Authoritative publishing in a time of participation

At last year’s ALA Annual Conference, I caught the end of Chris Anderson’s presentation on his “long tail” concept. His book The Long Tail had just been published. I slipped out the door as questions began and bought a copy, reading it in the week after conference. It’s fair to say it rattled my world. For a while, I was bringing it in our editorial meeting so often it created a sort of comfortable, predictable rhythm to our discussions (right, Jenni?). After all, the concept seemed to suggest that what I’ve been doing the past 15 years or so, finding and publishing the experts, wasn’t important. Around the same time, the Economist published a special section on participative publishing. Words like revolutionary carry heft in a publication not given to hype. And it was their business they were covering. I continue to think hard about the new place of ALA Publishing in a time of participative publishing.

The value of authority is also a concern of the academy. Barbara Fister at the ACRL blog pointed out a Chronicle of Higher Education article on scholarly communication and Web 2.0.

As we work on the “reference canon” Guide to Reference, we consider authority and community is a big issue in our Guide to Reference project, as do other reference publishers. Bob Kieft, our general editor will lead a panel discussion Monday morning at Annual Conference, “Reference Works: From Authority to Community: A Discussion Forum on the New ALA Guide to Reference.” Along with fellow panelists John Dove of Xrefer, Alan Poole of Birds of North America Online, and publishing consultant Judy Luther, he will explore ways in which professionally published reference works can take advantage of social networking to strengthen their appeal and usefulness to librarians and library users. The discussion will be in the Washington Convention Center (WCC) 204C, 10:30 am - 12:00 pm.