (De Gruyter)

Rick Anderson (Brigham Young University)

Sever Bordeianu (U. of New Mexico)

Todd Carpenter (NISO)

Eleanor Cook (East Carolina University)

Will Cross (NC State University)

Anne Doherty (Choice)

Michelle Flinchbaugh (U. of MD Baltimore County)

Joyce Dixon-Fyle (DePauw University)

Michael Gruenberg (Gruenberg Consulting, LLC)

Chuck Hamaker (Retired, UNC, Charlotte)

Bob Holley (Retired, Wayne State University)

Donna Jacobs (MUSC)

Ramune Kubilius (Northwestern University)

Myer Kutz (Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.)

Tom Leonhardt (Retired)

Stacey Marien (American University)

Jack Montgomery (Georgia Southern University Libraries)

Alayne Mundt (American University)

Bob Nardini (ProQuest)

Jim O’Donnell (Arizona State University)

Ann Okerson (Center for Research Libraries)

Anthony Paganelli (Western Kentucky University)

Rita Ricketts (Blackwell’s)

Jared Seay (College of Charleston)

Corey Seeman (University of Michigan)

Lindsay Wertman (IGI Global)

ATG Proofreader: Caroline Goldsmith (Charleston Hub)

Graphics: Bowles & Carver, Old English Cuts & Illustrations. Grafton, More Silhouettes. Ehmcke, Graphic Trade Symbols By German Designers. Grafton, Ready-to-Use Old-Fashioned Illustrations. The Chap Book Style.

Production & Ad Sales: Toni Nix, Just Right Group, LLC., P.O. Box 412, Cottageville, SC 29435, phone: 843-835-8604 fax: 843-835-5892 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Advertising Information: Toni Nix, phone: 843-835-8604, fax: 843-835-5892 <justwrite@lowcountry.com>

Publisher: A. Bruce Strauch

Send correspondence, press releases, etc., to: Katina Strauch, Editor, Against the Grain, LLC Post Office Box 799 Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482 cell: 843-509-2848 <kstrauch@comcast.net>

Authors’ opinions are to be regarded as their own. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This issue was produced on an iMac using Microsoft Word, and Adobe CC software under Mac OS Monterey. Against the Grain is copyright ©2022 by Katina Strauch

the Grain

AGAINST THE GRAIN

ISSUES, NEWS, & GOINGS ON

Rumors

From Your Editor

Letters to the Editor

Advertising Deadlines

FEATURES

HIGHLIGHTS

2022 © Katina Strauch

Controlled Digital Lending: Ready for a Close Up?

The “C” Stands for “Controlled”

Progress Toward a Recommended Practice on Controlled Digital Lending

Internet Archive Files Final Reply Brief in Lawsuit Defending Controlled Digital Lending

Op Ed — Sic Parvis Magna: Let’s Leave the Docks

Back Talk — Childhood at the Public Library

REVIEWS

Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews

Booklover — Experiment with Words

ATG Food + Beverage Roundup — Charleston, SC

LEGAL ISSUES

Legally Speaking — Stealing? I think not.

Questions and Answers — Copyright Column

PUBLISHING

Bet You Missed It

The Scholarly Publishing Scene — Getting The Word Out

Stop, Look, Listen — An Atavism in a World Digitized

TECHNOLOGY & STANDARDS AND TEACHING & LEARNING

Learning Belongs in the Library — Stakeholders across the Campus on Student Success and Course Materials Affordability

BOOKSELLING AND VENDING

Optimizing Library Services – Embracing Accessibility in Academic Publishing

The Digital Toolbox — Supporting the Whole Student: How Academic Libraries are Inspiring an Increase in Leisure Reading

ATG INTERVIEWS & PROFILES

Allison Belan – Director for Strategic Innovation and Services, Duke University Press

Richard Gallagher – President & Editor-in-Chief at Annual Reviews

Profiles Encouraged

From Your (fingers crossed) Editor:

By the time you’re reading this, the 2022 Charleston Conference will be upon us! We’re excited to welcome everyone to Charleston whether it’s your first time attending or your 42nd! My fingers are crossed for a wonderful experience, no technical glitches, great attendance, and good weather for all of us. The weather is especially important — I remember one year when it POURED rain all week and we had our conference reception planned for an outdoor courtyard space at the new College of Charleston School of Science and Mathematics building. We had tents and heaters galore, and the rain didn’t dampen our spirits at the party, but it did cause short term panic for our catering company who had to source the tents and heaters at the last minute!

Hip-hip-hooray for our guest editors for this issue, Meg White (Director of Vendor Partnerships, Charleston Hub) and Todd Carpenter (Executive Director, NISO). They presented a session called “Controlled Digital Lending Is Just Lending, But It Needs Standards Too” at the 2021 Charleston Conference, and we invited them to give an update

Letters to the Editor

on the topic for this issue of Against the Grain. We’re thrilled to have articles from both Meg and Todd as well as Lila Bailey, Senior Policy Counsel at the Internet Archive.

We have an Op Ed submission from Daniel Huang of Lehigh University with a call to update the Charlotte Initiative’s principles of eBook acquisition. He gives us a charge to “leave the docks!” with a proposal for how librarians and publishers can move forward together. We also have two dynamite interviews with Allison Belan (Duke University Press) and Richard Gallagher (Annual Reviews). And if you’re attending the conference in person, don’t miss the ATG Food + Beverage Round Up from Nicole Ameduri (Springer Nature) where she lists her top picks for Charleston restaurants. Last, but never least, our Back Talk this go-round talks about fond childhood memories of the public library from the inimitable Ann Okerson.

Come say hello if you’re in Charleston, and my very best wishes for a great conference for all!

Love, Yr.Ed.

Send letters to <kstrauch@comcast.net>, phone 843-509-2848, or snail mail: Against the Grain, Post Office Box 799, Sullivan’s Island, SC 29482. You can also send a letter to the editor from the Charleston Hub at http://www.charleston-hub.com/contact-us/.

Hi Katina, Leah and others:

I remember the survey about format preferences for ATG I hope that we can still get a print copy. This journal does not really lend to online reading as it is packed solid and I read it cover to cover. Journals work best for online reading in my experience when you are very young or read very selectively content. Most if not all subscribers likely claim that this is one of few professional journals that they depend upon for

AGAINST THE GRAIN ADVERTISING DEADLINES

VOLUME 34 — 2022-2023

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learning what is happening and read each entire issue. I hope that we can continue to get print even if there is an additional cost. Those of us who are online all day cherish the opportunity to turn pages of a favorite read when each issue is delivered, after hours or to give us a break during these long days. As we all get older, are scheduling cataract procedures, fear macular degeneration, etc., the comfort and ergonomic pleasures of print call to us.

Thanks for your consideration, Julia

Julia M. Gelfand (Applied Sciences & Engineering Librarian, University of California, Irvine Libraries) <jgelfand@uci.edu>

Hey Julia, darling!

So glad you miss the print like I do! But it was a necessary financial decision with the cost of printing and postage going up and the fact that getting advertisers was harder and harder. Of course, we are always exploring other options. You might have noticed that we have shortened the number of pages in the issues and tried to make reading easier. We can put more content online. The issue can also be printed by anyone who wants to do so. If you have suggestions, let me know.

Thanks, Katina

Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain)

<kstrauch@comcast.net>

Against the Grain / November 2022 <https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/atg/>

GOOD ECONOMICS CHANGES EVERYTHING.

EconLit provides the coverage most needed by scholars to make new discoveries, develop important insights, and contribute valuable research to the economics community.

Professionally classified, updated weekly, and including over 1.6 million records, EconLit covers economics literature published over the last 130 years from leading institutions in 74 countries.

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Rumors continued from page 1

A big thank you and shout out to Don Hawkins, Conference Blogger, for his expert and in-depth coverage of conference sessions again this year. Don has been writing conference reports for many years now and we’re glad to have him on board. Visit https://www.charleston-hub.com/category/blogs/ chsconfnotes/ to stay up to date on all the happenings in real time!

Ramune Kubilius, Collection Development / Special Projects Librarian at Galter Health Sciences Library & Learning Center, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, will once again be organizing the 2022 “And They Were There” conference reports. Ramune tirelessly manages a group of volunteer reporters to ensure even and accurate coverage of sessions in addition to the blog reports. These articles will be included in future issues of ATG so keep your eyes open!

Something fun and new for the in-person conference this year is a Scavenger Hunt at the Vendor Showcase on Tuesday, November 1, from 10:00 am – 5:30 pm. We have trivia questions that you can find answers to by visiting our exhibitors, plus a bonus “brain teaser” for extra points. We’ll send prizes to our winners after the conference, so be sure to participate! We’ll have “ballot style” collection boxes set up around the showcase floor to collect your entries.

The Poster Sessions also have something new — we’re hosting the posters and video presentations online at https://chsconf.cadmore.media/page/posters, but poster presenters also have options to participate in a Q&A session either in-person or online. If you’re attending in person, stop by the Wednesday afternoon refreshment break at the Gaillard Center to talk to the poster presenters and view the posters at an iPad kiosk. Presenters will be wearing an “Ask Me About My Poster!” button. If you’re attending online, you can join the Poster Presenter Q&A on Monday, November 14, at 12:00 pm Eastern.

Job and Company Updates

We have some “rumors” from De Gruyter, straight from the horse’s mouth! Steve Fallon (Vice President, Americas and Strategic Partnerships) sent us these updates: “Michael Zeoli is now the Director of the Partner Program and oversees our University Press Library at De Gruyter. And Whitney Jordan, Director of Acquisitions and Content

the Grain

November 2022

Management at UT Chattanooga is leaving her post and joining De Gruyter on October 24th as our Senior Library Liaison bridging the communication channels between academic libraries and publishers (De Gruyter and our twenty University Press Partners). We are thrilled to have her onboard!” Thanks for keeping us updated, Steve!

Christopher Warnock, Tish Wagner, and Marty Mularkey (all formerly of Ebrary, remember them?) got the band back together again with a new company called Helper Systems. They’re premiering their startup company and their new Krisolys product at the Charleston Conference with a big splash at the Vendor Showcase on Tuesday. Krisolys “dramatically improves how researchers use PDFs and how publishers manage them.” Be sure to check it out! They’ll be in the prefunction B area outside the Grand Ballroom of the Gaillard Center and are sponsoring the Welcome Reception from 4:00 to 5:30 pm. Rumor has it they’ll have specialty cocktails available to celebrate their launch!

continued on page 24

Charleston Gaillard Center

PROJECT MUSE AT THE CHARLESTON CONFERENCE

We make content affordable for libraries so readers have access to groundbreaking works and can use them to unearth discoveries of their own.

Project MUSE staff are pleased to be contributing to the following conference sessions. You can also visit us during the Vendor Showcase at table 110.

VENDOR INFORMATION SESSION

TUESDAY, NOV. 1 3:00 PM

GAILLARD CENTER SALON 1

Scholarship for All: Trusted, Affordable Resources for the Humanities and Social Sciences

MELANIE SCHAFFNER DIRECTOR, SALES AND MARKETING

CONCURRENT SESSION

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2 9:40 AM

FRANCIS MARION HOTEL CAROLINA BALLROOM

What Happens When Journals Change Platforms? A 360º View of Content Migration

ELIZABETH BROWN PUBLISHER RELATIONS MANAGER, JOURNALS

LIVELY DISCUSSION

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2 1:15 PM

GAILLARD CENTER GRAND BALLROOM 2

Debate: Sustainable OA Models are Not Possible for Small Publishers

WENDY QUEEN DIRECTOR, PROJECT MUSE

POSTER SESSION

WEDNESDAY, NOV. 2 3:30 PM

GAILLARD CENTER GRAND BALLROOM

A DEIA Toolkit: Strengthening DEIA Selection and Marketplace Infrastructures through Decision Support, Subject Expertise, Artificial Intelligence, and Collection Analysis

PHILLIP HEARN PUBLISHER RELATIONS MANAGER, BOOKS

EMPOWERING YOUR NEXT DISCOVERY

Built on the Johns Hopkins University campus

Scholarship FOR ALL muse.jhu.edu

Bet You Missed It — Press Clippings — In the News

Carefully Selected by Your Crack Staff of News Sleuths

Column Editor: Bruce Strauch (The Citadel, Emeritus) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com>

Let’s Read WWII Women

Sonia Purnell, A Woman of No Importance (2019) (Baltimore socialite Virginia Hall lost a leg in a hunting accident, but volunteered for British Spec Ops and was parachuted behind German lines); (2) Katherine Sharp Landdeck, The Woman With Silver Wings (2020) (women ferrying aircraft to release men for combat); (3) Rebecca Donner, All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days (2021) (American woman married to a German develops largest underground resistance group); (4) Liza Mundy, Code Girls (2017) (code breakers recruited from the women’s colleges); (5) Evelyn Monahan and Rosemary Greenlee, And If I Perish (2003) (accounts from thousands of women who served).

See: Catherine Musemech, “On the Unsung Women of World War II,” The Wall Street Journal, July 23-24, 2022, p.C8.

College Mergers

Northeastern was a blue-collar commuter college until they decided to capitalize on the work/study that the students were doing. They developed a network of 3,100 companies for the students to intern and made the faculty alter curriculum to meet the needs of the companies. Suddenly they were in vogue and highly selective. Last year, 95,000 applied for 2,600 spots.

Flush with success, they began adding additional branches around the country and designed them to serve the needs of their areas. They have campuses in Charlotte, San Jose, London, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, Portland. Then a plum fell in their laps.

Mills College, a 170-year-old women’s college in California was going under. But it was near Silicon Valley with a 135-acre campus worth $1 billion.

In an astounding bargain, in exchange for Northeastern assuming $21 million in Mills’ liabilities, it got the land, $30 million endowment, and a valuable art collection. As you can imagine, there’s much criticism of the deal.

Mills was a typical story. Women’s seminary updated to a women’s empowerment mission. Tried to go coed but backed off under strident alum objections. Squandered money on administrators and contractors. And then — incredibly — decided to require not one but two essays for admission.

Applications immediately fell, but Mills wouldn’t back off and dwindled to ruin.

Joseph Aoun, President of Northeastern, is quite the innovator. He earned degrees in Lebanon, Paris, and MIT. He observes that all around the world there is an Education Minister who rigidly runs the universities from the top down. America is not saddled with that, but higher-ed groupthink and accreditation teams homogenize everything.

He thinks education must change with the world, and he’s broken the strait-jacket. Now multiple struggling colleges are begging for a merger.

See: Douglas Belkin, “Broke Colleges Resort to Mergers for Survival,” The Wall Street Journal, July 20, 2022, p.A1.

Book Fraud for Fame and Profit

Go Ask Alice purported to be the diary of a middle class California girl who took LSD and entered a downward spiral to death. It tapped into the 1970s panic over drugs and Satanism.

Beatrice Sparks was a struggling author who milked a connection to Art Linkletter to get published by Prentice-Hall. Linkletter was a star author for Prentice-Hall and blamed LSD for his daughter’s death. The book tapped into the anxieties of the age to produce a best seller.

Sparks, however, was a “walking correction” whose stories of her credentials and how she got the manuscript were constantly changing.

Next, a mother grieving the death of her son by suicide entrusted his diary to Sparks. In 1979, this became The Haunting Diary of a 16-Year-Old in the World of Witchcraft. This tapped into a national obsession with Satanism and secret devilworshipping cults.

Sparks “discovered” and “edited” six more such journals up to her death in 2012. In Unmask Alice, Rick Emerson manages to unravel what was undoubtedly a fraud.

See: William Tipper, “The Tale of a Bad Trip,” (review of Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson), The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 4, 2022, p.A15.

Obit of Note

Son of a NYC hatmaker, Bob Rafelson (1933-2022) was a cinefile from a young age. He rose to TV producer and co-created The Monkees, a sitcom that spawned a band.

Flush with Monkees money, he and Bert Schneider formed their own production company seeking countercultural projects. Head featuring B-list actor Jack Nicholson flopped.

But they made a huge rebound with him in Easy Rider and then with the 1970 classic Five Easy Pieces.

See: “The filmmaker who captured the counterculture,” The Week, Aug. 5, 2022, p.35.

Let’s Read Rise & Fall of Dynasties

Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (1901) (Nobel Prize in lit 1929); (2) Emile Zola, Au Bonheur des Dames (1883) (models story after Bon Marché, one of the first department stores); (3) Stefano Massini, The Lehman Trilogy (2016) (700-page novel in verse [!!] about Lehman family); (4) David S. Landes, Dynasties (2006) (examines family dynasties in banking, automobiles & treasures of the earth); (5) Andrea Colli, The History of Family Business, 1850-2000 (2003) (problem of thrusting managerial hierarchies into family biz).

See: Joseph Sassoon, “Five Best,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 6-7, 2022, p.C8. Joseph is the author of the forthcoming “The Sassoons: The Great Global Merchants and the Making of an Empire.

Birding for Fun and Profit

Roger Tory Peterson came from humble origins in western NY state and credited bird watching with keeping him from delinquency.

His Field Guide to the Birds: Eastern Land and Water Birds was rejected by four publishers before Houghton Mifflin bought it. The dinky print run of 2,000 copies sold out in a week. The runs increased to 300,000 and by 1980 made the New York Times Top 10 Bestseller List. When he died in 1996 at the age of 88, it had sold 7 million copies.

His genius lay in grouping birds of similar color, size and shape rather than taxonomy. It revolutionized birdwatching. Plus he was a superb artist.

It brought him a wealth of degrees, awards, and medals from the New York Zoological Society to the Explorer’s Club to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And made him rich.

See: Brooke Chilvers, “Roger Tory Peterson The book, the man and his wives,” Gray’s Sporting Journal, August 2022, p.92.

Literary Rejection As Genre in Itself

Sex Bias: Bentley and Son’s rejection of Moby Dick — “First, does it have to be a whale? For instance, could the captain not be struggling with depravity towards young, perhaps voluptuous maidens?”

A publisher told Nabokov that Lolita was “overwhelmingly nauseating even to an enlightened Freudian.”

Quality of the writing: San Francisco Examiner told Kipling he didn’t “know how to use the English language.”

Faux concern for the author’s welfare: D.H. Lawrence was told of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, “For your own sake, do not publish this book.”

William Faulkner’s publisher on Sanctuary, “Good God, I can’t publish this. We’d both be in jail.”

Political grounds: Orwell’s Animal Farm was rejected due to a need for “more public-spirited pigs.”

See: https://thecritic.co.uk/good-god-i-cant-publish-this/

Some Authors Get Rich

Alice Oseman flunked her entrance exam to Cambridge but found a far more lucrative path in life. At 17 she signed a twobook deal starting with her novel Solitaire. She wanted to read about female characters who have lifechanging moments that don’t involve a man. Unable to find one, she wrote her own.

Except it’s about a shy gay boy with a crush on a rugby player. But no mind.

Heartstopper graphic novels broke sales records and got picked up by Netflix. Now she’s selling a million £ worth of books a month in the UK alone. She surpasses J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, and Lee Child.

Heartstopper has sold 4 million copies worldwide with rights sold in 33 countries. Netflix is ordering more series.

See: Alison Boshoff, “The British author you’ve probably NEVER heard of who is selling a million pounds worth of books each month,” The Daily Mail, Aug. 5, 2022.

Obit of Note

Marvin Josephson (1927-2022) was a bored young lawyer who decided to become a talent agent. He helped Bob Keeshan style himself as Captain Kangaroo and built on that success to form International Creative Management that took on thousands of actors and writers.

ICM spread from New York to Hollywood with clients like Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, Barbara Walters, Norman Schwarzkopf, and Eddie Murphy. Josephson never sought the limelight like Mike Ovitz of the rival Creative Artists Agency. “I believe the clients deserve the attention,” he said.

See: J. Kim Murphy; https://variety.com; Marvin Josephson, Founder of ICM Partners, Dies at 95.

A New Type of Transformative Agreement for Research Publishing in Biology

“A sustainable path to open publication of biomedical research is a long-sought objective among the many science communication initiatives at Cold Spring Harbor. Our transformational offerings provide a model for any research-intensive institution whose scientists wish to make their articles openly available in these long-established, prestigious, not-for-profit journals.”

— Dr. John Inglis, Publisher of CSHL Press, co-founder of bioR χiv and medR χiv

Turn your subscription license into an OA publishing license — Immediate benefits for your authors and no extra cost for most institutions

Subscribers to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press (CSHLP) journals who renew for 2023 now have the option to adopt a Transformative License Agreement. This allows corresponding authors from your institution to publish unlimited OA articles (once accepted for publication), while giving your users access to the complete collection of CSHLP journals.

Transformative license agreements offer a fully OA publishing option for your researchers whose papers are accepted at Genes & Development, Genome Research, Learning & Memory, RNA, or Molecular Case Studies. For more information about a transformative license with Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, please contact Doug LaFrenier at dlafrenier @cshjournals.org

Benefits include:

• Unlimited open access publication in CSHLP research journals

• Access to the complete collection of CSHLP journals

• No additional cost for most current subscribers (some minimums apply)

• The option to create a branded channel in bioRχiv for preprints posted by your authors (includes medRχiv postings)

Present your institution as an “end to end” open access advocate for the biological sciences.

Controlled Digital Lending: Ready for a Close Up?

By Meg White (Director of Vendor Partnerships, the Charleston Hub) <megmwhite13@gmail.com>

Inmid-March of 2020, in an airport departure lounge on the way home from Austin and ER&L, I heard a public health official on TV state: “there will not be a person on the planet not impacted in some way by COVID-19.” Naively, I dismissed this statement as just another example of the hyperbole that has become the unfortunate norm for so many media outlets. How could this be? A virus akin to the common cold would spread to every corner of the planet, impacting lives, economies, and society as a whole? Incredibly, in the days and weeks to come, we all gradually came to understand that this virus would launch a pandemic, almost 100 years after the Spanish Flu swept across the globe, and killed more than 6.5 million people.

Historians, public health experts, anthropologists, economist, and researchers of every stripe will study COVID and its impact … some subtle, some not so subtle, and some far too nascent to be fully understood. It seems an over-simplification to say that scholarly communication is not immune from the impact of COVID, but in many ways the ripple effect from the pandemic is still unfolding in the world at large and in our industry. In this issue of Against the Grain, we will focus on exploring Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), a process that has been percolating for more than a decade, but for many reasons has taken center stage in a COVID-influenced landscape.

Background

According to the organization Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries, Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) “… is an emerging method that allows libraries to loan print books to digital patrons in a ‘lend like print’ fashion.” The premise seems simple, the same sections of U.S. copyright law that govern library lending of physical books and materials should apply to digital versions of those same materials. However, the interpretation of U.S. copyright law as applied to digital versions of print materials (and, of course, “born-digital” materials) is relatively new legal territory, and multiple stakeholders have varying views on what rights are held by each party under the law, and how they can best be preserved.

