S-USIH Publications Committee News

As our regular readers know, I was recently appointed by the S-USIH executive board to serve as the chair of the Publications Committee.  My colleague Tim Lacy is taking a temporary break from official S-USIH duties, and I am honored to serve out the remainder of his term.

There are a few items of news and business I would like to bring to the attention of our membership.

News

As stated in the S-USIH bylaws, the PubComm chair can appoint up to two additional members to assist in the work of the committee.  Thankfully, my colleague Ben Alpers has graciously agreed to continue his work on the Publications Committee.  As part of his PubComm duties, Ben is the editor of this blog.

I am also pleased to announce that Mary Ellen Lennon will be joining Ben and myself as a member of the Publications Committee.  Mary Ellen is an assistant professor of history at Marian University (Indianapolis); you can read her faculty profile here.  She will begin her stint with the committee after October 1.

I have also asked Mary Ellen to take over for me as our book review editor, and I'm glad to say that she has agreed to do so.  I'm pretty good at spinning plates, but doing triple duty on the Publications Committee is one plate too many.  So I'd rather hand one off than drop one.  However, I don't plan on laying everything on Mary Ellen's shoulders. We have a few book review roundtables coming up -- on Ray Haberski's God and War, on Kerwin Lee Klein's From History to Theory, and on Erik McDuffie's Sojourning for Freedom.  I will work with Mary Ellen on presenting the Haberski and Klein roundtables; our colleague Lauren Kientz Anderson has arranged the McDuffie roundtable, and she will be assisting Mary Ellen with that presentation.

In the meantime, publishers who wish to submit a book for review should contact Mary Ellen at this email address.

Business

As a regular feature in our S-USIH newsletter -- an edition of which will be published to coincide with this year's conference -- we plan to include a column highlighting professional news from our members.

If you have some news you would like to share with the S-USIH membership -- a recent publication, a new academic position, an upcoming lecture, a professional appointment to an editorial or governing board, and the like -- please let us know.

Send your news items to me, L.D. Burnett.  To be included in this fall's newsletter, news items from S-USIH members in good standing (join online here, or download this form and mail it in) should be received BEFORE October 5.

Besides member news, we would be glad to consider guest contributions from our members.  We are particularly interested in publishing reflections on the state of the discipline.  If you would like to submit a brief essay (1000 - 1250 words), please send that to me before October 5.

Additionally, this blog often features essays by guest contributors.  If you would like to write for the blog as a guest contributor, you can contact any of our regular bloggers with a proposal.  All of our bloggers have the opportunity to sponsor guest posts at their discretion.

Finally, we would be delighted to add some bloggers to our roster.  If you are interested in becoming a weekly contributor to the S-USIH blog, please contact Ben Alpers, our blog editor.

Thank you to our blog readership and to the Society membership for your engagement in our discussions and your support of our work.  If you have any suggestions or questions about the work of the Publications Committee, please email me, and I will be glad to discuss the matter with you.

L.D. Burnett
Publications Committee Chair

The Pub Com Chair's Corner

Hello!  I plan to make "The Pub Com Chair's Corner" a regular feature during my chair tenure. Although this comes a day late, it will be integrated into my Thursday posting cycle---perhaps once per month. The things I want to bring to your attention today are idiosyncratic, so the following is in bullet point format:

1. New Bloggers: The Publications Committee continues to seek applications for new bloggers. This past year we happily added Lora Burnett and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn---both of whom have immensely improved the weblog in terms style, wit, content, and brain power. Although we have seven regular bloggers who currently post during each week day, I envision up to 14 regular bloggers doubling up the weekly calendar.  If you're interested in becoming a regular blogger, please apply by sending the Pub Com two things: (1) a statement of interest containing your embryonic thoughts on post content, and (2) your CV. 


