I met our author Susan Gibbons for the first time at the Charleston Conference last week. We were both leaving a plenary session. Susan was headed down the street to the College of Charleston’s Addlestone Library, where she was a co-presenter on a “Lively Lunch” discussion of e-books. To go from the main hotel to the Addlestone Library one crossed the gate into the College of Charleston’s campus, sharing the sidewalk with the “net generation,” whose social (software) behavior was the topic of so much talk. A sort of visual affirmation.

Similarly, last night on my train ride home, I paged through Susan Gibbons’ The Academic Library and the Net Gen Student. Coincidentally, a student had sat in the seat across the aisle from me. She immediately laid down on her seat, knees propped up, and put in her earbuds, not the norm among us nine-to-fivers commuting back to the suburbs. Not long after I was reading through Susan’s description of the helicopter parents and how libraries can develop programs for them, the student was on her cell phone, presumably talking with a parent, apologizing that she had messed up, plaintively noting that she “felt like shit,” and offering assurance that she had tried to explain things to her professor.

We see the Net Gen all around us, or at least in front of us at Starbucks ordering complicated drinks. Susan Gibbons, associate dean for public services and collection development at University of Rochester River Campus Libraries, had the advantage of grant funded anthropologist studying her students. For more information, see the report, available as downloadable PDF and in print, or listen to a podcast interview of three researchers. Drawing on a perspective from the research results as well as Clayton Christensen’s “disruptive technology” concept and successful business models described in Jim Collins’ Good to Great, Susan offers an intelligent, convincing, and readable synthesis on how academic libraries can respond with action.

Teacher’s College Press approached me about the possibilty of co-publishing Partners in Literacy. A partnership with the American Library Association was a sensible idea for a publisher for the education market addressing, as the subtitle states, schools and libraries building communities. In evaluating the possibility, I first looked at the quality of the press and then author credentials. Impressive. Publishing for more than a century, Teachers College Press is affiliated with Columbia University and its leading graduate school of education. The authorship is a compelling father-daughter partnership. They write in the acknowledgments, referencing their strong relationship and good communication, “It was a natural next step for us to dialogue about similar problems we were wrestling with in different, but closely related, community-based institutions, and roll up our sleeves to write about.” Sondra Cuban is a librarian with 14 years experience in public libraries of Hawaii. She holds a Ph.D. and focuses her research on adult literacy. She served 4 years as a research associate at Havard’s National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy. Larry Cuban is professor emeritus of Education at Stanford University, a historian by training, and former high school teacher.

As I read through manuscript I noticed a difference in perspective that was subtle, yet striking, ideas about the profession and its practices, expressed from the outside looking in. That’s what clinched it for me. We’re proud to bring you this co-publication with Teachers College Press.

While I note the new, I can’t resist a plug for the old. Natalie Ziarnik’s School and Public Libraries is a beautifully written book. I farmed her manuscript out to a freelance editor who liked it so much she wanted to buy a copy for a teacher relative of hers.

It’s here! It’s here! The 3rd edition of BBYA, that is, wearing a lovely cool blue to ward off the dog days of August.

You can bet that any list this comprehensive and complex has a colorful production history, and this is no exception. Thanks to volume editor Holly Koelling, YALSA executive director Beth Yoke, Editions managing editor Christine Schwab, Editions book designer Dianne Rooney, and freelance editors Russell Harper and Kristy Mangel for powering through and giving us a great product!

From the jacket:

The new third edition continues to be the most comprehensive and effective reference for great reading for young adults, including

• Annotated lists of the the YA books extending back to 1966, indexed by author and title
• Background on the history and procedures of the BBYA Committee
• A recap of the current trends in teen literature as reflected in the past decade of BBYA lists
• Twenty-seven themed and annotated reproducible book lists, perfect for readers’ advisory with teens, parents, and teachers or for collection development.

Themed lists include:

FICTION LISTS
Abuse: Physical and Psychological; American Historical Fiction; Challenges: Physical and Psychological; Family in Crisis; Family Redefined; Fantasy: Dark and Light; Friendship; Humor; Identity, Image, and Acceptance; Loss, Grief, and Recovery; Love and Romance; Mystery and Crime; Retellings: Old Stories Made New; Science Fiction; Short Stories; Stories Creatively Told; The Teen Social Experience; World Historical Fiction; The World in Conflict

COMBINATION LISTS
Adventure and Survival; The American Ethnic Experience; Social and Environmental Issues and Activism; Sports and Competition

NONFICTION LISTS
Biography, Autobiography, and Memoir; Exceptional Women; Fascinating True Stories; The World in Conflict: Past and Present

When Rebecca Watson-Boone first proposed her project to ALA Editions, I took a pass on it. As a research report for a specialized audience, the project did not fit our publishing strategy. The project presents a good example of the sort of balance association publishers must strike between mission and margin. Managing a profit generating unit for ALA, I am accountable to our bottom line and therefore evaluate prospective projects first for marketability. On the other hand, we also need to be attentive to the larger goals of the association and be creative about ways that we can support them.

Denise Davis, director of ALA’s Office for Research and Statistics, went to bat for this project. She was familiar with Watson-Boone’s research and had a draft manuscript. Denise felt strongly that the research was important information for recruitment to librarianship. She was looking for a way ALA could get it into the hands of the educators and adminstrators in library and information science schools and college career counselors. The research investigates career choice and satisfaction among graduates of liberal arts colleges who went into librarianship.

After discussion with Denise and later with my publishing colleagues, we decided to go forward with the project. A Good Match marks the first of a series with the straightforward name ALA Research Series. Denis Davis will effectively be our acquisitions editor, looking for the best of research and taking care of the upfront manuscript reviews and substantive editing.