As technology has improved over the last two decades, there have been many initiatives in the march to leverage technology to make scholarly books more accessible and redefine legal boundaries of copyright. Google Books, launched in 2004, worked with libraries and sought to digitize public domain and copyrighted works … allowing users to access full text of public works, while limiting access to works still protected by author or publisher copyright. Challenged for more than a decade in the courts, most recently by the Authors Guild, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Google in 2015, affirming that this initiative is allowable under the Fair Use provision of US copyright law. Another initiative, well-known to ATG readers, is the Internet Archive (IA), whose books project defined many of the principles that are associated with CDL today, most notably “own to loan” which limits the number of active digital readers to the number of physical copies in a library’s collection. The Internet Archive has also faced numerous legal court challenges as the law seeks to catch up with the capabilities of technology, the most recent filed in 2020

Why Now?

Against this backdrop, we have a global shutdown of physical spaces. Overnight, the entire planet came face-to-face with the reality that COVID would force us to find ways to live and work without access to the physical infrastructure and resources that underpin our personal and professional lives. For libraries, the limitations of a physical space with physical objects were exposed in an immediate and urgent manner. Libraries worked as quickly as possible to support remote users and readers, a challenge made exponentially more difficult by the fact that librarians were also learning to work within a fully remote environment. Publishers, libraries, and vendors collaborated to quickly establish and maintain access to the materials needed to continue vital research and education.

As discussed above, IA and other initiatives, in addition to policies at some individual libraries, have been employing CDL as a tool for more than a decade, operating under what they perceive is the legal framework provided by existing US copyright law. So why did Hachette, Wiley, Penguin, and Harper-Collins choose to file a new challenge to IA’s Open Library in 2020, a project that had been in existence since 2006? The answer is the removal of the IA’s “own to loan” limitation from March 2020 – August 2020 in response to COVID under its National Emergency Library initiative. In the “all hands-on deck” emergency, CDL took center stage as a crucial tool to help support the unprecedented challenge of COVID, and in so doing brought the question of interpretation of U.S. copyright law front and center yet again.

Read More in ATG

The above primer focused on some of the legal questions fundamental to CDL and why CDL has emerged as an important topic for multiple stakeholders in scholarly communication. This issue of ATG will explore facets of CDL beyond legal and copyright, looking at library policies and infrastructure, developing standards, the relationship between CDL and Inter Library Loan (ILL), as well as potential risks and unintended consequences. We are grateful to Todd Carpenter, Executive Director of NISO, for his insights and are happy to revisit perspectives on this topic from Lila Bailey, Senior Policy Counsel, Internet Archive, delivered as part of the Charleston Conference in 2021. Happy reading on a topic that is continuing to evolve as we go to press!

“Overnight, the entire planet came face-toface with the reality that COVID would force us to find ways to live and work without access to the physical infrastructure and resources that underpin our personal and professional lives.”

The “C” Stands for “Controlled”

By Meg White (Director of Vendor Partnerships, the Charleston Hub) <megmwhite13@gmail.com>

Everyindustry, every discipline, and every friend group seems to have its own unique vernacular … those words or abbreviations that are so well-known, they are easily recognized and understood by members of the community.

Think of the alphabet soup word scramble that has become commonplace in everyday life: TIA, LMK, LOL. The meaning of these phrases is often so well understood that we cease to recall the real words behind the shortcut, and the abbreviations take on their own identity and meaning. In the case of CDL, libraryspeak for Controlled Digital Lending (and not California Digital Library or Commercial Drivers’ License) the use of the word “controlled” contributes significantly to the practice of sharing digital copies of owned materials. In fact, CONTROLLED as part of the title that is descriptive of this practice is at the core of ensuring that CDL is supported and protected by U.S. copyright law. And this assertion simultaneously places responsibility for “control” into the scholarly communication landscape.

CDL is defined by Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries as “an emerging method that allows libraries to loan print books to digital patrons in a “lend like print” fashion.” On its face this definition seems simple and derives its legal protection from the same U.S. copyright law that allows libraries to loan physical materials. CDL enables libraries to loan digital copies of owned materials, in and out-of-copyright, while maintaining a 1:1 relationship of “owned-to-loaned.” CDL does not allow sharing of licensed materials, and according to Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries “is not intended to act as a substitute for existing electronic licensing services offered by publisher.”

Proponents maintain that CDL is an extension of rights defined by existing copyright law and enables libraries to use technology to expand the content in their physical collections that is available to their users.

Some copyright holders disagree, arguing that CDL violates and undermines the rights and interests, financial and otherwise, of publishers and authors. These groups maintain that the making and sharing of a digital copy exceeds the First Sale and Fair Use sections of U.S. copyright law and undermine the economic and ownership rights of content creators and/or copyright holders. The most recent challenge to CDL is a complaint filed in 2020 by a group of publishers against the Internet Archive, one of the earliest and most high-profile adopters of CDL. Hachette Book Group vs. The Internet Archive challenges the legality of CDL and, while in the discovery phase, is likely to wind its way through the courts well into the future. For those interested in digging deeper into the library perspective on the legal framework of First Sale and Fair Use and how U.S. copyright law relates to CDL, David R. Hansen & Kyle K. Courtney have authored an in-depth Whitepaper on this topic.

Who is in Control?

While the courts decide how U.S. copyright law applies to new technologies

for formats outside of the physical ones on which it was based, what are the options, if any, for libraries to employ CDL as a means of serving their users and readers? If the courts side with the proponents of CDL, agreeing that digital versions are in fact representations of owned materials and governed by the same laws, is this issue settled? Agreement in principle about the legality of CDL is just the beginning … in practice the processes and policies around exerting the CONTROLLED portion of CDL to ensure compliance with U.S. copyright law are not trivial. Libraries have traditionally been good stewards in the effort to protect copyright, but using CDL as a tool for providing access introduces additional responsibilities for enforcement and protection of publisher and author rights on libraries and the U.S., increasing their potential risk.

Controlled Digital Lending by Libraries defines some of the required parameters for CDL, chief among them the “use of technical controls to ensure a consistent ‘owned-to-loaned’ ratio,” mandating that a library only simultaneously circulate the exact number of copies of a title that they own in print; meaning at any given moment, access in any format is directly tied to the number of physical copies owned by the library. The definition further states that the library must “put controls in place to prevent users from redistributing or copying the digitized version.” And here is where things get interesting or complicated, depending on your point of view. The good news is that the technology (primarily DRM and concurrent user access) exists to allow for CONTROL in controlled digital lending, but the not-so-good news is that few libraries have the technology, tools or infrastructure to enforce copyright in such a distributed environment. The tools to implement CDL in a manner that honors the rights of all stakeholders are not necessarily prevalent in the landscape or accessible to many libraries.

Currently, CDL infrastructure is supported primarily by consortia, with groups collaborating to share collections across their membership. The Boston Library Consortia, as a part of their CDL implementation, released a guide entitled Consortial CDL: Implementing Controlled Digital Lending as a Mechanism for Interlibrary Loan for other groups as well as individual libraries interested in using CDL as a tool. The Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA), the state’s academic library consortia, has adopted CDL as a service to its members, and individual academic libraries including UC Berkeley and the University of Florida are using CDL to support eReserves, extending their reach to users for whom the library has become what they are able to access on their desktop or phone. Common among all of these initiatives is a core belief that CDL is permissible under the “owned-to-loaned” framework, if the library can take steps to enforce existing access, reproduction, and usage rights to be compliant with the First Sale and Fair Use sections of U.S. copyright law.

“The tools to implement CDL in a manner that honors the rights of all stakeholders are not necessarily prevalent in the landscape or accessible to many libraries.”

Collections

COLLECTION

Thematic Collections

& Contact

Some library service providers and vendors have also begun work to support CDL … deploying existing concurrent user and DRM technology to enable interlibrary loan (ILL) and course reserves, no doubt in response to customer demand. Primarily focused on eBooks, CDL “dashboards” support local preferences and workflow preferences for CDL; titles to be included, length of “check out,” and wait list management are configurable to help libraries manage and control CDL. However, in considering adding CDL as service, libraries should be mindful of the resources necessary to support and manage these programs, even aided by tool sets, as well as the potential legal risk as the courts have yet to decide whether CDL is a right guaranteed under U.S. copyright law.

For CDL to become a common practice in scholarly communication, the industry needs a common understanding of best practices and the framework needed to support these practices. Enter NISO. In January 2022, the standards organization formed a working group to “develop a consensus framework in support of controlled digital lending of book content by libraries, to be published as a NISO recommended practice.” Importantly, NISO recognized the need to create the

standard for an “Interoperable System of Controlled Digital Lending” … but also specifically states that the outcome of the working group will be a “natural extension of rights held and practices undertaken by library for content they legally hold” moving forward to help define the future, based on the assumption that CDL will be found to be a legal practice under U.S. copyright law.

For libraries, the desire to explore CDL is heightened by potential benefits to their users … first and foremost by removing the limitations inherent in physical location(s). If CDL is deemed within the boundaries of the law, (and while not explicitly stated previously, the legal discussion of CDL applies only in the Unites States, as copyright law varies greatly in individual countries) implementation by libraries will require increased investment in technology, developed locally or purchased as a tool, as well as heightened vigilance to enforce copyright in a greatly expanded digital arena. Libraries should be mindful that the “C” in CDL stands for CONTROLLED, and the expectation is that they will be accountable not only for lending, but also for ensuring that they have the processes and technology in place to protect the rights of all involved.

COMING SOON! A new title from The Charleston Briefings: Trending Topics for Information Professionals

The Predator Effect: Understanding the Past, Present and Future of Deceptive Academic Journals

By Simon Linacre, Head of Content, Brand & Press at Digital Science

The Predator Effect is intended as a primer for researchers, publishers and funders of academic research so that they understand the background, operations and impact of predatory publishing journals. By shining a light on the murky world of predatory journals, readers will learn how to identify and avoid them in their activities - benefiting their own work and research.

See https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/briefings/ for more information, or contact Matthew Ismail, Editor-in-Chief, matthew.ismail@ icloud.com

The Charleston Briefings are a series of short books (12,000 to 20,000 words) on the topic of innovation in the world of libraries and scholarly communication. The default format for the Briefings is an open access eBook. We use Michigan Publishing’s eBook hosting platform Fulcrum to provide online access. We will also offer the customer the option to purchase a Kindle, iBook or print-on-demand version.

The audience for the Briefings is the same audience that attends the Charleston Conference: librarians, publishers, entrepreneurs in information technology, vendors and consultants. The series will offer timely, readable, and focused treatments of topics of significance to practitioners in these fields. The purpose of the series is to offer the reader a useful overview that will allow them to engage more effectively with new trends and innovations in their industry.

A Transformative Model for Open Access

Open Access publishing for all corresponding

in

access for all authorized users to the full-text contents of the

Library

pricing for the length of the

Progress Toward a Recommended Practice on Controlled Digital Lending

By Todd Carpenter (Executive Director, NISO) <tcarpenter@niso.org>

0000-0002-8320-0491

Circulation

of content in all formats is a core feature of what libraries exist to do, and they have been doing so legally for centuries. Libraries have also shared their collections with other institutions because it is understood that no library, regardless of its resources, can collect every item available. Providing patrons access to content via interlibrary loan (ILL) is another way in which institutions serve their patrons by connecting with other institutions through collections sharing. Building upon these traditions, controlled digital lending (CDL) is an emerging method that allows libraries to replicate their right to loan their legally acquired items in a digital format to patrons under controlled conditions. A new NISO recommended practice seeks to develop and promote community consensus on how best to apply this new approach to circulating content.

For direct-to-patron lending, CDL relies on many traditional circulation protocols and practices, with some variations, such as removing the print version of the loaned copy and setting hold periods differently from traditional circulation, to replicate the “friction” of handling the physical item. For institutional sharing, CDL is an extension of traditional ILL services, using the application of new technologies to more efficiently serve these requests, with lower costs, faster response time, lower environmental impact, and more effective collections development and management. In addition, through CDL, libraries can make available out-of-print books and provide access to readers with disabilities. Fragile collections that would not be able to circulate in any scenario can be made available via CDL — particularly for access to rare or unique materials, CDL thus supports a wider range of researchers who might not be able to travel to physically view the item. In addition, as items do not need to be physically shipped, CDL is a more environmentally friendly practice for content sharing.

As with any expansion of an existing service, there are new elements, features, and practices that need to be developed to adapt traditional circulation and ILL activities, policies, and infrastructure to the requirements of CDL. Many institutions implemented initial CDL trials and explored possible services, taking a variety of approaches to address differences between CDL and traditional circulation and ILL services. These differences include the interoperability requirements between systems, circulation policy and practice such as returns and holds, and technical measures to limit further sharing of copyrighted works. Other issues, such as the implications for the user experience, the network-awareness of the availability of digitized versions, and how CDL aligns with — or diverges from — long-standing practices that guide decision-making about copying materials, highlight the need for consensus-based approaches to aligning community practice.

In the fall of 2022, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) launched a project, with the support from a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to develop a consensus Recommended Practice addressing the growing practice of CDL. The Interoperable System for Controlled

Digital Lending (IS-CDL) project was approved by the NISO Voting Members in September of 2021. Following a public call for participants, a working group numbering nearly 30 people from across the information community was organized. Cochaired by Jennie Rose Halperin, from Library Futures and Allen Jones, from The New School library. The aim of this group is to identify and define a reference model of recommended practices supporting the technical and functional aspects of Controlled Digital Lending (CDL), an emerging method that allows patrons to electronically access books (print and digital) and book-like objects in a “lend like print” fashion.

The group began its work focused on four key areas: Digital Objects, General Circulation / Reserves, Inter-Library Lending, and Asset Sharing. The goal of the project is to develop a reference model upon which libraries and service providers can build and then operate a system of components to enable controlled digital lending within a library’s current service portfolio. Focusing on four operational areas of libraries, the group is considering the role of CDL in course reserves, general circulation, ILL, and digitization of content. Secondary goals for the project include agreeing on a common definition for CDL and the potential need for additional changes in other related standards such as OpenURL, circulation protocols (NCIP/SIP) and interlibrary loan standards. Importantly, this project is not seeking to define the legal rationale for whether an institution should engage in CDL or not, or for what types of circulation CDL might be appropriate, but rather it aims to describe best practice for how CDL should be implemented regarding functionality and control of access.

The group began its work undertaking an environmental scan of CDL systems that are presently in production and development. It is reviewing requirements of special collections digitization as compared with general circulation or ILL. It is also considering how objects available for CDL might be represented in MARC records; how terms of use should be represented, and how analytics and usage data should be gathered and reported. The final recommendations will also include user journeys, model workflows and staff roles in the CDL process. It will also contain a glossary of CDL terms and a bibliography of additional readings on the topic.

There are a variety of models available in which CDL can be incorporated into existing library infrastructure. Some approaches have included centralized system where institutions collectively upload to a single, shared, cooperative system. In this model, the library’s ILS and CDL systems are integrated. Building upon model this some networks of libraries may have a centralized system where a number of institutions collectively upload to a single, shared, cooperative system. In this model, the ILS and CDL systems of a particular institutions are NOT integrated, but rather shared resources across the system of participating institutions. The own-to-loan ratio is managed within the ILS, but the CDL system manages access

STREAMING VIDEO

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controls to digital objects and assets via an interconnected and interoperable network. Individually, institutions may deploy local digital asset management systems where digital objects are upload to an institutional instance for access. In this model, the ILS and CDL systems are integrated. The final scenario envisioned is where these local digital asset management system exists but that the CDL system and ILS are not integrated, but interoperable in some capacity.

Addressing the specifics of these models, each of the subgroups has made progress advancing their areas of focus. The subgroup working on how digital objects are managed is developing a profile of standards related to the discovery, description and delivery as it relates to the creation, requesting, supplying and lending of CDL and E-ILL objects. They have begun outlining best practices for how CDL copies are represented within discovery services, evaluate MARC-based, OPDS as well as other exchange standards. Within these contexts, the group is evaluating file formats, encryption approaches, and the accessibility requirements of sharing these files and their associated metadata.

A second subgroup is focused on reserves and is developing end-to-end staff workflow and library staff technical and business requirement recommendations. They are outlining the technical requirements for delivery via browser and mobile devices of CDL/E-ILL objects to patrons. They are then identifying and documenting own-to-loan procedures and potential circulation interoperability interfaces that address these issues. Finally, the group will describe metrics to articulate the transaction and service performance of CDL activities.

Since CDL can be used not only to exchange content directly with patrons, but also between institutions, another subgroup is focused on ILL aspects of CDL exchange. They have begun by identifying integration opportunities for component developers and library systems vendors. This subgroup will describe ideal workflows for the exchange of CDL and licensed digital objects between institutions and the variety of systems used in digital

circulation of content. Since many existing standards relate to this exchange among institutions, the group will develop draft work items for existing standards groups to consider, that could address the gaps in those standards the communicate information between institutional and broker endpoints. Ideally, the subgroup will be able to articulate best practices for an interoperable user experience and outline metrics to articulate the transaction and service performance.

The final subgroup tasked with exploring asset protection will be describing the processes by which libraries securely exchange digital files between CDL systems and digital asset management systems. They will document best practice for how to discover representations of CDL objects that are exchanged between lending systems. A key elements of this will be how descriptive and exchange standards are defined within the bibliographic record, which are required to enable libraries to import CDL objects into local digital asset management systems. The subgroup will also articulate technical requirements for the secure exchange of unencrypted digital assets between systems.

The group is working toward a draft for public comment in the first quarter of 2023. Ideally, the final recommendation will be published by the end of 2023 and the group remains on target toward that goal. Obviously, many factors will play a role in whether the project is completed on schedule. The volunteer team involved in this project is working diligently and the community should be appreciative of their efforts. Additional information regarding the project will be posted to the NISO website (https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/ is-cdl) for the initiative and public presentations are planned throughout the coming year. Given the range of applications for CDL, regardless of the outcome of pending litigation, it is likely that this recommendation will serve as a guide for institutions seeking to deploy controlled digital lending in their environment.

the

Internet Archive Files Final Reply Brief in Lawsuit Defending Controlled Digital Lending

By Lila Bailey (Senior Policy Counsel, Internet Archive) <lila@archive.org>

Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on the Internet Archive blog at http://blog.archive.org/2022/10/08/ internet-archive-files-final-reply-brief-in-lawsuit-defendingcontrolled-digital-lending/ on Friday, October 8. Reprinted with permission. The Charleston Conference was privileged to have Lila as a speaker for the annual Long Arm of the Law presentation in 2021, where she also spoke about this issue. See a video of her presentation at https://youtu.be/90YaKo4dbhg

On Friday, October 7, the Internet Archive filed a reply brief against the four publishers that sued Internet Archive in June 2020: Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins Publishers, John Wiley & Sons, and Penguin Random House. This is the final brief in support of our motion for summary judgment (our previous motions can be found here and here) where we have asked the Court to dismiss the lawsuit because our lending program is a fair use.

The lawsuit was filed against Internet Archive in 2020 because of “anger among publishers” about digital lending by libraries. The publishers are urging the court to declare that “controlled digital lending is not a defense to copyright infringement” and is unlawful under United States law. They allege that controlled digital lending deprives them of the opportunity to obtain millions of dollars in additional “revenues from both public and academic libraries” through expensive ebook licensing schemes. Unwilling to confront library lending on its own terms — as an obviously not-for-profit exercise in expanding access to information — they claim that our lending is “commercial” and “does not serve the type of ‘educational purpose’ recognized under the Copyright Act.”

As the reply brief explains, the Internet Archive is indisputably a non-profit organization whose free lending program — like all library lending — serves a noncommercial, educational mission: to expand access to knowledge. And there is no evidence that controlled digital lending harmed their sales or profits at all — as the brief argues, “rather than making use of their unfettered access to more than a decade of empirical data, [the publishers] simply assert that market harm is ‘self-evident.’” Indeed:

“All that CDL does, and all it can ever do, is offer a limited, digital alternative to physically handing a book to a patron.

Libraries deciding how to meet their patrons’ needs for digital access to books are not making a choice between paying eBook licensing fees or getting books for free.

Libraries pay publishers under either approach — but digital lending lets libraries make their own decisions about which books to circulate physically, and which to circulate digitally instead. That choice means that librarians can continue to maintain permanent collections of books, to preserve those books in their original form for future generations, and to lend them to patrons one at a time, as they have always done.”

Read the full brief here: https://www.eff.org/document/ hachette-v-internet-archive-internet-archives-reply-isosummary-judgment

Rumors continued from page 8

HARRASSOWITZ is celebrating 150 years of quality service! Otto Harrasssowitz founded his company in 1872: https://www.harrassowitz.de/ history.html . Here is a just married picture of Knut and Renata Dorn, taken from a book celebrating the company milestone! We did an interview with Knut about his retirement in 2011: https://www.charleston-hub.com/2012/02/v236-atg-interviews-knut-dorn/

Did you know we have a Job Bank on the Charleston Hub? If you’re in the market for a new job, check out https://www.charleston-hub.com/category/jobs/ . If

you’re hiring, send us your job openings at editors@ against-the-grain.com!

The Library of Congress recently announced the implementation of FOLIO, an open-source library services solution, to transform the library’s collections management and access. From the press release: “This is a milestone in our journey to implement a user-centered approach to connecting more people to the Library’s collections,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “We are grateful for Congress’ generous investment in this next-generation system that is essential to the Library’s digital-forward strategy, which harnesses technology to bridge geographical divides, expand our reach and enhance our services.” See the full press release for more details. ATG has reached out to Kate Zwaard, Associate

on page 41

Ed — Opinions and Editorials

Op Ed — Sic Parvis Magna: Let’s Leave the Docks

By Daniel L. Huang (Resource Acquisitions Manager, Lehigh University, Class of 2007) <dlh4@lehigh.edu>

Wayback in the day (note to self: stop reminding self about age) at a Charleston event I remember being struck by the UNC Charlotte’s Three Principles of Ebook Acquisition. Those guiding principles reflect in my mind what was an era of humble beginnings in librarianship where we completed part of the transition from print to widely accepted and utilized electronic resources. But is it a false victory where the Macedonian wept (we can agree to disagree why Alexander did so)? Are we out of horizons to explore?

My goal today is to challenge our profession to accept a new set of goals for librarianship in electronic books:

1. eBooks ought to utilize their digital nature to communicate information that would otherwise be restricted by the print format and facilitate different methods of learning, including facilitating coordination, collaboration, and communication of ideas.