2. Pub Com Committee Members: As of today both Ben Alpers and Lora Burnett have expressed an interest in remaining on the Pub Com. In the interest of continuity in relation to a young society, I have unilaterally reappointed them to the Committee without a broad search for new members. I realize that this appears unwelcoming in relation to new folks interested in participating. Given that appearance, I want to emphatically state that I welcome additional volunteers. Although Lora, Ben, and I fill out the S-USIH Constitutional requirements for Pub Com membership (Article III, Section 7), we are not constitutionally restricted from soliciting volunteers from the S-USIH community for various endeavors. We might, for instance, solicit the S-USIH President, Paul Murphy, to create an Ad Hoc committee, working in coordination with the Pub Com, for any special task we feel warrants the move. In sum, if you're interested in serving on the Pub Com, please write. There is plenty to do!

3. Duties--Blog, Book Reviews, Newsletter: Both Ben and Lora have tentatively accepted Pub Com duties (Ben as Blog Editor, Lora as Book Review Editor). As one of his last acts as outgoing Pub Com Chair, Ben took charge of composing a set of blog rules and guidelines. We hope to publish them soon. His work on that task, as well as his strong interest in moving us from the Blogspot platform, made him a natural for the Blog Editor position. As incoming chair, I could not continue as Book Review Editor. The task has grown in terms of quality and quantity, so Lora agreed to take over. In addition to chair duties, I currently plan to be the Newsletter Editor (S-USIH Notes) for the coming year. Despite our best intentions, we published only one S-USIH Notes last year. Per the 2011-12 Executive Committee's Final Report (p. 3, point #6), I plan to publish at least two this coming year. In addition to content mentioned in the Report, I welcome suggestions and proposals from S-USIH members on other content.

4. The Journal: The Society is considering the creation of a journal. The Pub Com discussed this possibility internally last year---i.e. platforms, exemplary journals, philosophy, staffing---and the Executive Committee, via Ben Alpers, picked up on those conversations. As such, in the Ex Com's final report (p. 5-6, point #12) the outgoing leadership team indicated wide support for continuing this effort. What now? The outgoing Ex Com suggested the creation of an Ad Hoc Committee to deal directly with the journal question. A Pub Com member will likely be a part of that committee.  I will use the The Pub Com Chair's Corner to keep readers and members updated on that effort.

That's it for today!  Please feel free to write me (timothy.n.lacy-AT-gmail.com) directly or comment on this post in relation to anything mentioned above. - TL

Historians, Academic Publishers, and the Ongoing Digital Publishing (R)evolution

But does it have a Reading Room?

During the last two weeks, two major national events exploring the frontiers of e-publishing took place on opposite coasts of the U.S.  On October 21, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) held its first Plenary Meeting at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. And on October 26-28, the Books in Browsers conference took place at the headquarters of the Internet Archive in San Francisco.

The DPLA event was built around the six winners of the DPLA's beta sprint competition to identify "ideas, models, prototypes, technical tools, user interfaces, etc. . . that demonstrate how the DPLA might index and provide access to a wide range of broadly distributed content."* The DPLA also announced a $5 million grant from the Sloan Foundation and the Arcadia Fund to promote "an intense two-year grassroots process to build a realistic and detailed workplan for a national digital library, the development of a functional technical prototype, and targeted content digitization efforts." Jill Cousins, of Europeana, the European Union's digital library project, announced a partnership with DPLA focused on coordination between European and US libraries, museums and archives. The agenda of the plenary meeting can be found here. A video of the entire event, as well as a variety of reports about it and documents from it, are available here.  The speakers at the event were, not surprisingly given the origins and scope of the DPLA process, largely from the worlds of libraries, archives (analog and digital), and academia.

The Books in Browsers conference, in contrast, was much less academic and much more geared toward the digital publishing industry.  A complete agenda can be found here. The common participant in both events was the Internet Archive itself, represented at both events by its founder, Brewster Kahle. Notably absent, at least from the agenda, were academic publishers.

What is--and what should be--the relationship of historians to these events...and to the greater digital publishing revolution in the midst of which we find ourselves?



