Save this date if you’re planning to be in New Orleans next June for the ALA Annual Conference. Saturday, June 25th Library Juice Press, possibly with one or more other groups, will be hosting a party of some kind. What to call it? It will be more lively than a reception or a meet-and-greet, but less wild than some of the things viewed on public computer terminals.

Doesn’t this French quarter penthouse look like a good place for a party?

Please contact me if you’re with a group that has similar interests and would like to co-host our … maybe it should be a cocktail party? Sazeracs, of course.

Chapter one of Vanishing Act: The Erosion of Online Footnotes and Implications for Scholarship in the Digital Age, by Michael Bugeja and Daniela V. Dimitrova, is now online:

Extinct Citations, Missing Links and Other Bibliographical Wonders

A decade ago, most research was done in the library rather than through its Web site, and scholars, editors, graduate directors and librarians were meticulous about the integrity of footnotes. They knew that citation was the backbone of research, from agronomy to zoology in the sciences and from art history to Zen studies in the humanities. The footnote upheld standards because it allowed others to test hypotheses or replicate experiments. Testing and replication are at the heart of the peer review and scientific processes upon which academe is based, from papers by first-year and transfer students to grants by postdoc and professor.

Because so much depended on the foundation of all scholarship, the footnote, academicians admonished students for sloppy or erroneous citation. This was the norm even a decade ago when most research was done in the library rather than through its Web site. Our discipline of communication scholarship was as exacting as any other in the academy, especially when it came to footnotes. Students submitting dissertations and faculty, journal articles, were fastidious about the accuracy of footnotes, knowing that their reputations relied on the fine print at the bottom of the page or at the end of the manuscript. Unacceptable were citations that simply named the source without specifying the document, as in “U.S. Mint, 801 9th Street NW, Washington, DC 20220-0001.” The worst types of mistakes would contain particulars, including an article’s title and date of publication, but might locate it in the wrong volume and issue of a journal. Indeed, if dissertation advisers went to the stacks to verify citations, as they often did, they would be aghast at checking a citation and finding none in any volume or number, or finding it with wrong pages or other particulars, and discovering a journal with those pages ripped out and missing. Those mistakes could doom a letter of recommendation for a job or advanced study. More…

Jeremy Dibble, of the PhiloBiblos blog, has reviewed John Miedema’s book, Slow Reading, which was published by Litwin Books last year. I am late in linking to the review. Jeremy Dibble’s blog consists of “[r]eviews of books old and new; news and commentary on book history, library culture, archives and related subjects.”

Richard J. Cox of the University of Pittsburgh i-School has posted a review of Michael Bugeja and Daniela Dimitrova’s Vanishing Act: The Erosion of Online Footnotes and Implications for Scholarship in the Digital Age to the group blog “What SIS Faculty Are Reading. (Full disclosure: Dr. Cox is the author of two books for Litwin Books/Library Juice Press.)

If you buy 5 or more of our books we’ll give you 30% off the price, ’till the end of the month. Just contact us at inquiries@libraryjuicepress.com to place an order.

If Library Juice Press were to set up a symposium for reflections on Jesse Shera’s 1972 book Foundations of Education for Librarianship, who would you like to see participating? The end product would be a published book.

Please comment if you have any ideas concerning this.

Vanishing Act: The Erosion of Online Footnotes and Implications for Scholarship in the Digital Age

Authors: Michael Bugeja and Daniela Dimitrova
Price: $18.00
Published: Summer 2010
ISBN: 978-1-936117-14-7
Printed on acid-free paper

A decade ago, most research was done in the library rather than through its Web site, and scholars, editors, graduate directors and librarians were meticulous about the integrity of footnotes. They knew that citation was the backbone of research, from agronomy to zoology in the sciences and from art history to Zen studies in the humanities. The footnote upheld standards because it allowed others to test hypotheses or replicate experiments. In sum, the footnote safeguarded scientific method and peer review upon which academe is based, from papers by first-year and transfer students to books by postdoc and professor.

Since 2003, authors Michael Bugeja and Daniela Dimitrova (Iowa State University of Science and Technology) have been at the forefront of research on the erosion of online footnotes and its implication for scholarship. Their research has been showcased in The Chronicle of Higher Education and a number of academic journals, including The Serials Librarian, portal: Libraries and the Academy, New Media and Society and Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, among others. Their book documents the vanishing act in flagship communication journals and provides readers with methods to mitigate the effect.

Michael Bugeja is director of the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication at Iowa State University where he also serves on the board of the Institute of Science and Society. He is the author of 20 books, including the acclaimed Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a Technological Age (Oxford Univ. Press, 2005) and Living Ethics across media platforms, and writes for several magazines, including The Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed. His comments about ethics appear in Columbia Journalism Review, American Journalism Review, Quill, Editor & Publisher and other publications.

Dr. Dimitrova’s research focuses on Information and Communication Technologies, Internet Diffusion, and Political Communication (ICTs). Her dissertation examined Internet adoption in the post-communist countries and proposed a multidimensional framework to predict Internet diffusion globally. Another interest is online news coverage of conflict (wars and terrorist attacks).