2. Librarians should advocate for university level changes to Tenure & Promotion policies that validate the importance of OER, OA, and other such initiatives.

3. Monograph budgets should be reallocated to support these initiatives; in concert with a drawdown of standard eBook expenditures facilitated by patron-friendly and trust-enabled borrow/buy systems.

We pretend we are Francis Drake, yet the current landscape can and does restrict the user’s exploration. Furthermore, if we continue on the same trajectory, the very method by which we create and select books doom us to irrelevance as if we were aboard the Golden Hind and thousands of smaller ships left us in their wake.

eBooks by their very digital nature should communicate information that would otherwise be restricted by the print format. A print book cannot have a rotating three-dimensional model of a molecule yet the silent question asked by our clientele is “if you can do it on the rest of the Internet, why can’t you do it on a library eBook?” I want to call attention to the PKP, Fulcrum, and Pressbooks platforms in a previous issue of Against the Grain as examples of potential systems that can add innovative content to eBooks that leverage the digital format.

How can it be that Facebook, Xanga, TikTok, Reddit, Gaia Online, or others foster such immense user participation and cross-examination of the issues at hand? In The Stalemate I stated “In our futuristic era where supercomputers exist in our pockets… why does academia conceive of eBooks as a pure facsimile of the printed word?” The lack of interactive capability potentially hampers both scholar to scholar interaction or interaction with the general public.

If an undergraduate student could argue the finer points of “My Hero Academia” (a popular TV show) or why Sirius is the best black cat name on Reddit or Gaia Online but cannot discuss academic-level questions with other scholars on an academic platform, there is

no interactive online environment where our eBooks live. Libraries need to create scholarly communication methods where any scholar (inclusive of student, professor, scientist, and general reader) can reliably create an eBook and also facilitate debate and discussion.

The outcome of that debate and discussion ought to generate changes and clarifications to an eBook. Such a system should facilitate “on the fly” commenting as scholarship changes because scholarship ought to be dynamic and continually evolving. These changes are already crystallized in the traditional concept of a book “edition.”

But why limit ourselves to the notion of a book as a completed work or a set of updates and editions? What I am proposing is that libraries should create a communication framework around existing eBooks that is openly accessible by the general public. Perhaps the actual eBook itself is behind a paywall but the discussion about the book ought to be freely accessible. Here’s some ideas on how that might work:

1. A user punches in an ISBN into this collaboration software platform and is taken to an online space where they can either write down their own thoughts about the book or read other users’ thoughts.

2. The book’s author(s) should be empowered to highlight worthwhile discussions in that online space.

3. Librarians should assist in the moderation and maintenance of this online space.

4. Students at their own individual universities should not have to reinvent the wheel. Discussion posts or useful ideas about a book that are currently locked behind their home institution’s online course systems could in theory be instead posted here.

5. Therefore there also ought to be some provision for students to self-identify that they are taking part in this online space for the purposes of their coursework.

6. This platform should be inclusive of readers outside of university systems. It is often said that the general public misunderstands what scholars write: let people post their questions.

7. If the original author wants to post a newsletterstyle brief to address those questions, this platform should facilitate identifying the book’s author and that this is a response to the discussion.

8. Lastly, the platform should be open access and be funded by memberships from library acquisition budgets. This should not be the bailiwick of a publisher or other for-profit organization (by all means they should help invest in the platform).

And who knows? My cynical side says that if there’s enough interesting arguments about a book, someone is eventually going to want to read what the fuss is all about. Internet dramatics and (even deliberately) bad-

The ASME Digital Collection

IMAGINING A BETTER FUTURE THROUGH ENGINEERING

of The

Collection include:

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers® ASME®

posting in theory should lead to increased readership. Well, if the eBook is behind a paywall, a publisher could put a purchasing API there for the academic librarians if someone hits a “buy this for me” button. Hint hint.

Our perspective as librarians on faculty often says that the professor is the one who wields the power on our campuses. Yet we know that some (but not all) faculty are exploited, including underrepresented groups, as part of the university system. In order for them to achieve tenure track positions, these professors are required to publish or perish with prestigious publishers. And even if they do, in order to gain promotions and salary increases according to tenure and promotion (T&P) rules, they must still publish with those same publishers.

If there is no career track advantage for faculty to publish in an open access format, there is little motivation to do so other than pure charitable or intellectual impulse (and many faculty do indeed do so). Also, consider that some faculty never achieve consistent (or any) levels of publication necessary to achieve tenure. There is an opportunity for open access publishing to accelerate its acceptance if the T&P rules included an allowance for OA publishing to “count towards” T&P. And T&P often includes these three factors (and I comment briefly on how OA could apply to these factors):

• Service (noteworthy contributions to the university and their respective professions; such as advancing the landscape through freedom of access to information)

• Teaching (the pedagogical role of the professor; which could include creating and distributing OA eBooks and other learning materials)

• Research (self-explanatory; but in a T&P assessment, a publication in a prestigious book “counts more” than an OA book, even after tenure is achieved)

This is not to say that librarians should be waving placards and pitchforks in front of the Provost’s office. Faculty are the core of a university’s mission: let faculty advocate for faculty. For example, let the faculty decide what to themselves is a good OA versus a bad OA. Another example is that deans and the faculty should debate among themselves (if they even find it appropriate) whether or not a good curricular model is facilitating OA creation as a course requirement and graduate students help with the text and quiz creation process.

However, we ought to prepare ourselves for the POTENTIAL that faculty could approach us for these very crucial conversations. This can include having pre-positioned OA engagement assets, prepared and updated environmental scans of the OA publishing landscape, continuing education and understanding of OA technologies and their potential, and so forth. Gain awareness of the importance and sometimes restrictive nature of T&P. Let them know that when the librarians are needed, we are allies for equity not only in access to information but also access to the technological tools for publishing to students and faculty of all ranks and statuses.

Monograph budgets should be reallocated to support these OA initiatives; in concert with a drawdown of standard eBook expenditures facilitated by patron-friendly and trust-enabled borrow/buy systems. As it stands right now, quite a few of our institutions have L’Embarras des richesses: too many eBooks that never get used and then requests we never anticipated and then the book does not make it to its reader and many print books are still requested via ILL.

Our profession makes a great fuss about who ought to read what and which collection suits what students, but, as far as I

can see, this is much ado about nothing since everyone will read what is needed whether we like it or not (hopefully legally). The presumption that the patron is an antagonist with Augustus Gloop traits is unhelpful when we ought to have built our patron a golden ticket where every patron gets what they need and not a dollar more. A good example of this is the Project ReShare CDL project and its structural basis for expansion to other forms of rapid monograph acquisition, whether digital or physical, with the capability to route from interlibrary borrowing to buying and vice versa.

Equity presumes we trust that all patrons are capable of using a “borrow or buy” interface and we should presume that the logic behind those systems are sound. The major point here is why publishers have not fallen over themselves to monetize this stream of patron behavior: work with the librarian and go straight to the patron in an intelligent fashion that leverages both borrowing and buying budgets. With the cost savings and (partial) automation of collection development (now partially in the hands of the patron), what is a librarian to do with all this spare time (as if running a complex borrow and buy system is something done in an afternoon)?

When you have eliminated the possible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth: librarianship will become focused on the equitable creation of books and all the other maintenance and housekeeping we already do to books in a library on top of facilitating all the raucous online debates in yet to be seen collaboration platforms. The faculty will get on this on their own (such as the Bookdown.org platform) with or without us.

My modest proposal is that the publishers themselves need to partially rearrange their business model from a competitive model to a partnership model. Instead of constant competition of selling collections (in a technological sense, not the publication date), a reputable group such as a “Cambridge University Press” could set up the platforms of the OA world and conduct the vetting and support of the process. The cost model would be a not-minor fee with regards to the hosting and technical support and all sorts of add-on costs such as the training and onboarding of faculty onto these platforms.

A “Cambridge University Press” would then focus on selling the current crop of eBooks that directly support and are relevant to the eBooks being created in this OA process. To dream even bigger, I am certain that courseware (which costs money) and homework and quiz creation for these OA resources is something that could be outsourced to a publisher to be created centrally (hey another upcharge!). Do graduate students and postdocs write the followup material? Who trains them to write it?

I refuse to accept in any way that our profession has figuratively circumnavigated the world. We have perfected a very small narrow slice of our world but are still at humble beginnings. And greatness can come from small things: our steadfast commitment to a more equitable eBook world where everyone can access both the books AND the debate around the books. A world where the eBooks themselves transcend the surly bonds of the print facsimile.

How do we do this? We ought to form a collaborative organization that assists in funding the spread of this technology and its life cycle. A crack team of librarians who want to make brilliant debates happen on the Internet. A team of advocates who can make OA “worth it” to professors. And of course acquisitions persons and publishers all working collaboratively to sell electronic content in a more intelligent way. So let’s leave the docks!

SUPPORTING HUMANITIES EBOOKS AND OPEN ACCESS

Fund to Mission:

Open Access Ebooks from University of Michigan Press

In 2021, the University of Michigan Press began to transition its ebook collection into an open access monograph model called Fund to Mission. Under the Fund to Mission model, the Press aims to make at least 75% of its frontlist monographs open access by 2023. By purchasing one of the collection packages, libraries join the University of Michigan and individual funders in supporting an open access program where no author ever has to pay. Libraries that purchase the collection receive perpetual access to approximately 80 frontlist titles as well as term access to a growing backlist of over 2,000 titles.

Learn more at ebc.press.umich.edu.

ACLS Humanities Ebook Collection

The American Council of Learned Societies Humanities Ebook Collection (ACLS HEB) is a subscription-based collection of over 5,700 scholarly books from over 125 publishers. More than just a group of books, ACLS HEB is a set of titles curated for scholars by scholars with members of ACLS learned societies nominating books to be added to the collection.

Learn more at humanitiesebook.org.

Lever Press

Emerging initially from a collaboration between liberal arts college libraries, Lever Press offers a collective solution to open access book publishing. With the participation of more than 50 academic institutions and publishing support from Michigan Publishing, Lever Press produces peer-reviewed, born-digital, open-access monographs at no cost to authors or their academic institutions. This collaborative structure allows institutions to have a voice in the future of scholarly communications and academic publishing regardless of their size of resources.

Learn more at leverpress.org.

Reader’s Roundup: Monographic Musings & Reference Reviews

Column Editor: Corey Seeman (Director, Kresge Library Services, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan) <cseeman@umich.edu> Twitter @cseeman

Column Editor’s Note: I am very happy to share a set of reviews with the Charleston community with this issue. What is fascinating (from an editorial perspective) is that for the first time I can remember, we have both one of the highest and one of the lowest ratings among the books reviewed this time. The two highest review ratings involve a book that needs a home on your nightstand or your desk. The lowest review rating suggests that the reviewer would invest money elsewhere. Both of these groups represent works that either excite or disappoint the reviewers of the work. While the ratings are listed elsewhere in this column, it is worth sharing a bit behind the rational.

We (as a society) are rating-happy, slapping a number or a score on just about everything. We also fixate on the winners, even though we know that a win, especially with awards, might represent short-lived praise. (My case in point are the 2022 Emmy’s loving The White Lotus and ignoring Better Call Saul — please don’t get me started). Having just returned from an actual vacation, it is interesting for me to think about how people might respond to post-trip surveys. Most of us on this vacation shared the same general experience, and yet have very different perceptions of how enjoyable the vacation was. There is a hope that if you get enough people to respond, the more probable rating might emerge, but there sometimes are not enough responses to really find the balance.

That being said, as I looked around at my fellow vacationeers (not sure that is a word), all I could think of was a fairly standard bell-curve. The vast majority of people seem to be generally happy or content. A small number are elated and a small number are miserable. It is the same food, the same entertainment, the same basic package — but with very different responses. Somehow, without a baseline — it is difficult to interpret the scores that they might give a vacation. The same could be true about movies, books, television series, museums, etc.

The ratings that we came up with for this column are intented to provide less of a score, but more of a general account of the value that a book may provide in a modern library setting. I personally believe that most every book has some value to the library and value to many members of the community. That being said, libraries have a limited budget and shelf-space to house all these materials, so decisions need to be thought out. When you are looking at these reviews, do not skip ahead to the rating, but use it to summarize the key elements you see in the review. Hopefully it will help clarify the value of that item in your library.

I very much appreciate the work of the reviewers who really dig into the work and provide context that may be missing elsewhere. Thank you to my reviewers: Erika Boardman (UNC Charlotte), Janet Crum (University of Arizona), Julie Huskey (Tennessee State University), Joshua Hutchinson (University of Southern California), Colleen Lougen (SUNY New Paltz), Jane Natches (Tufts University), Mary Jo Orzech (SUNY Brockport) — who penned two reviews, and Kathryn Vela (St. Luke’s Health System). Thank you very much for your work in bringing this column together.

If you would like to be a reviewer for Against the Grain, please write me at <cseeman@umich.edu>. If you are a publisher and have a book you would like to see reviewed in a future column, please also write me directly. You can also find out more about the Reader’s Roundup here — https://sites.google.com/view/ squirrelman/atg-readers-roundup.

Happy reading and be nutty! — Corey

Alessio, Amy, Katie LaMantia & Emily Vinci. 50+ Programs for Tweens, Teens, Adults, and Families: 12 Months of Ideas. ALA Editions, 2020. 978-0-8389-1945-3, 176 pages, $54.99

Reviewed by Mary Jo Orzech (Librarian, Drake Memorial Library, SUNY Brockport) <morzech@brockport.edu>

As the title might suggest, this book presents more than fifty ideas designed for public library programs aimed at a wide range of ages and interests. The format is clear and straightforward, using easy-to-follow cookbook style instructions for each event. The first section is logically organized by month for effortless referral. The second part of the book includes five short chapters discussing ideas for groups and clubs that can grow from single events, such as a Graphic Novel Group, Power Parenting Nights or STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) Club.

A description of each activity mentions preparation time needed for planning and shopping, as well as setup. A handy supply list is provided along the typical length of a program, optimal number of attendees, and suggested age range. Marketing ideas, program variations, trivia and free games are included as ways to build interest before the event. “Pro Tips” contribute additional pointers likely to enhance participation, ease implementation, and encourage success.

Perennial favorite themes are updated with inspiring offshoots and intriguing brainstorms for fresh planning. The concise template format incorporates a number of creative twists and turns worth exploring. One example features card games such as cribbage or whist to supplement a Jane Austen event. Programs can be scaled and adapted by astute library staff to suit the unique needs of their communities.

Plans may build on tried and true favorite activities, such as those involving food and crafts, yet still include enough variation to satisfy readers looking for something new. The book includes sketches, not pictures, and frequently refers to websites for further details or examples. Specific websites are occasionally no longer available, a weakness shared by many print books in the current environment.

The complementary backgrounds of the three collaborating authors amplify and enhance the material:

• Amy Alessio is an award-winning librarian, author of several library programming books, and an adjunct professor of library science. She also teaches webinars on book trends and social media.

• Katie Lamantia is a collection development librarian for a well-known publisher and co-author of several books, with expertise in programming for teens and young adults.

• Emily Vinci is the fiction manager at a township district library in Illinois. She presents frequently about pop culture and niche library programming, and has also co-authored multiple books.

A small point is that trademarked names of supplies are frequently used rather than general descriptions. Addressing that might help the book be more useful in areas where specific commercial items may not be available, accessible or affordable, yet similar items could be substituted. Examples include plastic cups for “Dixie” cups, hook and loop for “Velcro,” jelly beans for “Jelly Bellies,” etc.

While intended for public library audiences, several programs could be readily modified for other venues. Academic libraries could easily benefit from ideas described in “Life Hacks for Living on Your Own,” “Healthy Living and Meal Prep” and financial literacy for college audiences. The book mentions that many activities could also be modified to encourage greater engagement through partnerships with a variety of community groups.

The book provides basic frameworks for interesting programs. It is easy to envision that supplemental online content (e.g., customizable flyer templates, prop descriptions, handouts and evaluation materials) could add value. This would reduce planning time, while still allowing for creativity and individualization. Although the book is primarily designed for in-person events, it recognizes the effectiveness of online, social media and other technology applications.

The authors generously share their expertise with tested programming ideas and their enthusiasm is contagious. The book illustrates successful experiences and promotes positive interactions. It is therefore a bit surprising that more discussion around assessment is not included. This resource might benefit from a simple customizable template to assist with evaluating impact and identifying suggestions, improvements or changes for next time.

In summary, many similar ideas may be available via online searching, yet the book includes multiple creative and practical twists for both new library staff and anyone seeking to refresh existing programs for specific audiences. The book also contains a valuable index that strengthens its usefulness.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Autoimmune Diseases Handbook & Resource Guide. Amenia NY. Grey House Publishing Inc. (2021). 9781637000359, 442 pages. $184.91

Reviewed by Jane Natches (Head, Collections Management, Hirsh Health Sciences Library, Tufts University, Boston MA) <jane.natches@tufts.edu>

In academia, most people accept that a Health Sciences library exists to support the educational needs of students, residents, fellows and faculty in health-related fields of study. But some Health Sciences libraries reside in hospital settings and

Guide to the ATG Reviewer Ratings

The ATG Reviewer Rating is being included for each book reviewed. Corey came up with this rating to reflect our collaborative collections and resource sharing means and thinks it will help to classify the importance of these books.

• I need this book on my nightstand. (This book is so good, that I want a copy close at hand when I am in bed.)

• I need this on my desk. (This book is so valuable, that I want my own copy at my desk that I will share with no one.)

• I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

• I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

•

I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this is a useful book for my library or my network.)

are expected to provide resources for patient use as well as health care professionals. It can be challenging to find good quality resources that are written at the level a patient can understand.

The Autoimmune Diseases Handbook & Resource Guide was written for patients and families with the intention of providing useful and understandable content about the prevention, treatment, and outcomes of 21 different autoimmune diseases. The book is divided into three sections. The first section, titled “Statistics & Studies about Autoimmune Diseases,” captures detailed information on 17 specific autoimmune diseases. The second section, titled “Types of Autoimmune Diseases” contains one page disease profiles of 21 autoimmune diseases — 17 of which are also covered in section one and four that are not. Each profile is followed by listings of various agencies, associations, research centers, support groups, and digital resources where one can find more information and help. The third section lists medications by disorder. An entry name index and a geographic index are provided at the end of the book.

When assessing a resource, we teach our students to look at the author’s credentials and ask: “Do they have the background and expertise to be writing about this subject?” But the first thing one notices about this book is that no individual authors or editors are listed on the cover or title page. In section one the authors are made up of various organizations and associations that support specific autoimmune diseases. Here Grey House Publishing has reproduced whole brochures and fact sheets originally published by those organizations. For example, the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation is the author of the 3-page fact sheet “News from the IBD Help Center” and the 21-page brochure “Living with Crohn’s Disease” that make up the chapter on Crohn’s Disease in section one. This lends legitimacy to the content, provided one has a level of familiarity and trust of the organization. Section two is more problematic as disease profiles appear to be unauthored and data sources uncited.

Books made up of a compilation of authors is not unusual, especially in the medical field. But books produced this way require editorial work if not of the actual content, then with the selection of that content. On the first page of the Publisher’s Note (page xi) the reader is told that “There are more than 80 different autoimmune diseases, affecting every part of the body” yet only 21 diseases were selected for this publication. The publisher note also explains that section one contains some detailed research articles taken directly from academic journals and appears to lament that they are “word-heavy” and long but that the valuable information within them made it difficult to exclude. Obviously, many editorial decisions were required to produce this book, but how those decisions were made and by whom is unclear.

The challenge with creating a guide this way is the ability to keep it concise. In a handbook such as this, one might expect to find all the information about the etiology or symptoms of a disease in one place. In this book, however, information can appear in multiple places and the duplicate content may not always agree. For example, in section one the chapter on Lupus contains a fact sheet from the Office on Women’s Health (OWH), a fact sheet from the Lupus Foundation, and a health topic flyer from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In the OWH fact sheet, the symptoms for Lupus are muscle and joint pain, fever, rashes, such as a butterfly-shaped rash that may appear across the nose and cheeks, chest pain when taking a deep breath, hair loss, sun or light sensitivity, kidney problems, mouth sores (usually painless), feeling very tired, anemia, memory problems, blood clotting, and eye disease (page 83). In the NIH Health topic, some of those same symptoms are noted, but this document also lists changes in color of the fingers and toes, swollen glands, swelling in the legs or around the eyes, headaches, dizziness, depression, confusion and seizures (pages 90-91). And in between, on pages 85-89, the Lupus Foundation explains about the four different forms of lupus. It is interesting to note that while the NIH content is only about the most common form of lupus — systemic lupus / erythematosus (lupus), the OWH content doesn’t clarify the specific form or that there is more than one form. Added to the patchwork of content in section one is the fact that the same 17 diseases here are also summarized in section two. For Lupus, on page 339 of section two the reader can again find an abbreviated list of symptoms for the most common form of lupus and brief descriptions of three other forms of the disease.

The content of this book certainly has value. It is the organization that is concerning. The fact that it requires the reader not only to read each section in full so as not to miss a critical piece that may be provided by one institute but not another, but to then have to jump to its companion section at the back of the book is problematic. It is also limiting in that it only covers 21 diseases and only 17 completely (in both sections one and two). I would be more inclined to spend my money on an encyclopedia of autoimmune diseases that covers every autoimmune disease and is written in a way that is consolidated and succinct.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this is a useful book for my library or my network.)

Blake, Allison, ed. Careers in Gaming. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press : A division of EBSCO Information Services, 2020. 9781642656862, 350 pages. $125.00.

Reviewed by Erika Boardman (Electronic Resources Management Librarian, UNC Charlotte) <eboardman@uncc.edu>

Whether you enjoy them yourself or know people who do, video gaming is a widely popular activity in today’s society and will continue to grow as a favorite hobby for years to come. There is a huge population that attends gaming events to hear from the producers, directors, and etc. about the “next big thing” for the gaming industry. Many of us admire the visionaries, artists, and all other contributors of our favorite games, and we can’t help but wonder how these people became involved in the gaming industry and how we can get there ourselves.

Careers in Gaming places itself as an introductory core reference work for those curious about the gaming industry and what jobs are involved within the field. This volume is a part of the Careers In series by Salem Press and the reputation of this series for providing real-world knowledge remains apparent in this volume.