Our goal was to publish Gamers . . . in the Library?! in time for the Gaming, Learning and Libraries Symposium, where author Eli Neiburger was a keynote speaker. To the right is a carton shipped to the symposium. Hats off to Managing Editor Christine Schwab for making it happen. Yeah, I guess Eli deserves some credit too. Authors will tell you that a book project can shift the domestic workload and diminish attention space for family and friends. At the symposium, I saw Eli’s family and thanked them for letting us borrow him for a while. Eli assured me though that the book was written at Denny’s while the rest of the family slept. Eli is a funny guy. He also speaks truth. I chuckled when reading in the book’s introduction: “My son will surely cherish his memories of the first time he camped out with his dad . . . on the sidewalk in front of Toys R Us, the night before the Wii launch.” Eli used the same line at the symposium then clicked to the photograph documenting it. He is an unabashed gamer.

In short, I’m one of them. You know who I’m talking about. The thumb twiddlers. The cathode-ray zombies. The strung-out junkies who can’t even wait for the bus without staring at some sort of screen. I am a gamer.

In the spirit of confessions, I’m one of them too. That is, one of those parents who don’t let the videogame consoles or the gameboys into the house. We were afraid it might hinder the kids’ creativity; you know, turn them into thumb-twiddling, cathode ray zombies. We might be wrong. My teenage son was arguing the point just last night at dinner. If he had known of Eli’s work at Ann Arbor Public Library and in his book, it might have been Exhibit A.

After seeing the vibe gaming tournaments have created at the library, as shown in Eli’s keynote, it’s hard not to be a convert. A word of caution though. I often hear the argument for gaming in the library of getting kids in, especially that hard-to-reach teenage boy demographic, so that you can show what else the library has to offer. No, the gaming is the thing. It’s not a hustle for pushing books. Eli repeatedly warned against the bait and switch.

Neal Wyatt takes readers’ advisory beyond its origins in fiction with The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Nonfiction. Neal notes that as publishers have brought out wonderful nonfiction books that read like the best of novels, professional literature, such as Joyce Saricks’ Readers’ Advisory Service in the Public Library, has begun to weave nonfiction into its guidance.

Neal devotes a chapter in the book to her concept of whole collection readers’ advisory, described as follows.

This approach includes not just fiction and nonfiction and not just books but everything we own or have access to, in the broadest conception of our collections, including audiobooks, movies, music, art, images, databases, and websites.

Library Journal articles adapted from the book are here and here. Also, Neal has posted examples of reading maps here.

In the Preface of Academic Librarianship by Design, co-author Steven Bell describes the transformation of Philadelphia University toward curricula rooted in design. In 2004 banners hung around campus proclaiming “Design Matters.” They got into Steven’s head. During the past few years, he and coauthor John Shank have been discussing and developing their concept of “blended librarianship.” The blend is an integration the resources and services of the library into the higher education’s teaching and learning process. Design is the best tool for achieving this blend. Bell and Shank recommend the book The Art of Innovation, coauthored by Tom Kelley, who was general manager of the Silicon Valley design firm IDEO. I’ll have to add it to my list of books that I’d like to read someday. Along the same lines, I need to someday get to Donald Norman’s Design of Everyday Things.

Bell and Shank host the The Blended Librarian Portal for an ongoing, community exploration of the concept.

In announcing the publication of The Whole Digital Library Handbook, I thought I’d look at the project file for the original edition of its inspiration, The Whole Library Handbook, now in version 4. In the earliest filed memo from March 1989, Art Plotnik describes his concept to the Director of Publishing as an almanac of the “latest general library-related information in concise form.” In Fall 1990, the project got underway with the title “The Whole Library Handbook,” and with George Eberhart as compiler. Plotnik described WLH as his pet project. Over multiple editions executing the concept, Eberhart has made it his own. He worked behind the scenes for The Whole School Library Handbook, and for The Whole Digital Library Handbook, I asked him to take the formal role of series editor.

The Whole Digital Library Handbook is a co-publishing project with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and the idea for it came from my desire to work with that organization. I appreciated the quality of content and was thinking about ways we might work together to bring it to a broader audience. Kathlin Smith helped move the idea along at CLIR, and Nancy Davenport, then president of CLIR, recruited Diane Kresh to be the editor and compiler. While getting the ball rolling, I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the idea. Could digital library even be defined? Does it mean one thing to computer scientists, something else to librarians? Where would you draw the line? I remember raising these questions with Diane and gaining confidence that she was ready to take the concept and run with it. Flipping through the table of contents now, I see that the entire first chapter is “Definitions,” and the first piece, an excerpt of the Wikipedia entry for Digital Library. Not that we are blind publishers of the hive mind. Also weighing in the chapter are Christine Borgman, Donald J. Waters, Abby Smith, Richard De Gennaro, Joseph Janes, Alex Wright, Deanna B. Marcum, Karin Wittenborg, Lorrie Lejeune, Anne G. Lipow, Roy Rosenzweig, Scott Carlson, Chris D. Ferguson, and Charles A. Bunge. See the full table of contents here.

I was Diane Briggs’ editor for her first book with ALA, 52 Programs for Pre-Schoolers. I could see then that she brings to her work the spirit of the do-it-yourselfer, the desire to share what she’s got, and gumption to put it in a book. She’s back with a new book, Preschool Favorites: 35 Storytimes Kids Love. While working on Briggs’ first ALA book, Dianne, our design and composition manager, complemented the author’s illustrations. Briggs drawings were DIY, and, while not as polished as a pro’s, they worked, and they inspired in readers the attitude that they too could draw a bit for programs. This time around though, Dianne didn’t have to do it herself. Her son, Thomas Briggs, a college student in fine arts, drew illustrations.