A number of those presenting at the DPLA plenary meeting are historians--or at least history-affiliated scholars: Peter Baldwin, Professor of History at UCLA; Bob Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library; and Amanda French, THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp) Coordinator at the Center for History and New Media.

But most historians and other academic humanists have not been much involved in these conversations about the future of digital publishing.  And academic presses--the institutions on which we largely depend for the dissemination of our work--seem to be even further removed from these developments.**

In my experience, historians and other academics in humanities disciplines tend to be rather conservative when it comes to considering structural changes in the conditions of our research or our employment. There are good reasons for this. For at least the last quarter century, most of the pressure for change has come from economic and political forces which are at best indifferent to our interests and often quite hostile to them.  But the changes that might be brought about by digital publishing might potentially be to our enormous benefit.  

Historians are, of course, very dependent on publishing.  It is a central means for circulating our work.  It is also among the most important ways that we credential ourselves professionally. And for many of us, especially in intellectual history, it also provides us with much of our data. More than scholars in any other field, historians focus on the production of books. And it is books--especially academic books--that have been put most at risk by the changing economics of the publishing industry.

Finding a publisher for an academic book has become more and more difficult...though we in U.S. history haven't seen the worst effects of the cutbacks in university press lists (talk to someone in, e.g., German or Russian Studies!).  And as the conditions of employment in the academy worsen, the imperative to publish or perish if anything grows.

The digital publishing revolution does present some dangers. To the extent that the traditional book is threatened with extinction, we ought to be defending it.  There are still things that it offers that other reading technologies don't.

But the upsides of the digital publishing revolution are potentially greater.  We are living in a moment in which the forms of academic communication--which have in the past usually changed fairly slowly and organically--seem open to experimentation and rapid innovation.  Digital technologies offer new means of disseminating work (traditionally conceived) that solve some of the economic problems associated with traditional publishing.  And they also offer the possibilities of entirely new kinds of academic work (including, of course, blogs).

The perceived crisis in traditional academic publishing--as well as the creativity that has begun to emerge in these new forms--has also led more and more departmental and university review committees to treat non-traditional forms--and non-traditionally disseminated forms--of academic work seriously.  Our central technology of quality control--peer review--cuts across the digital divide; it can be used to bolster any of these new forms.

But it is essential that historians and other humanities scholars involve ourselves more actively in the process of creating this new world of digital publishing.  There are, of course, far bigger players in this game, most of whom are at best unaware of our professional needs.  If, when the dust settles, we are stuck with digital forms that do not suit us--or face a market dominated by a few huge corporate players who have no interest in our distributional needs--we may find that these changes don't serve our purposes at all.

As the first Publications Chair of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History, I find myself having to think about these issues very concretely. In the past, a new professional organization like ours would have been faced with one big question: do we publish a journal?  Now, instead, we are faced with a more exciting, open-ended, and complicated one: what does our publication program look like? 

I would love to answer that question in ways that will put S-USIH on the cutting edge of academic publishing (taking into account our very small scale, of course).  As an organization that started as blog, we perhaps have the right pedigree to do this. But I need to further educate myself about what others are doing and what we might conceivably take on. Blogs, after all, are so 1999.

Along with a number of other S-USIH bloggers, I look forward to participating, this coming January, in THATCamp AHA.*** And Tim Lacy and I are still on the lookout for anyone interested in becoming the third member of S-USIH's Publications Committee (prospective members need to join S-USIH, of course).  Those with a knowledge of, or interest in, the changing world of digital publishing are very much encouraged to offer their services to the PubComm (though I should add that we have not by any means ruled out trying to start a journal). 

But I hope that even those who are not tempted to sign up for the S-USIH PubComm will educate themselves about the changes--good and bad for historians--taking place in the world of digital publishing. I'm convinced that we can make those changes better for us than they'd otherwise be...and quite possibly create a publishing landscape that is a marked improvement over the one we have faced in recent years, both in the quality and availability of scholarship and in the opportunities it offers us for professional advancement. 
______________________________

* This blog has discussed DPLA a number of times in the past.  The most recent video update (dated September 14) from DPLA chair John Palfrey can be viewed here.  The forty final submissions to the beta spring can be seen here.