Careers in Gaming is organized alphabetically by career title and covers a variety of disciplines including arts and music, software and information systems, and other subjects of interest. Some of the featured careers include voice actor, market research analyst, e-sports player, and market research analyst. Each career profile starts with a “Snapshot” that includes the career clusters, what interests an individual may have that would be beneficial for the type of job, salary earnings, and employment outlook. The rest of the profile is broken down into six sections: “Overview,”

“Work Environment,” “Education, Training, and Advancement,” “Earnings and Advancement,” “Employment and Outlook,” and “More Information.” Throughout the career profile are side boxes with additional information about transferable skills, duties and responsibilities, and extra quick information that compliments the rest of the profile. Some of the career profiles also include a section called “Conversation With…” that provides an interview with an individual that has current or previous experience with the career profile it corresponds with.

The last section of the book includes a list of the organizations and associations mentioned throughout the book, an index and bibliography, and an informational chart about the Holland Code, a career theory about the different work groups an individual could fit into. There are additional pages that explain the six groups of the Holland Code.

Overall, Careers in Gaming is a relevant reference work for anyone interested in obtaining information about working in the gaming industry. Some of the information for each career profile felt repetitive at times, but it’s definitely not a deal breaker to have the same information presented twice in a different manner. The interview pieces are a great addition to the career profiles because it offers a bit of context about the different avenues people have taken to get to their career. There were a couple of careers that I felt were a bit of a reach

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to include as a “gaming career” or just something I wouldn’t particularly be looking for in this reference work. For example, “School teacher” was a career listed and the career profile really only mentions gaming in the context of being utilized more in classrooms for teaching and learning purposes — not actually a career in the gaming industry. Since the topic of gaming careers is still relatively new and there aren’t many publications about finding a job involving video games, this is a good career book to have on hand in a reference collection and to expand the subject coverage of a career resources collection. Careers in Gaming provides a good introduction and general overview to the field of gaming that can provide direction for people in their career search and insight into the gaming industry.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Cardiovascular Disease: Handbook & Resource Guide. New York: Grey House Publishing, 2020. 9781642658521, 545 pages. $165.00

Reviewed by Kathryn Vela (Medical Librarian, St. Luke’s Health System, Boise, Idaho) <velak@slhs.org>

This book is the second title in the new Grey House Health & Wellness Guides series, designed to collate information about cardiovascular disease for patients and

healthcare providers alike. The book is organized into four sections: Section One covers studies and statistics about cardiovascular disease; Section Two outlines the different types of cardiovascular disease, including relevant agencies and resources; Section Three describes comorbid conditions like substance use and obesity; and Section Four includes a selection of appendices. The purchase of this book comes with free online access to the Grey House/Salem Press Online resource for this book.

The first section of this book encompasses over 300 pages and is composed of a collection of government-funded manuals and reports on cardiovascular disease and a large selection of statistical maps showing cardiovascular disease death rates by state and county in the United States. While nearly all of this information can be found online for free, areas that struggle with reliable Internet access or who serve a population with limited digital literacy could benefit from having this information in print as part of this book.

The same is true for the second and third sections, as well; each type of cardiovascular disease and comorbidity that is described is accompanied by a list of agencies, resource centers, research foundations, support groups, and/or journals. This information could be found online, but having this list of resources could be helpful to those who are familiarizing themselves with a certain condition and not very familiar with effective online searching. There is a risk that much of this information could quickly become outdated as contact information changes.

The publisher states that the Cardiovascular Disease Handbook & Resource Guide is “a necessary reference for public and academic libraries, as well as health care and senior center collections.” Given that much of the information in this book can be found online for free, I do not feel that academic or hospital libraries would find much benefit in adding this book to their collection. One possible group of users might be libraries that are located in a rural area with limited or unreliable Internet, or libraries that serve a population that lacks digital literacy. They might find that this work has useful information that might not be easily obtained elsewhere.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I’ll use my money elsewhere. (Just not sure this is a useful book for my library or my network).

Evans, Robert C. (ed.) Notable Crime Fiction Writers. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, 2021. 978-1-63700-031-1 (print set); 9781-63700-032-8 (ebook). 2 v. (930 p.), $225.

Reviewed by Janet Crum (Director, Health Sciences Library, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ) <janetcrum@arizona.edu>

Popular with readers since the nineteenth century, crime fiction is often ranked as one of the top-selling literary genres in the United States and United Kingdom. In recent decades, the genre has also earned increasing respect from critics and academics. Notable Crime Fiction Writers has much to offer both fans and students of crime fiction.

According to the Publisher’s Note, the set is based on its predecessor, the five-volume Critical Survey of Mystery & Detective Fiction (2008), with some changes to the scope and content. Authors who have died or stopped publishing in the genre have been removed except for, “major, continuously influential figures, such as Poe, Christie, Hammett, and others” (vii). Over a hundred new entries have been added for, “writers who were not active enough to have been included in 2008,” including an effort, “to broaden the coverage of writers from previously underrepresented groups, namely African American, Native American, Hispanic, Women, and LGBTQ” (vii). Entries for authors included in the previous edition have been updated to include newer works, and the new edition includes an appendix with new essays on the genre.

The work includes entries for authors across all major subgenres as well as a few authors well-known in other genres whose work includes elements of crime fiction (e.g., Stephen King). Entries are arranged alphabetically and begin with ready reference information such as pseudonyms, type of plot (e.g., police procedural, amateur sleuth), principal series, principal characters, and a photo. The remainder of each entry typically covers the following:

• A summary of the author’s contribution to crime fiction

• Brief biography

• An analysis of the author’s, “themes, motifs, and writing style” (vii)

• Principal works or groups of works by genre

• An annotated bibliography

All entries are signed. Contributors are a mix of academics (mostly American) and independent scholars. Entries do not include complete bibliographies but rather highlight a few key works. Most entries run four to six pages, with a few slightly longer.

The set contains four appendices:

1. Past and Present Mystery and Detective Fiction: Six essays covering the history and major developments of the genre, from its nineteenth-century origins through the golden age, pulp magazines, subgenres, and more. Thoughtful and richly referenced, these essays will be of interest to both students and fans.

2. Crime Fiction Settings and Situations: All but one of the essays in this appendix focus on settings: Crime Fiction Set in Sweden, Crime Fiction Set on the West Coast, etc. These essays are brief and discuss only a few works; for example, Crime Fiction Set in the West discusses only four novels and makes no mention of Tony Hillerman, Craig Johnson’s Walt Longmire series, or JA Jance. Similarly, an essay entitled Crime Fiction with Mentally or Physically Challenged Characters — the only one not focused on a setting — includes Jeffery Deaver’s iconic Lincoln Rhyme but discusses a later book in the series rather than the first and best known, The Bone Collector. In most cases, the essays in this section consist primarily of plot summaries with some additional details sourced from reviews.

3. Resources: This section includes: an excellent annotated bibliography of reference, criticism, and other books about the genre and glossaries of genre terms, techniques, and jargon.

4. Author Birth and Death Data — an alphabetical listing of author birthdates, birthplaces, and death dates.

The set includes several useful indexes: author place and year of birth; authors by category (e.g., cozy, gay and lesbian detectives); character; and subject (including author names, titles, and some character names).

Most of the author entries I reviewed are well-written and offer substantive insights into each author’s body of work and contributions to crime fiction while also being accessible to the general reader. Standouts include the entries for Tony Hillerman and Attica Locke. A few entries have significant issues. For example, the entry for JA Jance is poorly written and demonstrates little knowledge of crime fiction (e.g., the author suggests that starting with a murder, “may seem backward,” when it is, in fact, standard practice in the mystery genre). The entry for Arthur Conan Doyle, arguably the most influential mystery writer in the western world, focuses mostly on one work — The Hound of the Baskervilles — with little information about the rest of the Holmes canon.

I also noted some puzzling omissions from the author entries, most notably Jeffery Deaver and Charlaine Harris, both huge names in the genre.

Despite these mostly minor issues, this work is a treasure trove for crime fiction fans and an excellent reference for librarians supporting reader’s advisory or literature programs that include crime fiction.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this on my desk. (This book is so valuable, that I want my own copy at my desk that I will share with no one.)

Hope, Jake. Seeing Sense: Visual Literacy as a Tool for Libraries, Learning and Reader Development. Cover Illustration by Olivia Lemenech Gill. London: Facet Publishing, 2020. 978-1-78330441-7, 195 pages. $43.40

Reviewed by Mary Jo Orzech (Librarian, Drake Memorial Library, SUNY Brockport) <morzech@brockport.edu>

This compact book provides a wide-ranging yet brief overview of many aspects of visual literacy. Written in a conversational style by an author well acquainted with the field, this handsome paperback provides valuable history and context for a sometimes neglected area of publishing. Integrating reading development and visual literacy with practical suggestions for book illustrators is a compelling area ripe for additional study. The increasing popularity of graphic novels and comics as art forms make deeper consideration of visual literacy both appropriate and timely. Covering a wide swath, we are reminded of the importance of visualizations for conveying meaning, as well as the myriad of relationships that exist between words and pictures, from early cave drawings through digital animations.

Author Jake Hope is a “reading development and children’s book consultant with a keen interest in librarianship, visual literacy, diversity and children’s books.” He has significant experience as both observer and judge for several book awards. His knowledge and background with award programs bring their history, processes and unique emphases into sharp focus. The book is sprinkled with first person interviews, quotes, and case studies from notable jurors and awardees, providing a unique “behind the scenes” glimpse into the creation of book illustrations, particularly, though not exclusively, in children’s and young adult books.

The book is an easy read and well organized. Concise chapters range from “What is visual literacy and why does it matter?,” through terminology, developmental reading stages, artist perspectives, and the critical importance of visual literacy in information-seeking, making meaning, and learning. The chapter on visual representation and inclusion is especially welcome and touches on a range of topics including cultural diversity, gender, sexuality, mental health, empathy, learning needs, sight and colour blindness.

The final chapter detailing visual literacy in libraries and reading environments should be most pertinent for librarians. The author illuminates some of the ways that visual literacy can be incorporated as part of library collections, displays, settings, and services along with creative examples of how it can be highlighted in both the physical and online worlds. Many of the cases emanate from libraries in the United Kingdom, but can be adapted and replicated globally. These “show me, don’t tell me” models can help to inspire and benefit visual learners as well as readers of all ages as both consumers and creators.

Figures, boxes and short case studies significantly enrich the text as does a glossary, reference list and index. Including comic strip writer Mort Walker’s definition of terms like grawlix (a string of typographical symbols to represent an obscenity in a comic), plewd (stylized sweat drops around a character’s head), squeans (lines and symbols drawn around a character’s head when disoriented or drunk) and emanata (elements such as a question mark over a character’s head) to describe emotions in depictions provides both vividness and humor. The book would benefit from additional proofreading to catch typos and misspellings, but the charming narrative pulls the reader past most of them.

As Quentin Black states, “We live in a verbal culture where we think words are important and drawing is merely decorative. But there are hundreds of things for which drawing is wonderfully economical and efficient.” (p. 124) Seeing Sense makes a convincing case for paying additional attention to the many ways that visual representations literally colour our world.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

Ng-He, Carol and Patti Gibbons. Exhibits and Displays: A Practical Guide for Librarians. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. 9781538144039, 135 pages. $65.00 ($61.50 ebook)

Reviewed by Joshua Hutchinson (Head, Acquisitions and Cataloging, University of Southern California)

<joshuah8@usc.edu>

Volume number 72 in the series longstanding Practical Guides for Librarians , this work demonstrates the best of a practical guide in a well-established series: it is well thought out, clearly structured, and does exactly what it says — presents a practical guide for librarians creating displays and exhibits. Ng-He and Gibbons tell us in the preface that the reader will learn “the full process of creating, implementing, and evaluating exhibits and displays” while helpfully presenting the chapters “in the sequential order that exhibit production generally takes.”

Those chapters are structured with helpful and brief titles, starting with “Show it! Why libraries create exhibits and displays,” moving through planning, telling the story, writing text and labels, physically building the exhibit and display, bringing in material and traveling exhibits, creating digital exhibits, and finishing up with the crucial steps of engagement, marketing and assessment.

Each chapter is clearly structured, with an introductory section, brief subheadings punctuated liberally with examples from exhibits presented in libraries, and closing with Key Points, Notes and References. Oddly, the Notes and References sections generally duplicate each other, but in general this formal structure serves the book well, ensuring that each chapter is clear, readable, easy to reference, and provides further reading if desired.

Happily, this guide engages readers in a clear and honest fashion. For instance, the authors note on page 6 that, “sometimes libraries are not ready to take on displays and exhibits, so be… realistic about what your library’s current capacity can support.” The real-world examples are presented in a helpful way, and clearly illustrate the chapter’s content. While many librarians reading this guide will have had little or no experience curating exhibits, seeing these examples will give them some degree of experience with presenting library exhibits.

In particular, I found the chapter on writing exhibit text and labels to be exemplary — offering advice in a wide variety of areas, moving from the size and typeface used on exhibit labels to how much text should be included, the style in which it should be written, and the various types of text and labels that an exhibit curator might want to write. The chapter closes with examples of a variety of different label types, including case panels, item labels and a pull quote.

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This book provides an excellent introduction to exhibits best practices for all librarians. Because of its highly structured format, it contains material useful for the novice exhibit creator as well as someone with more experience, and still prove to be useful for both. It can be read front to back, and can also be treated as a reference book. In libraries where many librarians are involved in the exhibits process, I can imagine a dog-eared copy of this book being passed around as an introduction to exhibition curation.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

O’Neal, Michael J. (Ed.). Principles of Business: Globalization. Ipswich, MA: Armenia, NY: Salem Press; Grey House Publishing, 2019. 9781642652895, 577 pages. $165.

Reviewed by Colleen Lougen (Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian, SUNY New Paltz) <lougenc@newpaltz.edu>

In Principles in Business: Globalization, Michael J. O’Neal defines globalization as the increased interdependence of nations, economies, populations, and cultures, and in particular, the establishment of economic partnerships between countries to promote international trade. Globalization has been a far more substantial element in modern businesses in nearly every country on the globe. Recent events, including COVID-19 and the Ukrainian War, demonstrate the vulnerability of global supply chains, and some say deglobalization may be a new reality. Knowledge of globalization and its components is essential in today’s rapidly changing business environment.

Salem Press’ Principles of Business series continues with this eighth volume. Principles in Business: Globalization provides a wide range of topics surrounding globalization that are described in an accessible manner and reveals ways to distinguish between efficient and inefficient forms of globalization. Other volumes in the series include marketing, management, finance, entrepreneurship, economics, accounting, and leadership. The books in this series serve as a useful introduction to business fundamentals.

The editor, Michael J. O’Neal is a former college teacher with a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from Bowling Green State University. He conducts developmental editing and copyediting for educational and reference books. A brief discussion of early trading between nations is presented in the introduction, along with some positive and negative effects of globalization. Examples of topics covered in the main contents include balance of payments, trade, business cycles, comparative economic systems, exchange rates, international supply change management, stock markets, and the World Bank.

A total of nearly 100 entries were submitted by 24 independent scholars, some with university affiliations. The entries range from two to eight pages long and are organized alphabetically. Each entry includes an abstract summarizing the essay’s contents, along with a thorough overview, viewpoints, issues, and applications of the topic. A comprehensive bibliography cites various scholarly books and articles, periodicals, trade publications, and websites referenced within the entry, and a recommended reading list provides further reading and research opportunities. Diagrams, illustrations, and photographs are

included in some entries. In addition to the book’s content, there is a twenty-page glossary of terms and what appears to be a thorough and helpful index. Additionally, libraries that purchase the print book are entitled to free online access to that title via Salem Press Online.

It is particularly pleasing to find an essay on globalization and human rights, a critical element in the global economy. The book also contains articles regarding poverty and government policy, climate change, and environmental issues, all of which play an active role in counterbalancing the market-driven nature of globalization.

Academic libraries would benefit significantly from this volume. In addition to providing essays filled with information about complex subjects, this book can be a useful supplementary resource for students. There are many details, subtopics, and citations in the densely packed entries, making it difficult to browse compared to other reference books. If I need to explore any of the topics in greater depth, it would be helpful to have this book available.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this in my library. (I want to be able to get up from my desk and grab this book off the shelf, if it’s not checked out.)

Ramirez, Tina M., editor. Great Events from History: Human Rights, Second ed. Armenia, NY: Salem Press, 2019. 9781642652918 (set) 4 volumes. 1857 pages. $395.00.

Reviewed by Julie Huskey (Head of Cataloging, Tennessee State University, Brown-Daniel Library) <jhuskey@tnstate.edu>

The late-twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have seen increased interest in human rights. In the second edition of Great Events from History: Human Rights , editor Tina M. Ramirez brings clarity and understanding to the issue of Human Rights. Ramirez is an independent scholar and human rights consultant and defines human rights, in part, as being “based on standards recognized among governments regarding the rights people have wherever they are — distinct from their civil rights [emphasis in original] which are only recognized within their country (xi).”

The first edition went to press in the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia; since then, events such as 9/11 and the Arab Spring have further encouraged discussion of human rights. Perhaps more significant than political developments, however, have been the growth of the Internet and social media, which, as Ramirez acknowledges, has shifted coverage away from newspapers and international organizations toward more informal, real-time coverage.

The set starts with an entry on the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and concludes with the murder of Saudi author, Washington Post columnist, and activist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. The first entry new to the second edition, appearing approximately halfway into volume four, concerns the riots, in 1991 and 1992, over the acquittal of the arresting officers in the Rodney King case.

The entries, all of which are about three pages long, open with a one-sentence summary, “Category of event,” “Time,” and “Locale,” and a list of two to eight “key figures.” A critical annotated bibliography, with three to ten sources, concludes each entry. A few black and white illustrations from Wikimedia Commons are scattered throughout.

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Young-adult author Michael J. O’Neal contributes over half of the forty-five or so new entries. Some entries from the first edition have been revised; others have merely added death dates for some of the persons involved. Although it may have been unrealistic to update every event that warranted it, many more entries would have benefited from revision, not only because of related developments, but because perspective can change considerably after a few decades.

The datedness of some entries shows itself not only in the excessive number of bibliographies that lack citations after 1990, but occasionally in more obvious ways — e.g., “Mother Teresa of Calcutta was born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu in Skopje, Ottoman Empire (now Yugoslavia) (1231); overall, however, the authors have taken care to avoid referencing the date the entry was written.

Any work such as this forced to make some choices about what to include. The scope is somewhat United States-centric, but there is sufficient coverage of areas that generally receive less attention in North America. Human rights cannot be separated cleanly from other aspects of culture, so some readers may take issue with the inclusion of certain events, such as the school-choice program initiated in Minnesota in 1985 (p. 1373). The mid-1990s is curiously under-represented.

The extensive indexing — alphabetical, categorical, personal name, geographical, and subject — is typical of Salem’s youngadult works.

Human Rights is an interesting set to browse, and it could be especially helpful for high school or lower-division college students exploring writing topics. The annotated bibliographies, especially for the updated entries, may be the work’s strongest feature. However, the uneven updating from the first edition may make it an optional purchase, particularly for libraries that already own the 1992 version.

ATG Reviewer Rating: I need this available somewhere in my shared network. (I probably do not need this book, but it would be nice to get it within three to five days via my network catalog.)

The American Journal of Psychiatry

Booklover — Experiment with Words

Column Editor: Donna Jacobs (Retired, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425) <donna.jacobs55@gmail.com>

As one who is always up for an experiment, Claude Simon’s work, The World About Us, provides this booklover an opportunity in literary form. Scientific experimentation defined my professional career. But a literary experiment? How fun might this be? Reading a novel where an author deconstructs, reconstructs and writes without punctuation or formatting is so intriguing. As with any experiment, a protocol is helpful and one was provided for this literary experiment in the form of Ralph Sarknoak’s book Understanding Claude Simon

Claude Simon “who in his novel combines the poet’s and the painter’s creativeness with a deepened awareness of time in the depiction of the human condition” was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Literature. In Sarknoak’s book, he provides a road map in the form of chapters for ten pieces of Simon’s work. His recommendation is to read these in chronological order to appreciate Simon’s metamorphosis as a writer. This Booklover’s Bucket List is to read one piece of work by each Nobel Literature Laureate, so one must choose. Like all experiments, there is modification when “reagents” (read Simon’s work in translation) are few or non existent (none in the library, few to be found online). Go with what you can get: Leçon de choses or The World About Us, the novel discussed in Chapter 9 of Sarknoak’s book. Start reading or maybe acquiring a bit of background first wouldn’t hurt.

Simon was born in Antananarivo, Madagascar in October of 1913; lost his father during World War I; grew up with his mother and maternal family in Perpignan located in the Roussillon wine district; educated at the institutions of Collège Stanislas, Oxford, Cambridge and Andrè Lhote Academy; traveled extensively; served in the military; and taken prisoner during the battle of Meuse in World War II. All of these experiences thematically influenced his body of work. A few can even be appreciated in The World About Us . It always enhances the read to know a bit about the author but to have an “Understanding” provided to the reader by a scholar takes the experience to another level. Instead of being put off by this literary experiment, one is shown an opportunity to embrace a discovery.

Back to the experiment. When executing any experiment, it is imperative to remember that the devil lives in the details otherwise the results may be inconclusive. So immediately there is a hiccup…. Simon is French and this short little novel is a translation. (Props to the translationer — Daniel Weissbort) Fortunately Sarknoak provides insight — not in a story spoiler way but in a word/language way. In the larger context of the author, we learn that Simon was not well known. In fact, his income came from the wine grown on the estate he inherited; thus no pressure to publish or be popular. Could explain the choice of the unconventional. William Faulkner, another Nobel Literature Laureate, was an influencer of Simon’s literary direction. Simon’s artistic training probably enhanced his style that has been described as poetic prose. Sarknoak goes so far as to state: “Simon is a writer who loves to describe objects and people, and in fact it would be quite accurate to say that he paints with his pen.” (Note to self — Hold on to this while reading The World About Us.) In addition, one is encouraged to “unlearn” reading habits, beware of unconventional punctuation (one whole chapter contains no punctuation), pay attention to metaphors (a bit hard with the language barrier), and that the sound of words can give clues (learned this one from the first Nobel Literature Laureate — Sully Prudhomme, also French and a poet, one has to be a dedicated reader of “Booklover” to recall that experiment).

With all of this in mind, you might be expecting the sharing of a few lines that is regularly scheduled programming in this column. However, no teasers from the author this time. Why would I spoil the adventure of a literary experiment you might want to do?

“The more we know, the more we realize there is to know.” — Jennifer Doudna, winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry

ATG Food + Beverage Roundup — Charleston, SC

Column Editor: Nicole Ameduri (Licensing Manager, Springer Nature) <Nicole.ameduri@springernature.com>

Nicole Ameduri, Springer Nature Licensing Manager, loves eating her way through conferences. Through some random twist of fate or luck, she ended up with a number of chefs, restaurant managers, famous sommeliers and food writers in her close circle of friends. They have steered her in the right direction for every destination on her calendar.