There’s a good interview with Library Juice Press author and series editor Emily Drabinski by Julia West in The Desk Set blog. Emily is co-editor of Critical Library Instruction: Theories and Methods and series editor for Library Juice Press, with the Series on Gender and Sexuality in Librarianship.

I’d like customers to know that books from Library Juice Press are printed by a company with “Chain of Custody” certifications aimed ensuring sustainable practices in paper production. The certifications come from The Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC®), the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification™ (PEFC™), and The Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI®).

• Forest Stewardship Council™ (FSC®) The FSC® Council is a non-profit organization, promoting the environmentally appropriate, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests. FSC® certification is recognized internationally as a rigorous environmental and social standard for responsible forest management.
• Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI®) The Sustainable Forestry Initiative is an independent, internationally recognized non-profit organization responsible for the SFI certification standard, the world’s largest single forest certification standard. The SFI program is based on the premise that responsible environmental behavior and sound business decisions can co-exist to the benefit of communities, customers and the environment, today and for future generations.
• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification™ (PEFC™) The PEFC™ Council is an independent , non-profit, non-governmental organization, founded in 1999, which promotes sustainability-managed forests through independent third party certification. The PEFC™ provides an assurance mechanism to purchasers of wood and paper products ensuring they are promoting the sustainable management of forests.

John Miedema, author of Slow Reading, was interviewed for the Italian newspaper, Europa. The interview is in Italian, but John has provided a rough translation.

Malcolm Jones has an article in Newsweek’s online version (June 23) titled, “Slow Reading: An Antidote for a Fast World?” John Miedema’s book Slow Reading is hotlinked and the author quoted. This is the biggest press event for one of our books so far. John’s work seems to be having an impact.

[Note added later: The July 12 print edition has another, similar article on slow reading that also quotes John.]

The Demise of the Library School: Personal Reflections on Professional Education in the Modern Corporate University

Author: Richard J. Cox
Price: $35.00
Published: June 2010
ISBN: 978-1-936117-18-5
Printed on acid-free paper

In The Demise of the Library School, Richard J. Cox places the present and future of professional education for librarianship in the debate on the modern corporate university. The book is a series of meditations on critical themes relating to the education of librarians, archivists, and other information professionals, playing off of other commentators analyzing the nature of higher education and its problems and promises.

Come to the reception for Library Juice Press and the Alternative Press Center

Saturday night, June 26th, 7pm to 11pm
M Street Bar and Grill, at the St. Gregory Hotel
2033 M Street Northwest, at 21st and New Hampshire
Cash bar
Good cheese

All of our books will be on display and some of our authors will be in attendance.

Here is a map to the M Street Bar and Grill:

I’ve been reflecting on our latest title, She Was a Booklegger: Remembering Celeste West, and its meaning for me within my overall publishing endeavors, and I think that the right thing to call it, for myself, is a tent stake, a stake for supporting the structure of a tent by holding it to the ground. Library Juice Press and Litwin Books are a tent to provide a space for idea exchange. The tent has room for people to interact, see each other, see at night by lamp light, and dream. That’s what I would like it to be.

Some of the books we’ve done are tent stakes, others poles that extend the space, and others unique objects in the space. There are some reasons why I consider the Celeste West book a tent stake for me.

First, more than any other person, Celeste West established the tradition of alternative library literature of which Library Juice is a part, and Toni Samek’s essay in the book explains the debt that we owe to her if we have benefited from her magazines, from Charles Willett’s magazines, Progressive Librarian, Unabashed Librarian, Sandy Berman and James Danky’s biannual anthology Alternative Library Literature, Women in Libraries, the progressive listservs that started in the 90s, Library Juice, the MSRRT Newsletter, and many other publications. Many of the blogs you now read also owe a debt to Celeste West. So the book about her that I have had the privilege of publishing serves to connect my publishing business to its roots.

The second reason that I like to view the book as a tent stake is that it has taught me something about what I am doing that I wasn’t aware of. I went off and started Library Juice Press at around the time I was withdrawing from active involvement in PLG and SRRT, and it seemed to myself for a while that it meant that I work better alone than with other people. Over time however, the books that I have done have all involved the efforts of more and more people, until with this one I did little more than guide and encourage a collaborative endeavor. A lot of people contributed a lot of work to this book; from the editors to the contributors to the designer and copy editor, it was a greatly collaborative project. I feel proud to have been a part of it in part because it shows me that people working together is at the foundation of my press. This book makes me feel privileged to be the publisher, and thankful to the people who have contributed their energies; that makes it a tent stake.

It is also a tent stake because of the ideas and ideals that are in it. It is a book full of passion and inspiration, in connection to libraries and life. As a scholarly publisher, it is too easy to get cut off from the passion that gives things their meaning.

Thank you to all the people involved. I am very happy to have been a part of this contribution to the public memory.

We now have a separate page on our website listing our forthcoming titles. We will be adding more titles to this page over the next few months.