** Among the several dozen Co-Chairs and Conveners of the six "workstreams" that will define the shape of the DPLA project going forward, only one comes from a university press:  Margeurite Avery, Senior Acquisitions Editor in Science, Technology, & Society (STS), Communications, Library and Information Science, Internet Studies, and Information Policy at MIT Press.

*** Those unfamiliar with the THATCamp concept are encouraged to listen to this episode of the Making History podcast, featuring THATCamp coordinator Amanda French.

The S-USIH Publications Committee

I'm honored to have been chosen as the first Publications Chair of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH).  Our Constitution describes my duties as follows:

The Publications Committee Chair shall supervise all official Society publications including but not limited to: the blog, the newsletter, and the book reviews. The Publications Committee Chair shall have the authority to appoint up to two members in good standing to the Publications Committee in order to help in any aspect of performing that committee's responsibilities.

I'm pleased to announce that I've appointed Tim Lacy to serve on the Publications Committee.  Tim is familiar to readers of this site as a founder of the blog, our regular Thursday blogger, and our book review editor.

This leaves one slot open on the Publications Committee.*  We have a clear need for someone with experience in traditional, hardcopy layout.  We have a lot of decisions to make about S-USIH publications and whoever joins the committee will have a seat at the table in making those decisions. But, most immediately, we have been specifically charged with putting together a newsletter. And newsletters require layout, with which neither Tim nor I have much experience.

Rather than asking yet another of the USIH usual suspects to come on board, I thought I'd open things up for new people to get involved.  So if you're reading this, have any experience with layout, and are interested in joining the Society for U.S. Intellectual History's Publications Committee, please send me an e-mail at balpers AT ou.edu (written as a traditional e-mail address, of course).  Please tell me why you're interested and why you think you'd be good for the job.  Please also include a cv.  In order to serve, you will need to be a member in good standing of S-USIH, so if you're interested, please also fill out a membership form and send it in with your dues.

_____________________

* I almost titled this post "I've got this thing and it's f***ing golden. And I'm not giving it up for f***ing nothing," but I didn't want anyone to think I was actually asking for payment to join the Publications Committee, so I thought better of it.

The S-USIH Publications Committee

I'm honored to have been chosen as the first Publications Chair of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH).  Our Constitution describes my duties as follows:

The Publications Committee Chair shall supervise all official Society publications including but not limited to: the blog, the newsletter, and the book reviews. The Publications Committee Chair shall have the authority to appoint up to two members in good standing to the Publications Committee in order to help in any aspect of performing that committee's responsibilities.

I'm pleased to announce that I've appointed Tim Lacy to serve on the Publications Committee.  Tim is familiar to readers of this site as a founder of the blog, our regular Thursday blogger, and our book review editor.

This leaves one slot open on the Publications Committee.*  We have a clear need for someone with experience in traditional, hardcopy layout.  We have a lot of decisions to make about S-USIH publications and whoever joins the committee will have a seat at the table in making those decisions. But, most immediately, we have been specifically charged with putting together a newsletter. And newsletters require layout, with which neither Tim nor I have much experience.

Rather than asking yet another of the USIH usual suspects to come on board, I thought I'd open things up for new people to get involved.  So if you're reading this, have any experience with layout, and are interested in joining the Society for U.S. Intellectual History's Publications Committee, please send me an e-mail at balpers AT ou.edu (written as a traditional e-mail address, of course).  Please tell me why you're interested and why you think you'd be good for the job.  Please also include a cv.  In order to serve, you will need to be a member in good standing of S-USIH, so if you're interested, please also fill out a membership form and send it in with your dues.

_____________________

* I almost titled this post "I've got this thing and it's f***ing golden. And I'm not giving it up for f***ing nothing," but I didn't want anyone to think I was actually asking for payment to join the Publications Committee, so I thought better of it.