Nicole’s Picks — Restaurants

#1. Gabrielle: Gabrielle is located in the newish Hotel Bennett. It’s the only restaurant to open onto Marion Square where they offer outdoor dining with a view of Charleston’s famed church steeple skyline.

The dining areas, indoor and out, are spacious and classically decorated. The tables are covered in white tablecloths. There is a bedazzled fishnet overhead made with real crystals. My husband loved it. Me, not so much. I am a purist after all.

The menu is upscale, merging French and Southern sensibilities. It centers around the bounty of Coastal Carolina. Keep in mind that the fish come a la carte, so you have to choose and order your sides. My husband ordered the mushroom bisque and the shrimp & grits with caramelized onion, lamb merguez sausage and Marsh Hen Mill grits. His first meal in Charleston on each trip is always shrimp and grits. He figures, when in South Carolina… The mushroom bisque was smooth and milky. I ordered a salad with cherries. It sounds weird but, it was really wonderful. Nothing about it tasted boozy and everything was very simple and crisp. For my entrée, I ordered the seared scallops with squash puree, brown butter vinaigrette and citrus crust. They were absolutely perfect. For dessert we shared the cheesecake with raspberry sauce. The cake was more the consistency of a fluffy sponge cake than of cheesecake, but, it was delicious. The pastry chef, Remy Fünfrock, used to work at DANIEL here in NYC, so it wasn’t our first time enjoying his creations.

Address: 404 King Street, Charleston, SC 29403 www.gabrielledining.com

#2. Royal Tern: “As I ate the oysters with their strong taste of the sea and their faint metallic taste that the cold white wine washed away, leaving only the sea taste and the succulent texture, and as I drank their cold liquid from each shell and washed it down with the crisp taste of the wine, I lost the empty feeling and began to be happy and to make plans.” — Ernest Hemingway

The above quote is on the menus. This is my favorite restaurant in the Charleston area. The décor and food are what I look for in a restaurant; beautiful, rustic and open space with perfectly prepared hearty food with texture. I don’t love fancy, delicate food.

My husband and I dining at Gabrielle. I’m wearing a dress from The Tiny Tassel, my favorite boutique in Charleston.

The Royal Tern is a seafood restaurant located on Maybank Highway’s restaurant row on John’s Island. Its interior is spacious, effortlessly stylish, light and airy. Flickering lanterns hang from the rafters. There is an open kitchen so you can watch the food preparation and everyone knows open kitchen equals clean kitchen. The restaurant itself is built into a patch of lush forest. The space is gorgeous.

Crème Brulee and Pecan Pie at The Royal Tern

I like the simplicity of the menu, which is predominantly upscale seafood. It’s more upscale than other seafood restaurants in the area. It’s not casual like the Fat Hen, which I also love for different reasons. There is a strong focus on the wood fire grill. The kitchen sources locally as much as possible from farms such as Ambrose, Joseph Fields and Spade & Clover Gardens. The menu does include ubiquitous low-country favorites such as she-crab soup and shrimp & grits. It also features options such as tuna poke, swordfish and a variety of oysters. There’s even a seafood tower. Not into seafood? There are steak, pasta and sandwich options. The Executive Chef, David Pell, was educated at Ecole Gregoire-Ferrandi. You may remember him from Coast.

Here are my menu favorites: hush puppies, beet salad, potted shrimp, yellow fin tuna, halibut, pecan pie and crème brulee. They have the best hush puppies around. They are moist and not too salty. The potted shrimp was delicate and buttery. The fish comes perfectly cooked. Crème brulee is not usually my favorite dessert but here they serve it with grapes on top. It is a delicious combination. Grapes are so underappreciated. They are great on salads and desserts. (Think of a salad with butter lettuce, grapes, apples, almonds, white cheddar and white balsamic vinaigrette.) You’ll have to trust me and try it.

The Royal Tern is open Monday through Saturday. The bar opens at 4 and the dining room opens at 5. The bar area is firstcome, first serve and is buzzing by 5.

Address: 3005 Maybank Hwy, Johns Island, SC 29455 theroyaltern.com

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#3. Sorghum & Salt: VEGAN OPTION The space has a cool vibe with warm lighting. It has an urban farmhouse feel with industrial style shelves. Its rough-hewn aesthetic surrounds the dining area with weathered floorboards and doors whose patinas bear witness to their mercantile roots.

When our waitress greeted us, she asked us for any food allergies and took notes. On this particular occasion, I happened to be dining with one of my favorite librarians who, like me, also has a million food allergies, many of which we share. The waitress then took our paper menus away with her. When she returned, each of our menus had been marked up with red x’s and black check marks, so it was clear what we could and couldn’t order. I was impressed with this hugely thoughtful gesture. Did I mention that they have an entire vegan menu?

We shared the vertical roots wedge. It was so pretty and delicious. I loved the textures. This dish is vegan and is made with maple tahini aioli, pistachios, bbq breadcrumbs, herbs and flowers. My dining companion had the vegan carrot pasta which was fantastic. (Of course I tasted it.) It was made with carrot butter, pistachio gremolata and breadcrumbs. I had the market fish, which was the flounder. It was made with charred cabbage and yogurt. It was delicious. For dessert, we ordered two of the vegan white chocolate mousses. The dessert comes in the shape of a corn husk. It’s accompanied by sorghum, satsuma, popcorn powder, pistachio and what looks like popcorn. However, I’m pretty sure the “popcorn” was actually popped sorghum. The dishes at Sorghum & Salt remind me of Yotam Ottolenghi dishes. Each one has an unexpected and unique ingredient.

The dishes are farm/sea to table. They source from local farms: Keegan-Filion Farm, Border Springs Farm, Grow Food Carolina, Palmetto Pork House and Spade & Clover Gardens. They offer a chef’s tasting menu of 4 courses for $55 or 6 courses for $75. They also offer wine pairings if you’re interested for an additional $35 for 4 courses and $50 for 6 courses.

Address: 186 Coming Street, Charleston, SC 29401 www.sorghumandsalt.com

#4. Three Little Birds Cafe: BUDGET OPTION My biggest non-food find on this trip, aside from The Tiny Tassel, was the West Ashley Greenway. It’s a 7.8 mile trail that runs from South Windermere Center out to Johns Island. I saw dolphins frolicking there on my birthday run. (Well played God.)

I don’t typically dine at malls or shopping plazas, anywhere near a parking lot, etc. However, Three Little Birds Café has its own freestanding indoor and outdoor space and they’ve made the venue look really cool. Besides, after a long run, we were hungry. It’s located in South Windermere Center at the start of the West Ashley Greenway.

They open at 8 AM and have a number of gluten free options available. They serve vegan cheese and gluten free bread as well as the standard versions. They have a number of smoothies on the menu. I ordered the green parrot, which is made with bananas, avocado, honey, cinnamon and milk. It was so perfect after a run. My husband ordered the green juice, which is made with spinach, kale, celery, apples and cucumbers. Mine sounds better doesn’t it? For my entrée I had the black bean benedict which was scrumptious and only $9.95. My husband had the stuffed challah French toast with peanut butter, honey and banana, which cost $10.95.

Three Little Birds Café is a great bang for your buck.

Address: 65 Windermere Boulevard, Charleston, SC 29407 threelittlebirdscafe.com

Vegan Carrot Pasta at Sorghum & Salt

Enjoying a green parrot and green juice at Three Little Birds Café after our run

Rumors continued from page 24

Librarian for Discovery and Preservation Services at the Library of Congress, and to Christopher Spalding and Harry Kaplanian, both on the EBSCO/FOLIO team, for an interview that will be included in a future issue of ATG as well as online. We look forward to hearing more from them about this initiative!

Scholarships and Awards

The Charleston Conference would like to acknowledge generous donations from Gale Cengage, Bloomsbury, AAAS/Science and and Taylor & Francis to our General Conference Scholarship Fund to allow librarians and/ or library staff with limited travel funds to attend the conference. Thank you so much for your support!

Other scholarships provided by generous donations included:

• Springer Nature continued to honor the legacy of Cynthia Graham Hurd by sponsoring the annual $1,500 travel award for library employees to attend the Charleston Library Conference.

• Bloomsbury Digital Resources 2022 Charleston Conference Grant for Librarians — Bloomsbury Digital Resources selected one applicant to receive a conference grant of $1000.

• HARRASSOWITZ Charleston Scholarship — HARRASSOWITZ, international booksellers and subscription agents, is pleased to offer once again a $1,000 scholarship to attend the Annual Charleston Conference.

• SAGE Publishing’s 2022 Photo Contest — The grand prize winner will receive complimentary registration to the conference, as well as a $500 travel stipend. An additional five winners will receive $50 Amazon gift cards. All winners’ images will be featured in the Charleston Conference’s 2023 photo desk calendar provided to all registrants.

• IGI Global’s Academic Librarian Sponsorship Program: Charleston Conference — As an exhibitor continued on page 47

LEGAL ISSUES

Section Editors: Bruce Strauch (Retired, The Citadel) <bruce.strauch@gmail.com> Jack Montgomery (Georgia Southern University) <jmontgomery@georgiasouthern.edu>

Legally Speaking — Stealing? I think not.

Column Editor: Ashley Krenelka Chase (Assistant Professor of Law, Stetson University College of Law) <akrenelk@law.stetson.edu>

Librariesare not — and have never been — immune from the ludicrous claims of patrons, boards of directors, and publishers who seek to control what we do and how we do it. Particularly now, when the actions of libraries and librarians are under the microscope by local governments seeking to censor both publications and perfectly acceptable speech, it is more important than ever that libraries provide access to materials that patrons need to understand the world around them.

That information, of course, should also be accessible online when it can be, to reach patrons who are unable to access the physical resource of a library. The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us that not everyone is comfortable coming into public spaces when a virus is ravaging our communities, and that the internet can serve as an excellent replacement location for library materials that users are eager to access.

That is probably one of the least controversial things I could say, particularly to librarians. Apparently, however, the idea that materials should be accessible online to users who need them is outrageous, “mass scale copyright infringement” according to Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley.1

While I think even those bigwigs would agree that eBook lending is a great way to put electronic materials in the hands of library users, apparently only electronic materials that are subject to outrageous digital rights management schemes created by these publishers count. The aforementioned publishers stated that outright in July court filings against the Internet Archive’s Open Library, because the Internet Archive dared to scan paper copies of books — books they have every right to lend under the first sale doctrine — and lend them as eBooks through their online platform, a practice called Controlled Digital Lending.

While I am certain we all know about the first sale doctrine, for the purposes of understanding how outrageous these claims are, I think it’s important to provide a definition. The first sale doctrine enables copyrighted materials to be distributed, allowing for those who purchase material first — the first sale — to be distributed after that initial purchase. The first sale doctrine applies exclusively to the distribution right of copyrighted materials (and not to other rights that fall under copyright, like performance, derivative works, etc.), and allows for libraries to distribute (i.e., lend) the materials they have rightfully purchased to patrons, without fear of being charged with violating the rights of the original copyright holder.

The process of controlled digital lending mimics the lending of a paper book almost exactly, except the process takes place electronically. The Internet Archive purchases a book for their collection. Legal. They scan the book. Legal (first sale doctrine! It’s their copy and they’ll scan if they want to, no distribution happening here!). They lend the print book. Legal. The print is returned. Legal. They lend the scanned, electronic copy of the print book to a single patron while the print book remains out of circulation, in the possession of the library. ILLEGAL. MASSIVE PROBLEM! THEFT!

Does this make sense to any of us who actually care about putting books into the hands of our patrons? A print book is, theoretically, the same as an eBook. Only when we purchase print books for our collections, we don’t sign licensing deals that limit the ways in which we lend those print books; we don’t expose ourselves to the capitalist nightmare that is digital rights management. We don’t fear the copyright gods raining hellfire upon us, because we know that the lending we do of print books falls squarely within the first sale doctrine. So why should we approach electronic materials any differently?

Personally, I have never understood the desire to license and lend eBooks. Academic law libraries (where my career was focused for a decade) are admittedly behind the times in terms of lending eBooks, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The latest filings from these publishing giants solidifies my stance: libraries should move away from lending eBooks lest we find ourselves in a situation where publishers are calling even more of the shots than they do today. And in this case between the Internet Archive and the titans of publishing, libraries certainly seem set up for a disastrous situation in which we are being told the best way to lend materials by the people who have the furthest thing from our patrons’ best interests at heart.

I can shout from the rooftops about cancelling eBook agreements, the need for libraries to take back control of their collections and how materials are loaned to patrons, but that stance is completely divorced from the economic and social realities in which libraries operate. We need eBooks, not only because of limitations on physical space but also because our patrons like them. We also need print books. Print materials are essential to disperse knowledge to those who don’t have access to a computer, the tactile medium is preferred by some readers, and who doesn’t love to see a child holding a book for the first time?

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And librarians shouldn’t have to be copyright experts. Asking individual librarians at libraries around the country to understand how much of a book they can scan and send to a patron who has no way of visiting the library is ridiculous, particularly if the book can be “checked out” to the patron, who is then provided a scanned copy, and no other patrons can access either the scanned or print copy during the lending period.

We, as librarians, have to fight to serve our patrons in the ways that are best for them. While I don’t advocate for breaking the law in any instance, I do advocate for fighting back against publishers who are only interested in limiting distribution rights of materials to line their own pockets. Of course there are benefits to authors, too, in limiting the ways in which libraries purchase and lend books. Sandra Cisneros filed a declaration in the aforementioned case detailing the ways in which she is economically harmed by the Internet Archive using Controlled Digital Lending to check out materials to patrons.2 But I do not believe that libraries are going to go out and scan every book in their collection in order to be able to utilize a Controlled Digital Lending model. Nor do I believe that libraries are going to stop purchasing print materials because there will be scans of those materials available.

It is clear that authors and publishers, alike, are only worried about the impact this is going to have on the eBook market. It seems they’ve forgotten that eBooks are just books that libraries rent, instead of owning them, thereby allowing publishers to completely degrade the first sale doctrine and its importance in

distributing copyrighted material. Publishers and the authors siding with them in the battle over controlled digital lending are, in essence, arguing that they don’t want any library to own these materials, and they want to force libraries into renting materials out so those same materials can be, in essence, sublet to patrons, while still in complete control of the publisher.

Controlled digital lending is not theft any more than licensing eBooks from a publisher is purchasing those books. The actions of Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, and Wiley in this lawsuit demonstrate that their only concern is not in the distribution of copyrighted materials to readers, but in the control of those materials for the long-term. Libraries have to fight back against being nothing more than landlords who are subletting publisher material. We need to take ownership over our ownership of print and materials that are properly scanned under the first sale doctrine. Controlled digital lending is not theft ... but we’ll see what the courts say.

Endnotes

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/17211300/ hachette-book-group-inc-v-internet-archive/

uscourts.nysd_.537900.89.0.pdf

Things always go smoothly with Emery-Pratt. Their people are knowledgeable, and always provide friendly, rapid service.”

Cameron University Lawton, OK

Questions & Answers — Copyright Column

Column Editor: Will Cross (Director of the Open Knowledge Center and Head of Information Policy, NC State University Libraries) <wmcross@ncsu.edu> ORCID: 0000-0003-1287-1156

QUESTION: A cataloging librarian asks, “Can I claim copyright in bibliographic records that I create?”

ANSWER: Even putting aside questions about work made for hire — which may suggest that the library or university rather than individual librarian may control any rights that do exist — the core issue about the copyrightability of metadata including library bib records is complex. Of course, a fundamental tenet of copyright is that facts, words, and short phrases are not eligible for the copyright monopoly. So, to the extent any descriptive metadata is essentially a fact-based description of a work with only minimal creativity, it may not be eligible at all. Likewise, if the metadata is simply a single word or short phrase like “published in 1994” or “Author: Cassidy Sugimoto” it would also be unlikely to qualify for copyright. On the other hand, where the metadata takes the form of longer, more creative descriptions, there could be some copyright to consider. Likewise, while the U.S. does not recognize any sui generis (or unique) protection for unoriginal databases, other countries do provide such protections for databases of descriptive metadata.

Given the potentially mixed copyright status of bibliographic records, as well as their public-serving mission, many libraries have elected to simply open up access to those records. The New York Public Library’s policy, for example, states plainly “To the extent that NYPL has a copyright interest in the Metadata Records, a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication will apply.” (https://www.nypl.org/help/about-nypl/ legal-notices/open-metadata) Under this policy, NYPL also requests standard attribution, open sharing of any materials developed from their metadata, and respect for the community norms set forth in the WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities for the OCLC Cooperative (https://www.oclc.org/en/worldcat/ cooperative-quality/policy.html).

Significantly, OCLC, which is the steward for much shared descriptive metadata, specifies, “OCLC claims copyright rights in WorldCat as a compilation, it does not claim copyright ownership of individual records.” Most other libraries follow a similar approach to NYPL including the University of California System (https://libraries.universityofcalifornia.edu/sag2/uclibraries-metadata-sharing-policy/). Creative Commons itself advocates releasing metadata into the public domain under a CC0 license: https://creativecommons.org/2012/08/14/ library-catalog-metadata-open-licensing-or-public-domain/ Taken together, it is fair to say that much descriptive metadata generated by libraries falls outside the scope of copyright and in the rare cases where it may be protected, most libraries choose to openly license it.

QUESTION : A student asks, “Who owns copyright in tattoos? If my university wants to commercialize my image, does the tattoo artist have any claim on my image if it includes a tattoo they created?

ANSWER : Tattoos have a long and unusual history in copyright law. As a baseline, tattoos themselves are clearly protectable under copyright law as pictorial and graphical works once fixed in the medium of expression (either an established design that is reused on many people or on a particular person).

Of course, tattoos can include both original designs and borrowed elements from other tattoo artists as well as from the wider world of copyrightable texts, images, and so forth. So identifying the particular owner can be a first level question that needs to be answered.

Despite the fact that the basic question about copyrightability is fairly clear, tattoos have often been used as a signature example of low-copyright regimes where the boundaries of acceptable use and practice are governed less by legal rules than by ethical and professional norms. Most disagreements about tattoos have historically been addressed informally through community sanction rather than through litigation, with some exceptional cases where a high-profile tattoo incorporates a highly-commercialized image or trademark such as a wellknown cartoon character or the logo for a well-known company.

In recent years, however, the issue of ownership in original tattoo designs has taken on greater significance as online media — especially video games and streaming services — have grappled with acquiring the rights to display athletes on their platforms. In several cases, courts have ruled that tattoos displayed by athletes appearing in a video game may be included under the doctrine of fair use. In fact the leading case in this area, Solid Oak Sketches, LLC v. 2K Games, Inc., 449 F.Supp.3d 333 (2020), found exactly that.

In the fall of 2022, however, a jury in the Southern District of Illinois reached a surprising decision holding that the same video game studio, Take-Two Entertainment, along with the WWE, was liable for incorporating tattoo art into a realistic depiction of wrestler Randy Orton for use in their “WWE 2K” series of video games. The tattoo was designed and the claim of infringement brought by Catherina Alexander, a mostly inactive tattoo artist who has never licensed any of her designs.

The case itself has taken some unusual twists and turns. Many copyright experts were particularly surprised when the court held that the case should be decided by a jury despite the fact that questions of law are generally decided by a judge. The court compounded this mistake when it failed to include jury instructions that covered the primary legal defenses at issue including implied license, de minimis use, and waiver, despite both parties request that this guidance be provided.

The law professor Zvi Rosen attended the trial and reported that the defense attorney may have done their clients no favors based on some behavior in the courtroom. From Rosen’s perspective, however, that the main distinction between this and the 2020 Solid Oaks case was that “the court in Solid Oaks found that the players’ tattoos depicted in the games were only identifiable when players selected their player models.” In contrast, “in this case, there are at least two times where the Tattoos are identifiable in detail: (1) during the customization process, and (2) during the walk-out clip of the player model.” You can read Rosen’s full report here: https://mostlyiphistory. com/2022/10/06/tattoos-and-fair-use-the-alexander-v-taketwo-case/

Significantly, the jury also awarded a relatively small amount of damages, $3,750, which works out to roughly $71 for each

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month the case has been pending! Despite the relatively small award, defendants are likely to appeal and with a new circuit split a court of appeals is likely to take up the issue. Certainly, the economic stakes could be much higher in a future case where the work at issue has been registered. Indeed, Alexander’s lawyer reportedly suggested that the jurors award Alexander $2 for each copy of WWE 2K sold, which would come out to about $20 million.

The case also raises profound questions about a person’s right to their own likeness and bodily autonomy. Copyright attorney Aaron Moss has written deeply about this case — most recently here https://copyrightlately.com/tattoo-artist-trialvictory-copyright-lawsuit/ — and closes with a series of quotes from flabbergasted copyright experts across the field including Aaron Perzanowski, the nation’s foremost legal scholar on tattoos. Perzanowski writes that, beyond any financial issues “these lawsuits are corrosive at the deepest levels of tattooing as a practice.” For students, faculty, and anyone who cares about the ability to control use of your likeness, this is a case worth watching.

QUESTION: A publisher asks, “We have been approached by a news organization that claims we are violating their copyright by including an image from their newspaper in a scholarly article. Should we be concerned?”

ANSWER : Of course, any credible claim of infringement merits attention, but publishers, scholars, and everyone else should be aware that copyright trolling remains an ongoing issue in higher education. Groups like Rightshaven LLC and attorneys like Richard Liebovitz, who was sanctioned and indefinitely suspended in 2021 for his bad conduct, have built a business around threatening and sometimes filing aggressive and opportunistic nuisance lawsuits over unauthorized use of materials with the specific intention of forcing expensive settlements.

In a column last year, we discussed the rise of a new version of this practice: “copyleft trolling” where a rightsholder targets creators who have incorporated a Creative Commons-licensed photograph of dubious commercial value but failed to provide proper attribution as required by the license. In a recent report, attorney Ethan Jacobs documents another new approach to copyright trolling, this time from news organizations.

Specifically, Jacobs notes “an uptick in demand letters from Mathew Higbee’s law firm, which represents copyright holders in claims over unlicensed Internet uses of photographs.” Photos by these holders are frequently included in news stories from major news agencies including AP, Reuters, and AFP as, in Jacobs’

words “infringement bait” for unsuspecting bloggers, creators preparing slide decks, and so forth. These high-volume nuisance claims raise the specter of statutory damages (up to $30,000 per infringement) and then offer a settlement of $1,000 to $3,000 per photograph used.

