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.

Here’s a nice summary review from the Wired Compiler blog. Includes comparison with Shelfari and LibraryThing features. First learned of it from Libraryman (thanks, Michael!).

ALA HQ’s neighborhood is home to the newest ING Cafe. With very little effort, one can imagine it as a library branch. Here’s what’s on offer:

• Full coffee/espresso drink menu, a decent variety of pastries, prepackaged sandwiches, and juices, all at low prices
• Staff equally trained in pulling espresso and helping you with your online banking
• A seminar room that’s free for public use (by reservation) when not occupied by the occasional ING presentation
• Free wireless
• 10 terminals
• Free newspapers and financial magazines for use on site
• 6 flat-screen TVs (all on CNN, all muted)
• Branded merchandise (duffle bags, computer bags, portfolios, travel mugs, etc.) and a few financial tools (books, mechanical savings bank for kids) for sale
• Strong return visit incentive: buy four coffee drinks and the fifth is free

I wasn’t supposed to take pictures (against bank policy), but they did agree to let me take a shot of the media wall, which gives you a sense of the ubiquitous branding. One-third of the tv screen real estate is occupied by the ING logo and scrolling advertisings of banking services. Branding and ING advertisements also line both sides of every browser window.

I asked one of the employees if there was any resentment about having to serve coffee when, arguably, the employees had more valuable banking service skills to offer. He said no, because everyone working there knew the arrangement going into the job.

I asked about Internet filtering. He said there were restrictions on access, both for security purposes related to banking (he didn’t elaborate) and for “adult” sites. He noted that he expected that access to adult sites would be self-regulating, as all of the monitors faced the interior public space or allowed people to view the screen from the sidewalk outside, through the large front window. I chuckled a bit at this notion, which is when he said that they also have privacy screens on order, ostensibly to allow people privacy during their banking transactions, but he could imagine requiring a customer to use one if someone complained about his or her viewing habits. I suspect they’ll find out soon enough how complicated that can be, even without a freedom of access mission.

You don’t need to be an ING customer to use the facility. In fact, most people just drink coffee (Peet’s!) and check e-mail. As soon as school starts, I’m sure there will be a huge influx of Loyola college students from the dorm that’s just one block away. I wonder if the students will realize that they can access their library’s online resources from there?

When I was a kid, I would hop on my bike on a muggy summer day and ride the three miles to my local public library where I would devour books. But it wasn’t until I started working at ALA that I heard of readers’ advisory. If I had known about it (or to be fair, if readers’ advisory was as developed then as it is today), I would have marched up to a librarian and asked unapologetically, “Could you recommend a good book for me to read?”

Librarians active in readers’ advisory now have another resource to turn to. Becky Spratford, author of one of ALA’s reader’s advisory books, The Horror Readers’ Advisory, has created a blog called “RA for All.” It states, “Looking for your next good read? RA for All is a blog to showcase how the Readers’ Advisors at your local public library can help.” Absolutely perfect. Becky, a teacher at Dominican, will also be showcasing her students’ work on the blog.

The “Angel of Peace” gets a shower from a sprinkler. The statue, by William Kieffer, stands in the Episcopal Church Center plaza, across the street from ALA HQ.

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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

Interested in running a trivia tournament in your library? Check out Fun Trivia’s Quiz Night Wizard. Based on your selections (preferred categories, country you’re playing in, etc.), the wizard pulls a custom question set from a huge bank of questions and packages it with scorecards and other tournament materials. I ran through the wizard quickly, making all of the recommended choices and selecting a package type that seemed to be for one tournament night. The cost for the set I created was $40.

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On Monday, Christine and I will roll bleary-eyed out of our respective beds for a 6 a.m. conference call to discuss the various stages of text editing that will occur during the production of Resource Description and Access (RDA). In preparation for the meeting, I sent to the participants definitions of all the possible flavors of editing. Not every project goes through every stage, and often the stages are combined in some fashion—but I think seeing them laid out in a formal progression is useful.

Do a quick Google search and you’ll find plenty of people using different terms for these same definitions, and different definitions for these same terms. My definitions are no more right or wrong than the others (well, OK, they’re more right than most because, hey, I’ve been at this for 15 years), but this list is a good place to start if, say, you want to hire someone to shape that novel that you just wrote on your Nokia.

1. Developmental Editing
Working closely with the author at the draft manuscript stage to help direct and shape the content.

2. Substantive Editing
Improving the organization and expression of ideas. Identifying places where the author needs to rewrite or add content. (I think of this as a paragraph-level edit because it typically involves moving paragraphs around and reshaping the flow of the content.)

3. Line Editing
Improving the writing at the sentence level. For example, eliminating jargon, passive voice, wordiness. Querying any remaining problems that would fall under substantive editing.

4. Copy Editing
Correcting (or making consistent) capitalization, punctuation, spelling, grammar, usage. Querying any remaining problems that would fall under line editing. Creating an editorial style sheet.

5. Editorial Proofreading
Reading, with reference to the editorial style sheet where one exists, to make sure that the copy editing is complete. Typically this stage occurs only if the copy editing stage has been skipped for some reason, or if the copy editing was done by a subject matter expert rather than by a professional copy editor.

6. Traditional Proofreading
Comparing final copy word-for-word against an edited manuscript to make sure that they match. Marking anything that the copy editor has missed.

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A couple weeks ago, I read a lament at ACRLog for the missing students, gone for summer, who left a library too quiet. My first reaction? “Good! I hope all our Guide to Reference contributors are stuck in quiet libraries.” One of the challenges in this project is that many academic libraries aren’t as supportive as they once were in allowing time for research or publishing projects . A little quiet can be a good thing, if you have a project.

This summer, some 75 contributing editors are in the home stretch of selecting and annotating entries for Guide to Reference. The first to break the finish line tape were Elisabeth Leonard in Economics and Business and Betsey Patterson in Psychology. A pack of science librarians are close behind, leaving the humanists in the dust.

I trust that our contributing editors now take solace in the Guide to Reference project and suffer no loneliness. If you’re a reference librarian with subject expertise and a knack for bibliography, consider signing on. We may need reinforcements to finish our launch version. Planning annual revisions, we will be looking continually for prospective contributing editors.

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.