Given the high-volume nature of much copyright trolling — firms often send out thousands of demand letters each year — one might expect that many cases would result from these legal threats. However, Jacobs notes, “it appears the Higbee firm has only ever sued once on behalf of AFP and has never brought a suit on behalf of AP or Reuters.” In addition, only a few of the recipients of demand letters have brought declaratory judgment lawsuits asking courts to find they were not liable for infringement. This disconnect between the high volume of legal threats and the relatively low level of legal action is not uncommon for copyright trolls, who are often more bark than bite.

Academic publishers and authors are especially well positioned to review these threats with a critical eye when their scholarly engagement with the materials would be likely to be protected by fair use. Resources such as the Codes of Best Practice in Fair Use ( https://cmsimpact.org/report-list/ codes/) document a huge set of practices across most academic disciplines that are clearly transformative and thus do not require any permission at all. When an article, book chapter, or other scholarly work incorporates images for purposes of commentary, critique, illustration, and so forth, the threats from a copyright troll are particularly unpersuasive. After all, this affirmative defense permits the use and raises the potential for a judgment requiring the plaintiff to pay for attorney’s fees.

Jacobs’ full discussion is worth a read and can be found here: https://twitter.com/ethanjacobslaw/ status/1572298298140274690 He closes with a suggestion that many of the news agencies that retain trolling firms may be hoping to keep a low profile since the practice of copyright trolling is borderline unethical and certainly disreputable. Jacobs cautions, as do I that “this is not legal advice that Higbee’s news agency clients won’t sue you. They might. They could. But so far they haven’t decided to sue almost anyone they’ve threatened.” Either way, I hope this discussion can help shed some light on bad actors who may have been hoping to stick to the shadows and to reassure academic authors and publishers that just because someone sends you a nasty letter doesn’t mean that you are actually doing anything wrong or in any credible jeopardy.

The Scholarly Publishing Scene — Getting The Word Out

Column Editor: Myer Kutz (President, Myer Kutz Associates, Inc.) <myerkutz@aol.com>

TheNew York Review of Books (NYRB) of June 23, 2022 is denoted, on the lower left corner of the front cover, as the “University Press Issue.” Inside, there are full page, full color book ads from the university presses of Chicago (inside front cover), Yale (page 5), MIT (page 9), Toronto (page 11), Harvard (page 13), Princeton (page 15), California (page 19), Columbia (page 21), Stanford (page 23), Cambridge (page 27), and McGill-Queens (page 31). NYU Press took half of page 8, West Virginia University Press a quarter of page 14. (The Getty Museum, which has its own university-style press, has a fullpage ad on page 7.) All of these ads are in the front half of the 63-page issue. All of them feature multiple books. Most of them print short blurbs under shots of book covers.

These publishers amount to a small slice of the total membership of the Association of University Presses — 158 in 17 countries, as of this writing. The number of titles displayed in the ads is an even smaller slice of the 12,200 titles published annually by AUPresses, although, I would guess, the output of the presses taking ads in the NYRB University Press Issue is a more substantial portion of the overall AUPresses total output.

According to what I can glean from the NYRB website. publishers, with discounts of over ten percent from general ad rates, pay $14,675 for full-page black-and-white ads. $8,675 for two-column (half-page) b & w ads, and $4,800 for quarter-page b & w ads. There are premium charges for preferred placement of ads. Inside of the front cover costs $2,200 extra; the first, second, and third full right hand pages cost an extra $750, $650 and $550, respectively. Color increases basic charges by fifteen percent, but there are time and bulk discounts ranging from 5% to 30% for multiple ads placed within twenty consecutive issues.

I’ve been an NYRB subscriber for more years than I can remember. (NYRB publication started in February,1963, during the 114 day New York newspaper strike over typographers’ wages and work procedures.) While I may not read every article in every issue, I do look through all of the magazine, and I notice all of the publishers’ ads, partly because of professional curiosity, and partly because I’m always on the lookout for a book I might enjoy reading. It’s safe to assume, I would think, that many other readers notice, and might even peruse, the university press ads. The numbers of sightseers and more careful observers could be fairly substantial for these, you might say, rather esoteric ads. As of June 30, 2021, NYRB audited circulation was 134,826 — 82% in the U.S. and possessions, 18% international. According to the NYRB website, worldwide circulation a year later was up to 145,000. The subscriber/single copy sales breakdown is 98/2. (An annual subscription (twenty issues) costs $99.95; a single copy costs $9.95.)

Are the expenditures worthwhile? Or do they just keep authors happy and attract new ones? I wondered, so I called up someone I knew at a university press, which shall remain nameless, and was directed to the head of sales and marketing.

Sales levels don’t change as a result of NYRB ads, I was told. What they accomplish is raising the awareness of the press — not only among authors but

also among professors and administrators, who notice if they don’t see print ads. Keeping authors happy requires showing multiple titles in a university press ad. The ads can tend to look like catalogs, the source told me. This press’s most effective ads are on Amazon, which accounts for sixty percent of its print business.

In any case, print advertising has dwindled recently, I was told, because there are so many options currently, including newsletters, banner ads, and podcasts. Still, this particular press has been advertising in the NYRB for ten years now. The Atlantic and The Nation are other publications in which to advertise. The London Review of Books (LRB), with a worldwide circulation of 92,000 and is similar to the NYRB (I’ve also been a long-time subscriber), would seem another obvious choice for university press ads, but, I was told, the ad people left and the new team hasn’t been as active in pursuing university presses for ads.

One publication that has been active, I was told, is the Los Angeles Review of Books (LARB). The pitch is we know you need to have an ad, so here’s the deal. The LARB, my source said, is trying to set itself up as a quarterly west coast New Yorker It’s even publishing some fiction.

The books thumb nailed in the NYRB university press ads cover subjects of general interest. A publisher might promote an eyecatching title, such as The Souls of White Jokes; Racist Humor Fuels White Supremacy , by Raul Perez (Stanford). Most university press ads in the University Press Issue showed the subject range of a press. A few honed in on an area of interest — a majority of the titles in Chicago’s ad on the inside front cover, for example, deal with education topics, while World Travel Through History reads a banner above the six titles in California’s ad on page19. There is little, if any indication that any of the university presses who took ads publish scientific and technical books, including even Princeton and Cambridge, both of which have major textbook and professional-level publishing programs covering a range of scientific and technical disciplines.

As for the books reviewed or drawn on in the NYRB University Press Issue, there is close to an even split between the number published by university presses and trade houses: seventeen to fourteen. Offerings of ten different large and small university presses are reviewed, including one in Germany — Bonn University Press. Ten of the nineteen reviewers are identified on the Contents page as having professorships or other academic connections. The rest are identified as authors, poets, editors, journalists, and judges.

In the NYRB University Press Issue, there wasn’t an article on the current

“... the presses themselves and their member organization spend a great deal of effort in publicizing the values they say they bring to scholarly publishing, their universities, their authors, and their readers.”

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state, much less on any value proposition, of university press publishing. (The issue’s final essay — drawn on from five books, two of them published by university presses — Endowed by Slavery, by Andrew Delbanco, of Columbia University, deals with the financial relationships between universities and the profits and profiteers of slavery.) As even a cursory web search will indicate, however, the presses themselves and their member organization spend a great deal of effort in publicizing the values they say they bring to scholarly publishing, their universities, their authors, and their readers. It’s as if these are justifications for the presses’ very existence, as if they’re always looking over their shoulders, worried that someone with authority to cut off their university subsidies will indeed do so. It happened to Stanford University Press not that long ago, although from what I can tell, it continues to thrive. Book publishing, which is what university presses focus on, is an expensive proposition, after all, much more expensive than journal publishing, where the money has been for some time. Besides, monograph sales aren’t what they used to be. I have no doubt that some university administrations favor journal publishing, the end result of research-supporting grant acquisitions, over book publishing. In the minds of some of these administrators, a university press’s budget may be no more than a rounding error in a university’s overall budget, but if a university press can’t cover its costs, it is looked at not simply as an irritant, but as a cost center. That said, I continue to believe that because commercial houses have no time for most of the titles that university presses publish, the values they tout really are vitally important. I hope university administrators can find a way to appreciate that.

Rumors continued from page 41 of the Charleston Conference for many years, IGI Global is proud to continue the Academic Librarian Sponsorship Program. IGI Global will select one librarian to receive a $500 stipend for in-person attendance at the 2022 Charleston Conference.

• Karen Hunter Memorial Scholarship Award — Elsevier sponsored this award that will grant $2,500 each to two librarians to support their travel costs to the 2022 Charleston Conference.

Thank you to each and every one of our 2022 conference sponsors!

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for reading! Be sure to send us your Rumors at editors@against-thegrain.com for inclusion in a future issue or online.

Stop, Look, Listen — An Atavism in a World Digitized

Column Editor: Dr. Sven Fund (Managing Director, Fullstopp GmbH, Maximiliankorso 66, D-13465 Berlin, Germany; Phone: +49 (0) 172 511 4899) <sven.fund@fullstopp.com> www.fullstopp.com

Over the past 20 years or so, academic publishing has come a long way. It has developed from of a profession of mainly elegant, cosmopolitan, white men with a pretty slow pace of innovation into a digital, highly consolidated, everincreasingly profitable business. A fast-paced digitization of products and processes has removed much of the romanticism attached to scholarly publishing and replaced it with an increasing level of efficiency and transparency. Despite all that, however, one of the core processes of the industry remains surprisingly non-digital. This element has so far managed to resist the impetus by commercially-minded CEOs of large international publishing conglomerates. Indeed, it seems rather that it in order to be professional, it had to be non-transparent and basically hidden from the public eye. Most surprisingly, almost all players involved — research funders, scholarly communications officers as well as publishers — have apparently not cared about it, nor could they even agree on the status quo in an ecosystem where there is little agreement on anything.

I am talking about peer review as the central mechanism of quality assurance. Performed by researchers in an anonymous fashion, it is one of the few remaining myths in what is otherwise by now a fairly rational industry. But also a pretty irrational one: reviewers invest countless hours in reading, improving, or rejecting their colleagues’ articles or books. They do not do so alone: in many cases, two or even three reviews are needed to make sure an article meets the standards of a journal or a series. Independent research has estimated large amounts of time being spent on this: Aczel et al estimate in their 2021 paper “A billion-dollar donation: estimating the cost of researchers’ time spent on peer review” that an annual value of labor time equaling 2.5bn U.S. dollars went into peer review in 2020.

As critics of the scholarly publishing system are often keen to point out, the societal costs of peer review are usually covered by the institutions that the researchers work for, not by the publishers benefiting from it financially through the transformation of the intellectual work into a commercial product. It comes as a surprise, therefore, that even in the new realities of open science which have alleviated many of the financial intransparencies of scholarly publishing, the subsidy paid in the form of peer review has rarely been a case for debate.

Since the beginning of digitization, publishers have invested significantly in peer review systems. This helped first of all their own organizations to deal with ever-increasing amounts of articles submitted for publication. If in doubt about for whom these systems are made, just ask a researcher how customercentric any of them are…

Peer Review Fatigue

Despite the deployment of such systems, the central interests of researchers in peer review remain uncatered to. Indeed, the scholarly publishing ecosystem relies on a huge volunteer effort by hundreds of thousands of researchers every year. With academic publication output growing at a faster rate than the number of researchers and in an increasingly competitive research environment that still centers around publishing volume and quality, academics are faced with a tough choice: should they continue to provide largely invisible peer review

to their profession, or rather take the time to write their own article which will be visible to their colleagues?

As if this is not already enough cause for concern, the seismic shift in publishing from established (paywalled) journals to open access publications by fast-growing new market entrants poses a major challenge to both editorial boards and the commercial interests of publishing houses: reviewer preferences need to change as quickly as publication preferences. But that is unlikely to happen, as OA publishing volume is directly dependent on ease of funding (in transformative agreements) and offers the direct benefit to each individual author as their work gets viewed far more than paywalled content. The stability of behavioral patterns in the researcher community makes change unlikely unless obvious incentives are provided.

The severity of the issue is demonstrated by various attempts to automate peer review. I would argue that while this addresses the issue from the commercial perspective of publishers, it leaves the reviewer completely out of the picture. And while automation and technology will be useful in addressing certain elements of peer review, I very much doubt that algorithms will be able to successfully resolve the many challenges.

Homo Economicus and Homo Academicus

There is no doubt that the system of peer review is on the brink of collapse. Certain claims by some stakeholders are helping to deepen the crisis. One of them is that peer review is only high quality and independent if it comes for free. This concept is obviously being promoted by those who have an interest in not paying for what they get, as it increases their profit.

The much more central issue, that of making peer reviewing part of the academic record and hence giving it a non-monetary value, does not seem to be a key consideration for publishers.

Psychology teaches us that human beings feel rewarded by different stimuli. In research, recognition of work is a core value. Researchers working in this incentive system can be described as representing the “homo academicus.” They strive first and foremost to further their career within their discipline, which is why they spend long hours in labs, libraries, at scholarly conferences or at their desks.

At the same time, most researchers would agree that their drive to create maximum visibility is not just altruistic. If they are successful, their research translates into economic success, both to receive funding for projects and research groups, but also for themselves. Climbing up the career ladder, securing a position at a top university and increasing their earnings is dependent on how their work is being perceived by their colleagues.

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“Funders, together with universities and other higher education institutions, will need to play a pivotal role in finding a sustainable approach to peer review.”

Peer Review is Vital to Open Science

Quality assurance through peer review will remain at the heart of the publishing process, and publishers need to take steps to keep this vital element intact. In their own interest, they need to increase the mobility of reviewers and abandon their traditional thinking of “owning” their reviewers. In return, they need to trust that they have sufficient access to researchers doing peer review through transparency.

Researchers, in many countries well trained in their institutions and also by publishing houses, need to be provided with an infrastructure in which they can decide what to review — and under which conditions.

Agora of Peer Review

How can this agora of quality assurance be created? A few companies are trying to tackle the issues surrounding peer review. Most of them strive to create visibility and include it in researchers’ CVs and institutional websites. Some, like Reviewer Credits, are experimenting with economic rewards alongside stimulating the homo academicus: reviewer credits can be spent on discounts for language editing, on book vouchers or other services a researcher needs when publishing. These experiments address the central challenges peer review is facing.

Technology not only helps publishers to reward researchers acting as reviewers far better than at any time in the past, indeed publishers would also benefit from such an approach. Even more important seems to me to be the increase in efficiency which potential reviewers would enjoy. They would no longer be spammed with lots of requests to review content, many of which are inappropriate being outside their specialty. They could calibrate their expertise in a database much more specifically than by a few key words of their own articles published (and written!) a long time ago. And they define their own set of parameters according to which they are looking to review. The self-serving assumption mentioned above (that for reasons of integrity peer review has to be

free of charge for publishers) has proven to be a very effective barrier to any timely change in the way peer review is carried out. No doubt all technical innovation will remain piecemeal, unless the ecosystem responds to researchers’ demands at a higher level.

Publishing Integrity Reconfigured

In my view, only the academic system, and not publishing, can make the move needed to change attitudes about, and hence structures in, peer review. Funders have been instrumental in making open access the dominant publication model in terms of article volume and innovation. They have done so by strong mandates requiring funding recipients to publish open access and at the same time simplifying compliance with the rules — in the case of OA by concluding transformative deals with publishers.

Funders, together with universities and other higher education institutions, will need to play a pivotal role in finding a sustainable approach to peer review. Alongside research and scholarly output, peer review as a practice must become part of the academic record. It is dangerously shortsighted to look mainly at article output when making academic appointments and not take review activity into account, as it will undermine the other 50% of academic publishing, which is so far invisible.

A pragmatic approach is needed to introduce a completely new category into the academic record. A first step could be to make the absolute number of peer reviews per year transparent. Providers like Reviewer Credits are already able to provide additional information on the quality of peer review by using the Reviewer Contribution Index. At the same time, when economic rewards are being introduced, they need to be made transparent to all those involved in assessing a researcher’s review activity.

More work undoubtedly needs to be done in this field, but the tools are already available to ensure that this key process for assuring integrity in publishing is a far more productive and rewarding one.

Learning Belongs in the Library — Stakeholders across the Campus on Student Success and Course Materials Affordability

An Interview with Niraj Kaji, CEO of Akademos

Column Editor: David Parker (Director of Product Management Underline Science & Founder Lived Places Publishing; Phone: 201-673-8784) <david@parkerthepublisher.com> parkerthepublisher.com

This month marks nine years since I launched my column in Against the Grain. The focus of my inquiry has always been the role of the university library in supporting teaching and learning as a distinct function from its major focus on supporting research. Too often, in my view, the role of the library in supporting research and the role of the library in supporting teaching and learning are conflated or made indistinguishable. Of course, the university center for teaching and learning exists apart from the library and has as its central mission the support of faculty in teaching and learning, but it does not engage with content acquisition and collection in a significant way. I believe the content and the tools that are deployed specifically in support of course delivery, via the library and center for teaching and learning, merit special focus.

In 2019 in this column, I featured an interview with Temple Associate University Librarian Steven Bell in which we discussed the spectrum of affordability and the place of the library in addressing affordability.1 Many discussions about the rise of Open Educational Resources (OER) focus on affordability but also student success, with the aim of representing OERs as a net positive contributor to improved student outcomes in classes built on OER.2 Libraries and librarians are, in the main, supporters of OER and are deeply committed to supporting student success. Where then should the emphasis be placed amongst librarians? How is faculty choice preserved in the drive to affordability? What outcomes are most critical?

Niraj Kaji, CEO of Akademos, an online bookstore platform provider focused on universities, has always taken a broad perspective on the role of faculty, bookstores, centers for teaching and learning, and libraries in driving toward student success and, yes, saving students money. What follows is an interview with Raj that takes as its emphasis the Akademos focus on student success.

What does student success mean to you? And should this work in practice across the many points on campus that support students?

On a fundamental basis, I believe that every organization should have a mission that serves as a north star for all its employees. Having been a higher education administrator for over 15 years, and now serving over 160 institutions as the CEO of Akademos, I have had a chance to review dozens of university mission statements and for most, “helping students succeed” is a clear through line. For us at Akademos, success means helping each student stay in school and graduate. Student success can have different meanings across institutions which is why it’s my belief that every person on campus should have tangible,

quantitative metrics that directly link their day-to-day activities with the university’s definition of what success is.

How do you see the role of libraries and librarians in the context of student success?

There are both direct and indirect ways libraries can support student success. On a direct basis, the work that is going into low cost/no cost materials is tangible. Though I don’t think it’s sufficient for anyone to discuss affordability of course materials without defining specific goals and measures. For example, if the average cost of a book on campus is currently $65, is the goal $60? $55? Librarians can help advocate for and increase dialogue as to the right course materials strategy, realizing that the goals and objectives can vary by institution. Indirectly, librarians have long supported faculty in terms of research endeavors and other means, so they have a unique position to encourage faculty to define and address student success.

What do we lose when we focus exclusively on affordability?

It’s actually the wrong question. Affordability has come to the forefront because the cost of materials is a known impediment to student success. Universities should think about how to organize their course materials strategy wholly around student success. Affordability will naturally become an element of that strategy but is not the sole factor that should be considered. Research by Dr. Michael Moore from the University of New Hampshire indicates that students who have materials day one experience course completion rates approximately four percent higher than those who do not have materials day one.3 This has implications for student success departments, academic advising, finance and the provost’s office. There is a tremendous opportunity to evolve the conversation from affordability to driving student success, as measured by course completion and graduation rates.

What is the “Akademos view” on the content faculty select to design their course? Put another way, how does Akademos support a faculty member who selects OER or a conventional textbook for course assignment?

We are agnostic as to the content selected, so long as it supports student success. Our platform allows faculty members to select OER materials, conventional textbooks, digital materials and more. Importantly, for all materials faculty can see the

“There is a tremendous opportunity to evolve the conversation from affordability to driving student success.”

cost prior to adoption and make their own determination of value versus effectiveness. We want to help students succeed regardless of what materials are chosen.

Are there other related services and/or centers on campus, beyond bookstores and libraries, that are trying to solve common issues related to student success?

Yes. If the issue that bookstores and libraries are trying to solve is helping students succeed by ensuring access to all necessary materials, the chief information officer’s office is also a stakeholder; they are oftentimes spending hundreds of thousands (or in the case of one Akademos partner, millions) of dollars buying licenses for software that are required for academic studies. Over time, all three constituencies (bookstores, libraries and the CIO’s office) need to be brought together to comprehensively think through what students need to succeed — and how to get it to them as easily as possible.

How does Akademos work today with libraries at the institutions it supports?

At this time, it’s a very light relationship. A few Akademos clients help to ensure that their library staff is working with their faculty or centralized instructional design teams to review adopted content to see if there are alternatives out there that are better (either demonstrating greater efficacy or carrying lower cost). We are eager to work with libraries to tighten this relationship and provide additional value and have chatted with several librarians on ways to better support the institution.

What is your view on the many direct-to-student student study solutions like Course Hero and Chegg?

In my conversations with individuals across the learning content landscape, I understand these services are frequently

used to simply find answers to common textbook problems and therefore don’t force student engagement with the content. I believe learning best takes place when students are engaging with problems and usage of such tools may provide expedient answers but ultimately reduce the student’s skill in learning the content.

What is your view on subscription packages direct-tostudents from publishers like Pearson and Cengage and aggregators like Perlego?

From our end, we thought deeply about subscription models and asked how we can help students succeed through these packages. As a technology led company, we created a set of algorithms that calculates on the fly if a student is better off purchasing the bundle or the disaggregated titles underneath. It’s clear that substantial change is coming to the bookstore world; we aim to be the thought leader in driving student success regardless of these evolutions. If we stay true to our mission, we are confident of future success.

Endnotes

1. https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg/vol31/iss2/18/

2. https://libguides.uta.edu/oer/success and, for example, from the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ EJ1184998.pdf

3. https://edarxiv.org/nfu4g/

Optimizing Library Services – Embracing Accessibility in Academic Publishing

By Mr. Nick Newcomer (Vice President of Sales & Marketing, IGI Global) <nnewcomer@igi-global.com>

Column Editors: Ms. Genevieve Robinson (Director of Content Solutions, IGI Global) <grobinson@igi-global.com>

and Ms. Cheyenne Heckermann (Marketer, IGI Global) <checkermann@igi-global.com>

Column Editors’ Note: Recognizing the continued need for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility, Mr. Nick Newcomer, Vice President of Sales & Marketing at IGI Global, writes about his perspective and experiences as an individual with a sight impairment in the scholarly publishing industry. As a company, IGI Global seeks to improve and maintain high standards with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) to continually improve our platform to ensure it is easily accessible to all users. Additionally, IGI Global has launched their Accessibility and Assistive Technologies e-Book Collection, which includes research on Developmental Disorders, Learning Disabilities, Instructional Strategies, and more valuable resources to support creation of a more accessible society. — GR & CH

Manyuniversities and publishers are publicly supporting diversity initiatives but making real-world and digital spaces accessible to everyone is an important — and too often overlooked — aspect of supporting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

One of the biggest challenges facing companies and institutions in supporting inclusive digital spaces is website interface design. From a programming standpoint, to take functionalities for a wide range of capabilities into consideration is difficult but is something that needs to be monitored regularly since it impacts many people’s day to day experiences.

Growing up without the modern offerings resulting from the internet revolution was much different than it is today, but these create their own challenges. As a child, I was diagnosed with Optic Nerve Hypoplasia or simply put, underdeveloped optic nerves. My disability is not as severe as many others, but it does significantly impact my vision to the point where even with corrective lenses, I am unable to obtain a driver’s license and require large text assistive technology when reading. This presents day-to-day challenges when such assistance isn’t available. With that, I am impassioned to ensure that IGI Global pursues all options to enact assistive elements into our products and services that meet everyone’s needs.

With this intimate knowledge of how accessibility is inherently part of inclusion, I led the initiative and worked with our Vice President of Technology, Justin North, to investigate and address issues within our InfoSci Platform and Online Bookstore. We also worked with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and a librarian associated with the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA) to identify some less obvious shortcomings, and rapidly and aggressively create solutions to these issues.

Unifying standards, such as WCAG, play an important role in guiding this ongoing process. IGI Global is committed to the continual growth of our accessibility features to meet the WCAG international standard to ensure a high level of inclusivity for everyone interacting with our website.

As an individual with a disability, I hold a personal understanding of the importance of accessibility and all the aspects of business that it impacts. This includes full website functionality and navigation for customers, researchers who are working with us, and our staff.

IGI Global has worked with a diverse group of research experts around the world for over 30 years, and continually strives to provide the highest quality research content and user experience. This progression towards inclusivity of all people regardless of ability, nationality, age, gender, etc. for our researchers and those utilizing our content is a natural part of our company’s eternal striving to innovate and support the entire academic community.

One way that we have shown our support is through the promotion of the efforts of our researchers who have dedicated their work to furthering the body of knowledge on accessibility in our Accessibility and Assistive Technologies e-Book Collection This collection supports researchers, libraries, and institutions in their efforts to increase accessibility across society.

Some of IGI Global’s growth in making our website more accessible is thanks to Hana Levay, a Collection Assessment Librarian at the University of Washington, USA, and a testing committee member of the Library Accessibility Alliance (LAA), an organization that helps test for accessibility based on WCAG compliance. Regarding her experience with testing for quality accessibility and website accessibility, Ms. Levay says:

“Libraries work to ensure access to information including for users with various disabilities. We strive to provide accessible information sources. For third party electronic resources, it can be tricky because libraries don’t control those interfaces and cannot make accessibility

“IGI Global is committed to the continual growth of our accessibility features to meet the WCAG international standard to ensure a high level of inclusivity for everyone interacting with our website.”

improvements without cooperation from those content providers. I’ve been testing our third-party resources for accessibility and reaching out to those companies whose platforms did not pass my tests. It’s always wonderful when a representative responds to my inquiry and reaches out for more information and comes back with a timeline and plan for accessibility improvements after we’ve had a chance to talk about the issues. Specifically, I was pleased by IGI Global’s response to my inquiry. I had a lengthy discussion with several members of their team who were very interested to learn about my findings. Not much later, I was especially pleased to receive a follow-up email detailing the take-aways from the meeting and how they plan to remediate their website for accessibility in the near future. I believe this is an excellent example of how libraries and publishers can work together to improve accessibility for everyone.”

As with Ms. Levay, we welcome suggestions from those who identify additional areas of improvement for our website or other processes. Our current accessibility implementations include:

• Screen reader compatible web pages with properly labeled elements.

• Text alternatives for non-text content so it can be changed into large print, braille, speech, symbols, or simpler language.

• User interface can be navigated using only a keyboard — no keyboard traps.

• Consistent navigation on all web pages.

• Meaningful section heading are used to organize content in a logical manner.

• Logical focus order of elements on each web page.

• No web pages contain any flashing, or design elements that are known to cause seizures or physical reactions.

• Text has high contrast, with a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1.

• Responsive design, with text that can be resized without loss of content or functionality.

While IGI Global has made significant efforts to expand the accessibility of our products and services, we also recognize that this will continue to be an ongoing journey as we learn and discover more in this field. To ensure that everyone can easily review the latest version of our VPAT, it can be downloaded at any time on our Accessibility Commitment Webpage

Recommended Readings

Akgül, Yakup, editor. App and Website Accessibility Developments and Compliance Strategies. IGI Global, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7848-3

Álvarez Robles, Teresita de Jesús,et al., editors. User-Centered Software Development for the Blind and Visually Impaired: Emerging Research and Opportunities. IGI Global, 2020. https:// doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-8539-8

Balharová, Kamila,et al. Dyslexia and Accessibility in the Modern Era: Emerging Research and Opportunities. IGI Global, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-4267-5

Berg, Gary A. and Linda Venis, editors. Accessibility and Diversity in the 21st Century University. IGI Global, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-2783-2

Dhamdhere, Sangeeta and Frederic Andres, editors. Assistive Technologies for Differently Abled Students. IGI Global, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-4736-6

Eusébio, Celeste,et al., editors. ICT Tools and Applications for Accessible Tourism. IGI Global, 2021. https://doi. org/10.4018/978-1-7998-6428-8

Ikuta, Shigeru, editor. Handmade Teaching Materials for Students With Disabilities. IGI Global, 2019. https://doi. org/10.4018/978-1-5225-6240-5

Kats, Yefim and Fabrizio Stasolla, editors. Education and Technology Support for Children and Young Adults With ASD and Learning Disabilities. IGI Global, 2021. https://doi. org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7053-1

Martin, Jennifer M., editor. Mental Health Policy, Practice, and Service Accessibility in Contemporary Society. IGI Global, 2019. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-7402-6

Ndlovu, Sibonokuhle and Phefumula Nyoni, editors. Social, Educational, and Cultural Perspectives of Disabilities in the Global South. IGI Global, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4018/9781-7998-4867-7

Stasolla, Fabrizio, editor. Assistive Technologies for Assessment and Recovery of Neurological Impairments. IGI Global, 2022. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7430-0

Stevenson, Carolyn N., editor. Enhancing Higher Education Accessibility Through Open Education and Prior Learning. IGI Global, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-7998-7571-0

Column Editors’ End Note: If you are interested in learning how you can support your faculty in Accessibility, visit our “Publishing with IGI Global” page to share opportunities for publishing books, journals, chapters, and articles. Additionally, you can support your faculty with IGI Global’s Accessibility and Assistive Technologies e-Book Collection. For questions or assistance on IGI Global e-Collections or IGI Global’s Open Access Agreements & Transformative Options , contact eresources@igi-global.com

The Digital Toolbox — Supporting the Whole Student: How Academic Libraries are Inspiring an Increase in Leisure Reading

Column Editor: Steve Rosato (Director and Business Development Executive, OverDrive Professional, Cleveland, OH 44125) <srosato@overdrive.com>

With

our 24-hour news cycle feeding us a continuous diet of doom and gloom, it’s with great pleasure that I share with you today a positive development in our world: Leisure reading among college students is up!

Circulation of OverDrive Academic eBook and audiobook collections jumped by 9 percent in 2021, followed by another 17-percent increase year-to-date in 2022. OverDrive Academic, which partners with hundreds of colleges and universities of all shapes and sizes across the globe, connects students, faculty and staff with the digital books they need — for both leisure reading and curriculum support .

So, what does this mean for publishers? We spoke to Penguin Random House about Gen Z and millennial reading habits, and how this impacts their leisure reading. Skip Dye, Penguin Random House SVP Library Sales and Digital Strategy, had this to say:

“Reading remains one of the biggest hobbies amongst members of the Gen Z and millennial generations. In a 2022 Hobbies & Passions Behavioral survey conducted by YPulse, both Gen Z and Millennials identified reading as one of their top five hobbies. Leisure reading is an important component of this. Forty-four percent of 18-24-yearold book buyers and readers reported reading more for leisure in 2021 than previous years (Penguin Random House Consumer Insights, 2021 US Book Buyer Segmentation).

“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Americans spent more time reading for leisure in 2020 than the previous year. Key groups that reporting reading more include adult Gen Zers age 20-24 and younger millennials age 25-34. This trend is driving an increase in binge reading, which is up 7 percent 2017-2021 (Penguin Random House Consumer Insights, 2021 US Book Buyer Segmentation).

“In addition to leisure reading, we know from consumer research that younger generations are continuing to turn to books as a key resource to learn a new skill or better prepare for their prospective futures (Stylus, 2022). Skill building is a key area of interest for Gen Zers, with almost three-quarters (72 percent) of Gen Zers identifying having taken a course outside of their schooling to learn a new skill (YPulse, 2022).”

The Penguin Random House Library Marketing team identified titles that are igniting a curiosity and passion for learning, such as The Sum of Us by Heather McGhee and The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. Whether sharing new fiction or revisiting classics, social media influencer recommendations are a big part of Gen Z and millennial leisure reading as well,

including: Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler, Beach Read by Emily Henry and I’m So (Not) Over You by Kosoko Jackson. Gaming and fandom are also impactful in leisure reading, as demonstrated in the series-based readership of Critical Role’s Vox Machina Dungeons & Dragons tie-in series, the graphic novel series Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe and the massively popular manga series The Seven Deadly Sins by Nakaba Suzuki.

We also asked three academic librarians from three different institutions about why leisure reading is so important in supporting the whole student — including academic success — and how they’ve shifted to digital books as part of the solution in driving these outcomes.

Georgia Southern University: “Everyone Needs a Break”

Georgia Southern University (GSU) Acquisitions Librarian Jessica Minihan Rigg believes connecting students with leisure reading during the COVID-19 pandemic was crucial.

“For us, it was important that we provided some sort of escape,” she said. “Everyone needs a break, everyone needs to relax, and leisure reading is a great way to do that.”

Rigg noted that a critical component of the library supporting the whole student is recognizing and acknowledging they have lives outside of the classroom. This means addressing their actual interests and needs, which is why GSU leisure reading collection development is based on requests.

“They’re Georgia Southern students, but they’re also people and mothers and soldiers,” Rigg said. “Ultimately, I think our job is to help nurture their curiosity, and in a lot of ways, their empathy, too.”

A major component of GSU’s leisure reading strategy has been a shift to focus on eBooks and audiobooks. And this isn’t limited to just leisure reading. The library has also expanded its digital resources to serve growing areas of study.

“More and more of our content is moving online because we want to meet people where they are. And where they are is usually on their laptop or phone,” Rigg said.

Northeast Mississippi Community College: “Support Students to be Successful in all Areas”

Northeast Mississippi Community College Librarian Ellice Yager also points to lockdowns at the onset of the pandemic as a catalyst for growing the library’s digital collection, particularly leisure reading titles.

“We realized our digital collection just wasn’t where it needed to be to support our students,” she said. “With the library closed, they had no way to access leisure reading materials.”

Yager sees supporting student mental health by, in part, providing a safe, inclusive space as a vital role of the library. Providing leisure reading resources that students can relate to and feel seen in is a key component of this.

“Students need a chance to open their brains to a lot of different things, and having a collection that isn’t just tied to the curriculum helps them explore.”

“To us, I would say supporting the whole student is not just supporting them academically but supporting them to be successful in other areas of their lives,” she said.

That’s not to say leisure reading doesn’t contribute to academic success. Yager recalls a student who wanted to pursue nursing but struggled with low standardized test scores in reading. So, she and another librarian recommended books to help the student start reading for leisure. The plan worked, with the student improving her reading speed and vocabulary — and test scores — with the more she read.

“We were proud of her,” Yager said.

Boise State University: “Fiction Opens Your World and Helps You Develop Empathy”

Mary Aagard is the head of acquisitions and collections and an associate professor at the Albertsons Library at Boise State University, Idaho’s largest public university.

“I feel like there’s lots of opportunity for academic libraries to be a part of that student wellness and whole student conversation,” she said.

Aagard believes leisure reading plays a role in this, alongside content in areas like self-help, personal development and DEI. Collectively, these types of content — which Boise State is increasingly offering in only digital formats — offer students opportunities for relaxation, contemplation, reflection and independent learning.

“Students need a chance to open their brains to a lot of different things, and having a collection that isn’t just tied to the curriculum helps them explore,” she said.

And with complex issues seemingly emerging every day from every corner of the globe, it can be difficult at times to make sense of it all — especially for college students who are also trying to navigate their own changing lives. Aagard sees reading both popular fiction and titles about current events for leisure as a powerful way to gain a broader perspective on what’s happening in our world.

“I’m a big proponent for how fiction opens your world and helps you develop empathy and understanding of other cultures,” she said.

A Cause for Celebration

Whether it’s just to take a break, explore a new curiosity or discover a different point of view, it’s great news that college students are reading more for leisure. And it’s no surprise that academic librarians are diligently working to support this encouraging trend by connecting students with the content and formats they want and need. This all truly is a cause for celebration.

ATG Interviews Allison Belan

Director for Strategic Innovation and Services, Duke University Press

By Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu> and Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain) <kstrauch@comcast.net>

ATG: Allison, you have been involved with digital strategies at Duke University Press since 2011. During that time, you have seen a lot of changes. Which would you say have been the most impactful?

AB: I have been doing this long enough that I could legitimately say “eBooks!” but that topic has been pretty well covered.

I’m really excited by the rise of project and product management as a discipline within publishing operations. It was a real accelerator at the press when we were able to put skilled project managers and product owners in a position to accomplish big changes and initiatives, rather than asking the marketer or managing editor or accountant with the most interest to take on such efforts in addition to their actual full-time jobs. This is one of those developments where the impact may be more visible over time.

One huge impact in the last few years has been consolidation. Significant portions of the technologies and the vendor networks that we rely on to create and disseminate scholarly books and journals have been bought by large commercial entities, some of whom are competitors who are not aligned with the mission-driven community’s values. A significant amount of work and head space now goes into figuring out which set of partners, tools, and platforms stand the best chance over time of remaining available, remaining affordable, and protecting the data and interests of authors, editors, customers, and users.

ATG: How many current staff members does Duke University Press have? Do they come from diverse academic backgrounds outside of Duke University?

AB: We have about 110 permanent staff and about a fifteen paid student interns at any given time. A significant majority of us come from public education backgrounds. Because we are located in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, we are fortunate to draw from stellar public institutions like NC State University, NC Central University, and UNC Chapel Hill, as well as private and public institutions further afield. We do have a contingent of Duke graduates. Durham is a wonderful place to live and quite a few Duke graduates would like to remain in the area and remain involved in academia. In the last several years, when recruiting for student interns, we’ve put a lot of effort into outreach to the many great HBCUs in the area. As is common with scholarly book publishers, positions in our book acquisition department attract people from across the country who want to build a career as an editor.

ATG: We understand that as the current Director for Strategic Innovation and Services, you work to align all aspects of the Press’s publishing operations to build a digital presence

for Duke University Press’s scholarship. What does a digital presence for Duke University Press entail? Does print still play a part in the Press’s publishing strategy?

AB: I think of digital presence in broad and inclusive terms. It comprises the elements you’d expect — an ecommerce and marketing web site, scholarly content platform, social media presence, eBooks of various formats and at various points of sale — but it also includes the invisible stuff that makes our publications successful in those environments: metadata, standards, analytics, data security, accessibility practices. Finally, our digital presence relies on smooth integrations with our back-office systems and operations, such as ordering, fulfillment, and accounting.

From the time I stepped into a presswide digital strategy role in 2011 through today, I’ve worked from one foundational philosophy: there is no separation between publishing and technology. There is no difference between “publishing” and “digital publishing.” To publish is to be deeply engaged with technology. Until the late 20th century, those were manufacturing technologies. Now they are digital technologies and they are present at every stage of the publication lifecycle: word processing software, PDFs, digital pre-press, metadata standards for discovery and for the marketplace, digital formats for devices and online.

That’s a bit of a long way of saying that at Duke University Press print and digital are all of a piece. We publish largely in the humanities and the qualitative social sciences, which remain very engaged with the print. So, our publishing strategy centers both the printed manifestation, which is still in high demand, and the digital expression, which is essential to increasing the accessibility and breadth and depth of impact of the knowledge we shepherd into the world.

ATG: Duke University Press is member of the recently formed Scholarly Publishing Collective. Can you tell us about the origins of the Collective, particularly, the reasoning behind its formation?

AB: The Scholarly Publishing Collective is a collaboration between nonprofit scholarly journal publishers that is managed by Duke University Press. What became the Collective began around 2017 as a series of casual conversations at conferences and meetings between university press journal managers at UPs that are reliant on journal revenues to sustain the larger mission of the organization. What we heard in those early conversations was that the mission was under threat because these presses lacked the resources, experience, and technology to fully engage the library community, especially consortia and

at a global scale. They were frustrated that there weren’t more vendor or partner options available to them for institutional sales and marketing, especially options that really understood humanities and social sciences.

Cason Lynley, our director of marketing, sales, and finance, was in most of these conversations, and she brought what she heard back home. The more we considered the problem, the more we felt compelled to contribute to a solution. We strongly believe university presses and independent societies are critical to the continued health of the humanities and the social sciences. We also believe that survival of mission-driven publishing requires community cooperation and resource sharing. Duke University Press has been successfully selling directly to the institutional and consortia market for about 20 years, and we wanted to find a way to leverage our success and expertise to meet the needs our peers were expressing.

Our discussions and planning focused on an institutional sales service until April 2020, when JSTOR announced its Journal Hosting Program would cease operation at the end of 2021. All of the UPs involved in discussions used the Journal Hosting Program to sell and fulfill access to their journals. Suddenly, instead of talking about how a sales service might work, we were scrambling to figure out how we could bring the press’s full sales, marketing, customer service, and content platform operation to bear to meet the now-urgent need for a hosting and digital access platform.

We rapidly pivoted. We defined and built out a full suite of core solutions, including institutional subscription management, online journal hosting, print and electronic subscription fulfillment, and marketing and sales to institutions. Between April 2020 and December 2021, we defined a service and fee model, entered into agreements with the members, created the Scholarly Publishing Collective brand, built a new content platform, deployed 137 journal sites and four publisher mini-sites, converted and migrated 70,000 articles, migrated 15,000 customer order lines, and communicated continuously with the library community and its vendors. Our strategic hosting partner, Silverchair, and our subscription system partner, AdvantageCS, helped us tap into their capabilities to make it all possible so quickly. In January 2022, we launched the platform, scholarlypublishingcollective.org , and began serving access.

In addition to Duke University Press, there are currently four member-publishers (Michigan State University Press, Pennsylvania State University Press, the Society of Biblical Literature Press, University of Illinois Press) and one strategic partner, Longleaf Services, through whom several other UPs receive subscription management.

ATG: What would you say is the most innovative aspect of the Scholarly Publishing Collective? Overall, do you think that the Collective is meeting the expectations of its members? If so, why? If not, why not?

AB: The Collective is an innovative intervention in the market for publishing services that aims to increase the ability of mission-driven journal publishers to attract and retain scholarly journals. The Collective members each have strong journal programs that produce high-quality, essential scholarship in support of dozens of HSS disciplines. If the publisher cannot cover the costs of publishing or meet the journal sponsors’ needs, the journals will leave the nonprofit space and partner with a large commercial publisher. Subscription prices will increase faster than inflation and

become unaffordable. Some of these journals would vanish altogether, diminishing the disciplines they shape and build. Duke University Press saw how we could use the quality of our journal content, our globally recognized and respected brand, our world-class infrastructure, and our hard-won experience to strengthen the academic journal space by preserving and, we hope, growing bibliodiversity. All participants in the Collective are betting that we are stronger when we bring this scholarship together under one roof and present it to the world in a coherent, consistent, and unified way, and to do that we are setting aside our historical competitive interests.

I do think we’re meeting the expectations of members. We’ve worked hard to be super-transparent about the things we are really confident will work and the things that are more speculative or that we’ll have to grow into. The Collective has been successful with the most important things: migrating the extensive corpus of content from its previous host to the Collective site, communicating effectively with the library community, getting it indexed in discovery systems and Crossref, and providing appropriate access to it all. Additionally, the members and their editors and partners are thrilled with the way the sites present the material and the tools available to enrich the research experience.

We are working hard to meet other expectations. Just this summer, we’ve introduced publisher collections — all of a given publisher’s journals in a package with a very compelling price point. The number of inquiries we’re getting already from the library community bodes well for meeting member expectations for increasing awareness and usage of their full set of titles through these collections.

ATG: What is Duke University Press’s role in the Scholarly Publishing Collective? Do you have a specific position? And if you do, how does it relate to your current job as Director for Strategic Innovation and Services at the Press?

AB: Duke University Press manages the services offered to Collective members and the technologies and vendors that enable those services. The press’s tremendous team of publishing technologists, customer relations professionals, library sales and marketing managers, and accounting professionals handle the day-to-day operations and support the members by responding to requests and questions, offering expert technical guidance, and generally executing the work of the Collective.

My remit at the press is strategic innovation, and my role is structured to allow me to focus significant portions of my time and energy on strategic initiatives, which is what the Collective is. I don’t have a formal, titled position with the Collective separate from my Duke University Press title, but I am essentially the director. At this early point in the Collective’s life, I wear a lot of hats. I oversee the planning and coordinate the delivery of services to the members. I manage the member relationships, ensuring that their needs are met, that they understand how to make fullest use of the platform’s capabilities, and that they receive reports and payments accurately and on time. Finally, I engage with journal publishers who are interested in learning more about what the Collective can do for their goals and mission and how we do it. As the Collective matures, I expect my role to both become more formal and more focused.

ATG: Can you give us some more specifics about the operation of the Scholarly Publishing Collective. Do you have an advisory Board? What is the Collective’s budget? How is it funded? Do you have a development officer? Does the Scholarly Publishing Collective have a staff?

AB: There is no formal advisory board. It’s a small, very closely connected community now, and the partners serve as an informal advisory board. When a question arises about the specific shape something should take, we discuss it with the group. Early in its planning and formation, all members aligned on the basic features of the journal sites, the workflows for publishing and disseminating content, and order management workflows.

Duke University Press provided the capital for the start-up of the service. We were able to constrain those costs because we built on existing strategic technology partnerships, the setups we already have in those systems, and the expertise we have in-house. Operationally, the Collective is an extension of Duke University Press. There’s minimal variation from how DUP manages its own fulfillment and online journals. The press’s digital content and platform, content marketing, library sales, customer relations, and finance teams all work on the Collective.

The launch required huge effort; it was all-hands-ondeck at the press to get to launch. We had to make it a top priority for the organization and push lower priorities to the side. Now that we are moving into more typical, ongoing operations, we’re assessing how best to staff the effort so that the Collective partners are well-supported and the workload for us is sustainable.

The Collective is funded through fees paid by the members for the services they utilize. The Collective is not an aggregation, so it does not make money from sales of an aggregated product. Nor are we a traditional sales or subscription agent; we don’t collect commission on the subscriptions we take and administer.

ATG: What are the current goals of the Scholarly Publishing Collective? What about goals for the future? Is the Collective planning to grow in membership? Will more services be offered?

AB: Short-term, our goal is to tie up the loose ends of such a massive content and data migration and establish “business as usual” operations across the whole endeavor. We want

to meet and exceed the expectations of library partners and their communities for all the critical aspects of serving digital content. The new publisher collections on offer from three of the Collective members are part of meeting that goal. They make it convenient and very cost-effective for libraries to discover, acquire, and administer a lot of high-quality HSS scholarship from publishers who align with their values and exist within the academy.

We do want the Collective to grow and add members, because we want as many independent, non-profit journal publishers as possible to contribute to and benefit from the economies of scale we are building. At the same time, we want to manage growth in a way that ensures we deliver the quality of service every Collective member and every library customer deserves. I see opportunities for adding services that, like what we offer now, provide enabling infrastructure and expertise for scholarly journal publishing.

ATG: Allison, we all need to recharge our batteries now and then, so we were wondering, what fun things do you like to do during your time away from work. Are there any hobbies or leisure activities that you particularly enjoy?

AB: For me, it’s all about food and travel. My partner and I cook most nights. On the weekends, we make all-day events out of planning, shopping for, and cooking something special. The center of my Saturdays is going to the Durham Farmer’s Market and grabbing all the best in-season stuff while chatting with the vendors. Travel is just an extension of food for me, because I pick most of my destinations based on the cuisine I’ll get to try. The pandemic put a long, sad pause on all travel, of course. I’m still not clamoring to hop on a plane, but I am satisfying my wanderlust by compiling lists of places to go when it feels manageable again. I’ve been very fortunate to visit some truly incredible places, my favorites being Vietnam and, just before COVID, Kenya.

ATG Interviews Richard Gallagher

President & Editor-in-Chief at Annual Reviews

By Tom Gilson (Associate Editor, Against the Grain) <gilsont@cofc.edu> and Katina Strauch (Editor, Against the Grain) <kstrauch@comcast.net>

ATG: Richard you started your career as a researcher at Trinity College Dublin before you began working in academic publishing. What prompted you to switch careers?

RG: I’d been an avid reader of the magazine Immunology Today , one of the Elsevier Trends Journals, since I was an undergraduate, but working in publishing never occurred to me until one of my postdoc friends became its Editor. She and I kept in touch, giving me a good insight into the role, and when she decided to return to Dublin for personal reasons, I applied for the job. That position — thinking about science, interacting with researchers, commissioning and editing articles, and putting issues together — was thrilling. I was sorry to leave Dublin but moving into publishing was the best decision I ever made. And honestly, it wasn’t a huge loss to research.

ATG: It sounds like you are wearing two hats as President & Editor-in-Chief at Annual Reviews. Are we right? How do they differ? What are your specific responsibilities for each?

RG: There are two distinct roles, but they pair well. I see my job as integrating the various talented groups that contribute to Annual Reviews to maximize our collective value to science. As President, which is the CEO role, I connect the Board of Directors who guide our mission, the external editors who shape the content, and the management team that runs Annual Reviews as a business, as well as representing the organization to the external world, including the customers. As Editor-in-Chief, I have a more specific task of working closely with the editorial committees, who are at the heart of the organization. This means that I get to participate in the meetings where topics and authors are debated and selected, often described by committee members as their most enjoyable meetings of the year. This gives me the science buzz that I crave. More importantly, it positions research and researchers at the core of decision-making and prioritization for the organization.

ATG: You have had diverse experience in academic publishing, working for Elsevier, as well as individual publications like Science, Nature, and The Scientist. So, what was it about Annual Reviews that caused you to agree to be its President and Editor-in-Chief? Were there specific opportunities and/or challenges that you found appealing?

RG: Before joining, what appealed to me was the interesting people that I would get to work with, and their sense of purpose. Annual Reviews’ nonprofit status and mission to synthesize and integrate knowledge for the progress of science (since expanded to include benefit to society) gives clarity and value to the job. The staff and volunteer experts (board

members, committee members and authors) are aligned and committed. Another attraction was the breadth of coverage. Previously I’d focused on biology and biomedicine, but here was criminology, linguistics, resource economics, physical chemistry, particle physics and many other topics. That was daunting, but hugely appealing.

Regarding specific opportunities and challenges, when I joined Annual Reviews in 2015, it was the first time since 2002 that I’d worked at a company that operated behind a paywall. And during that 12-year period I was more involved with science magazines than with journals. I therefore saw the potential value of moving the reviews to open access, and of making the knowledge contained in them more relevant to non-researchers. These have been the two main opportunities/ challenges that we have pursued, with a commitment to carbon neutrality (a business consideration), a climate change initiative (a content-development project) and a drive for diversity, equity and inclusion (impacting both content and business) added along the way. It’s a real team effort and I feel privileged to be part of it.

ATG: Recently, Annual Reviews purchased The Charleston Advisor. At that time, you said that TCA was “a good fit with our mission to synthesize and integrate knowledge.” You also said that it “expands our horizons by providing high quality reviews of products and services.” Can you elaborate?

RG: TCA shares an overarching goal with Annual Reviews of reviewing crucial information for a key group within the knowledge ecosystem. The many distinctions — TCA focuses on products and services, provides candid assessments and recommendations for action, is less formal in style and shorter in length, and it is aimed at librarians — bring new ideas to the organization. Diversity is a strength. Likewise, Annual Reviews has extensive editorial and business experience that we can apply to develop TCA

ATG: Are you planning any changes or enhancements to The Charleston Advisor? What can current subscribers expect from TCA now that it is part of Annual Reviews’ portfolio of review journals?

RG: Yes, there will be developments within the next year. For now, we’re taking the time to get to know the TCA staff and integrate the publication into our workflows, it’s the first time we have done this with an established publication. In the meantime, we are exploring the needs and interests of current readers and the larger target audience, and this will guide additions and enhancements to TCA. To give one example, coverage of open

infrastructure for libraries is likely to be one new focus, and there will be others.

ATG: Under your leadership, Annual Reviews developed its “Subscribe to Open” initiative removing paywalls from its review journals. What led you to develop this innovative subscription model? What has been the library community’s response?

RG: Necessity led to the development of Subscribe to Open (S2O). The existing approaches to open access, APCs and Readand-Publish, could not be applied to Annual Reviews, yet case for converting our content to open access is compelling. As a recent illustration of this, in Bangladesh articles from the eight S2O titles in our pilot program are downloaded 3,500 times per month while the other 43 titles, although freely available through Research4Life, collectively accumulate fewer than 500 downloads per month. The new approach, S2O, is based on a mutual assurance contract model proposed to us by publishing consultant Raym Crow. There is now an active S2O Community of Practice to guide development of the model. It includes librarians, researchers, funders, publishers, agents and others, working together towards the common goal of equitable OA.

In general, the response from the library community has been incredibly positive and supportive. That’s vital, as it is they who will determine whether S2O succeeds or fails. They are making that decision right now as we are in the middle of the 2023 sales season.

ATG: Are there any other innovations in the offing for Annual Reviews? Can the scholarly community expect any additional new journal titles?

RG: No new titles for now. Rather, we are working on maximizing the impact of what we publish, not just within the research community, but in policy, business and civil society.

An example is our climate change initiative. We know that decisions taken today will have profound effects on planetary health and the prospects of every generation to come. It is imperative that policy decisions prioritize effective change and that a consensus is built around responsible institutional and personal behavior. To underpin this, accurate and unbiased research information on climate change must be freely available. And it must clear and comprehensible regardless of background knowledge of the reader.

Scientific reviews have a special importance as they provide concentrated summaries of knowledge. Our aim is to make all Annual Reviews journals open access (through S2O) and then

to develop products and services based on the reviews that deliver accurate, useful, and engaging climate change research information to different audiences in different societal contexts.

Our award-winning general science publication, Knowable Magazine (https://knowablemagazine.org), is the most advanced of the engagement efforts. Published in English and Spanish, it is free to read and republish. Its content appears in major media outlets world-wide, including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and BBC Future. This provides readers with scientifically valid and digestible information via their preferred media outlet.

Several other initiatives are in earlier stages of development, aimed at two-way interactions between climate change researchers and policy makers, business leaders and social influencers. Helping to bridge the gap between research and society on climate change is our way to meet the moment. The extent of these efforts will depend on attracting new funding sources; journal subscription income is used solely to support production of the journals. We are exploring partnerships with technology, media, event and publishing organizations to deliver more usable research knowledge, and to counter misunderstanding, misinformation, and deliberate disinformation.

ATG: Your work at Annual Reviews must keep you extremely busy but everyone needs some down time to relax and recharge. What fun activities do you enjoy when you are not working?

RG: I’m going to give four.

Top billing to our two young grandchildren that my wife and I love spending time with. It’s far too little time as they are 5,000 miles away in London.

I’ve always been a runner and these days I aim for 26 miles per week, outdoors, usually early in the morning. All my other habits are bad, so there’s a lot riding on this one. It’s definitely the best way to explore places when you travel. We also enjoy hiking vacations, which tend to be in France or Spain.

My Francophilia extends to cars — I have a bright green Citroen 2CV, the French equivalent of the VW Bug. It gets more attention in San Francisco than any supercar. However, despite its tiny engine, it is rather polluting, so its outings are increasingly rare.

Last, and not least, I follow Celtic FC. The only time being up at 4am is acceptable is for a match on celtictv.

ATG PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Allison C. Belan

Director of Strategic Innovation and Services Duke University Press

905 W Main St., Brightleaf 18B Durham, NC 27701

Phone: (919) 687-3683

<allison.belan@duke.edu>

Websites: www.dukeupress.edu, read.dukeupress.edu, scholarlypublishingcollective.org

BORN AND LIVED: Born on Fort Meade, MD, raised in Huntsville, Alabama. Lived in North Carolina for 27 years.

EARLY LIFE: I was raised in Huntsville, Alabama, which is best known for Space Camp, the Space and Rocket Center, and large U.S. Army and NASA installations. There were so many transplants from around the country and the world that I never developed a southern accent. The one I have now I actually acquired from living in North Carolina for the past 25 years. I grew into a passionate devotee of the letters and arts, perhaps a bit in reaction to the hard core engineering culture that surrounded me. I attended and graduated from the University of Alabama, fulfilling the fondest hopes and dreams of my UA alum parents. I came out of the womb yelling Roll Tide, and I made good on my fandom by getting my bachelor’s degree at Alabama.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: After obtaining my masters degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I went to work for a publishing services company in Durham, doing page composition for publishers like Algonquin Press, Oxford University Press, and Duke University Press. The skills I gained with graphics packages and an innately organized nature led me into doing project management work for an early custom web development company. After working in software for several years, I very much wished to be elbow deep in publishing and production again. I was fortunate to find a home in Duke University Press’s journals production department, from where I advanced and broadened my responsibilities so that I now am a member of the press’s senior leadership with oversight of our technology operations, strategic planning, and innovation. I’ve been nurtured in my career by deep engagement with the Society for Scholarly Publishing and the Association of University Presses. I present regularly at both organizations’ annual meetings, and I have served on several committees over the years. Currently, I am serving the final year of a three-year appointment on the AUPresses board.

FAMILY: My husband and I are proud, serial dog adopters. We’ve adopted four dogs from local rescues over the years, and currently have two wild, hilarious, adorable mutts. We enjoy visiting our extended families in Alabama and West Virginia and, when we have the chance, introducing them to the beauty of North Carolina’s piedmont, mountains, and beaches.

IN MY SPARE TIME: All things food and travel.

FAVORITE BOOKS: To keep this list manageable, I’ll focus on some recent favorites. Lauren Groff’s Matrix. Honoree Fanone Jeffers’s The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock

PET PEEVES: Storylines that depend on silly misunderstandings or miscommunications between characters.

PHILOSOPHY: Pragmatism.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: It feels like the pandemic has changed the course of so many things, and in

our industry, the impacts won’t be understood for quite a while. I think higher education will be smaller and more consolidated, and that will also mean smaller budgets and fewer tenured and tenure-track researchers and scholars. That will have transformative effects on how knowledge is produced and validated and how libraries serve their institutions. The business models within scholarly publishing will, I hope, be even more diverse than they are now, because there is no single model that will support all disciplines and all modes. I think all that I can predict safely is that none of this will be any easier. New business models, evolving standards, and emerging technologies facilitate incredible advances in the sharing of knowledge and the exchange of information, but each advance comes with significant labor burden and increasing complexity.

Richard Gallagher

President & Editor-in-Chief Annual Reviews

San Mateo, CA 94402 USA

Phone: (510) 407-2769

<rgallagher@annualreviews.org> www.annualreviews.org

BORN AND LIVED: Scotland, Ireland, England, USA.

EARLY LIFE: Scotland.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES: Immunology researcher; journal editor; magazine editor; publisher.

FAMILY: Wife; two children; two grandchildren.

IN MY SPARE TIME: Running; hiking; family activities; Celtic FC FAVORITE BOOKS: Right now, The Ministry of the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson. Books that began a devotion to particular authors are The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. The writing style I most admire is Isaiah Berlin’s, for his elegant packaging of complex ideas. And the things I most often re-read (to laugh out loud) are the Myles na Gopaleen columns and Flann O’Brien books by Brian O’Nolan, and the short stories of Irvine Welsh.

PET PEEVES: Remakes of classic movies — do something new, for goodness sake.

PHILOSOPHY: Hopeful, though falling short of outright optimism.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT: Involvement in publication of the human genome sequencing papers in Nature, 2001.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW: Workwise, to help establish S2O as a widely-used OA option. And to establish Annual Reviews as a bridge between research knowledge and its use by government, business and civil society. Personally, to still be running.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS: Let me say where I think we should be, in fact where we need to be, in five years: fully open science. The immediate sharing of research knowledge is crucial for understanding and developing policies to address an emergency, and climate change is the biggest colletion of emergencies imaginable. But how do we align researchers, funders, librarians, publishers, governments and popularisers, given their many points of disagreement and the historically slow pace of change in our area? A consenus on the need for open science is required, and we may already be close to achieving this. Then we need to act on it — quickly, but thoughtfully. Perhaps a commission could be set up to bring forward proposals, timetables, and funding suggestions. If it started immediately, I am confident that the transformation could be acheived in five years. I am not so confident that it will be.

<https://www.charleston-hub.com/media/atg/>

COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Annual Reviews

1875 S Grant St., Suite 700 San Mateo, CA 94402 USA Phone: (650) 493-4400 https://www.annualreviews.org/

OFFICERS: Richard Gallagher, President; Jonathan Michael, Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary.

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Annual Reviews journal series; Knowable Magazine and Knowable en espanol; The Charleston Advisor

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE: Researchers, teachers, students; science-interested public; the library community

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: 100

NUMBER OF JOURNALS PUBLISHED ANNUALLY (PRINT, ELECTRONIC, OPEN ACCESS, ETC.): 51 Annual Reviews

OTHER PUBLICATIONS: Knowable Magazine (in English and Spanish); The Charleston Advisor

TOTAL NUMBER OF JOURNALS CURRENTLY PUBLISHED: 51 HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/ PUBLISHING PROGRAM: Annual Reviews is a nonprofit publisher dedicated to synthesizing and integrating knowledge for the progress of science and the benefit of society.

All 51 of the journals that we publish are review journals. No other science publisher specializes in this way. They are run for researchers, by researchers and have been since the organization was started in 1930 by a group of biochemists who wanted the research literature sifted, reviewed and synthesized.

We also publish an award-winning general science magazine (Knowable Magazine) in English and Spanish. Its content is free to read and republish and appears in major media outlets world-wide, including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, and BBC Future. This provides readers with scientifically valid and digestible information via their preferred media outlet.

In 2022, we purchased The Charleston Advisor Our finances are transparent and our products priced to cover costs, not to profit shareholders and investors.

We are a small, organization with100 members of staff and a turnover of around $20 million.

Duke University Press

905 W Main St, Ste 18-B Durham, NC 27701 Phone: 888-651-0122 Fax: 919-688-2615 https://www.dukeupress.edu

AFFILIATED COMPANIES: Duke University, Scholarly Publishing Collective, Project Euclid.

OFFICERS: Dean Smith, Director.

ASSOCIATION MEMBERSHIPS, ETC.: Association of University Presses.

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES: Print and electronic books and journals, book and journal collections for libraries, print fulfillment and electronic hosting on behalf of partner publishers via the Scholarly Publishing Collective

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE: Academic and public libraries, scholars/ academics, and general readers.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES: ~110

NUMBER OF BOOKS PUBLISHED ANNUALLY (PRINT, ELECTRONIC, OPEN ACCESS, ETC.): 150 books, print and electronic.

NUMBER OF JOURNALS PUBLISHED ANNUALLY (PRINT, ELECTRONIC, OPEN ACCESS, ETC.): Over 60.

TOTAL NUMBER OF BOOKS ON YOUR BACKLIST (PRINT, ELECTRONIC, ETC.): Approx. 3000.

TOTAL NUMBER OF JOURNALS CURRENTLY PUBLISHED: 62

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/ PUBLISHING PROGRAM: Founded in 1921 as Trinity College Press, we became Duke University Press in 1926, shortly after Trinity College became Duke University. The Press’s publishing program grew rapidly in the 1990s and became particularly known for expanding interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences and pioneering new fields of inquiry and debate. Today, we continue to seek out new scholarly voices in emerging fields and use our digital platform to support our mission to expand the reach and readership of this important scholarship.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU THINK WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO OUR READERS? Our Library Relations team is excited to see our colleagues in person at the Charleston Library Conference this fall.

Back Talk — Childhood at the Public Library

Editor: Ann Okerson (Advisor on Electronic Resources Strategy, Center for Research Libraries) <aokerson@gmail.com>

I got my library card!

Those are beautiful words, aren’t they? Didn’t many of us exclaim them with delight when we were children? When most of us were little, that was probably the first card with our name on it that we ever got for ourselves, giving us new power we had not known before. Checking a book out, writing our name on the card in the back of the book, seeing the date stamp — and then being allowed to walk right out the door with a precious book (our local library had a maximum of ten for children, so I needed my father to help me carry them home): that was a high point of our lives.

Well, I hit that high point again yesterday.

You know how life goes nowadays. We move a few times, we get busy, we may not live where there’s a public library on our natural daily routes, and the old habit slips away. And in our nowadays, we’ve probably acquired a “device” that lets us buy eBooks (or maybe I should say “buy” eBooks) and read them anywhere. That’s me. My Kindle account is full of oodles of books, and I long ago lost the ability to organize and manage them effectively, even though I read the latest acquisitions all the time. (Don’t get me started on how bad Amazon’s metadata are and how weak the interface on Kindle pages and devices is for “shelving” one’s books.) But my general reading life is much like it was in the days when I had to stack the print books I had bought two or three deep on bookshelves and wonder what I would do with them, only now the stacks are muddled together on my computer.

Of course, I think that if I can’t truly own a book, a book to do with as I wish — for example, I can’t really share it with others — the prices charged for buying eBooks are outrageous. So I subscribe to a free daily alerting service called BookBub

( http://www.bookbub.com ) that lets me know what titles fitting my profile (think “approval plan”) are on sale right now for $1.99 or $2.99, and I “buy” and read a lot of those. And I will pay full price for an author whose book I really want.

So when I decided lately that I wanted to read that Jonathan Kellerman mystery from a few years ago (it never went on sale with Amazon or anywhere else), I finally got stubborn and decided to take another approach. I got my library card!

This time it was at the Tempe Public Library, a huge and handsome building here in Arizona. I marched boldly in, presented my driver’s license, and in under five minutes I was handed a handsome plastic card with an Arizona bald eagle on it. (Wait a minute: how did I get that first card when I was a child without showing photo ID? Hmmm. I guess my father signed for me.) And there I was, feeling the same rush of pride and power that I had felt so long ago.

I immediately walked out of the building, drove directly home, fired up my laptop, and went to the library’s website. Ten minutes later, I had checked out my first book (that Kellerman I was looking for!) and figured out how to download it. (Pro tip for Tempe residents: go with the Kindle option for download. The EPUB option leads one into a tangled world of Adobe Digital Editions that I just couldn’t figure out.) While I was at it, I put myself on the waiting list for several more books, some in hardcover, some as eBooks. Now I felt the happiness of a reader’s power for real. (Already this morning, I cleared the waiting list for one of my “hold” books!)

INDEX

Harbor

Why do library books make us so happy? Well, for one thing, they extend our financial reach to more books than we’d ever afford ourselves. We can browse and sample easily, taking home (or checking out electronically) several titles to sniff around in and see what we really want to read or what’s a keeper for purchasing. Books are beautiful things and being surrounded by more of them is always a good thing.

<justwrite@lowcountry.com>

And yes, things have changed. I’ve been struck, as my new wealth pours down upon me, by a nagging question. If I don’t really own the eBooks I “buy” (and I’ve bought many hundreds), what have I gotten myself into here? I have all the same persistent annoyance and frustration of being surrounded by mountains of books, but at least in the old days I could bundle them up and take them off to give to others. When I lived in New Haven CT, the good people at New Haven Reads (https:// newhavenreads.org/) were only too happy to help find good new homes for such books, and I did notice that the Tempe Public library has a library bookshop just inside the front door that doubtless helps in the same way. Those Amazon eBooks that make me so cranky — well, they sit there on my tablet, in a heap more confusing than ever my old bookshelves were, and they can’t go anywhere (also, I do have to delete some of them when I reach the limits of my storage space). Since the first Kindle book came into our house in 2009 (Jerome K. Jerome’s hilarious Three Men in a Boat), Amazon thinks we’ve bought about 1,200 eBooks. A few are the kind you’ll go back to for reference or rereading, but the vast majority of them are collections of 1s and 0s that have lost all their usefulness to me and can’t be useful to anybody else. How did we get to this place?

Against the Grain has gone digital!

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