Neil Block has been promoted to the position of vice president, worldwide sales, for Innovative Interfaces. In addition to his responsibility for new sales in North America and the U.K., Block will assume leadership of all Innovative sales activities outside of North America. He joined Innovative in 1998 as a training consultant. Earlier, Block worked at MINITEX, the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library. He holds an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Patricia Katopol will join the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science, Iowa City, in January 2007. A Ph.D. candidate at the University of Washington Information School, Seattle, she earned a J.D. from Howard University, Washington, DC, and an M.S. in Information Economics and Management and Policy from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She will teach in the joint MLIS-JD program.
Joan Bessman Taylor will also join the University of Iowa School of Library and Information Science, Iowa City in January 2007. Taylor is completing her Ph.D. at the School of Library & Information Science, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she has earned mention as an "outstanding" teacher. Her dissertation focuses on reading groups and contemporary reading practices.
Bowker: After Record 2004, U.S. Book Production Plummets in 2005
According to Bowker's annual assessment, compiled from its Books In Print database, the number of books published in the United States fell roughly 9.5 percent in 2005, the first decline in U.S. title output since 1999, and only the tenth downturn in the last 50 years. Based on preliminary figures, Bowker projects that U.S. output in 2005 decreased by roughly 18,000 titles to 172,000 new titles and editions. All the more shocking, the slide comes on the heels of a record 14 percent increase in 2004, meaning the industry suffered a hefty 23.5 percent swing in12 months. In 2004, the industry recorded an increase of more than 19,000 new books. Of note, Great Britain saw a massive surge in 2005. More than 206,000 new books were published in the U.K. in 2005, 45,000 more than in 2004, and a hefty 28 percent increase over 2004. With a population of just over 60 million, roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population, Great Britain now ranks as the world's publishing leader, and replaces the United States as the publisher of most new books in English. Andrew Grabois, a consultant for Bowker said "the sudden and steep drop" in the number of new books was surprising.
Grabois, meanwhile was able to point out a silver lining. "2005's book output was the second highest total of new books ever recorded," he noted, "after 2004's record year." And the year wasn't so bad for large academic, professional, and trade publishers, who managed to publish close to the number of new titles and editions that they did in 2004. University presses, despite well-worn headlines of a tough business climate, managed to increase their title output by a modest 1.8 percent, publishing 14,746 new titles, the largest annual university press output total since 2000. Output from the small publishers, however, dipped more than seven percent, while new titles from the small-to-medium and medium-to-large publishers declined by ten percent and 15 percent respectively. Still, over the last decade, total U.S. publishing output has boomed, increasing by a healthy 51 percent. A correction, however, now seems to loom. Gary Aiello, Bowker's chief operating officer of Bowker said the decreased title trend was likely to stretch into 2006 at least. "The price of paper has already gone up twice this year, and publishers, especially the small ones," he noted, "will have to think very carefully about what to publish." Additional charts and statistics can be found at www.Bookwire.com and clicking on Book Industry Statistics.
The Battle Begins: AAP/PSP Blasts Public Access Bill
Professional and scholarly publishers represented by the Association of American Publishers this week blasted a new bill introduced by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) that would mandate free online access to federally funded research within six months of publication. "The Cornyn-Lieberman bill would create unnecessary costs for taxpayers, place an unwarranted burden on research investigators, and expropriate the value-added investments made by scientific publishers--many of them not-for-profit associations who depend on publishing income to support pursuit of their scholarly missions," said Brian Crawford, chairman of AAP's
Professional Scholarly Publishing (PSP) division, and Senior Vice President with the American Chemical Society.
Crawford reintroduced many of the very same arguments publishers used to successfully beat back the NIH's public access policy last year, including the specter of a crumbling system of peer review. He argued the bill would result in a significant loss of revenue from subscriptions, licensing, and individual article sales, and would harm scientific publishing by removing publishers' "incentive and ability to sustain investments in a range of scientific, technical, and medical publishing activities." AAP VP for Legal Affairs Allan Adler decried the process of introducing the bill, arguing that there was no "evidentiary record," or impact studies conducted to determine the long term effects of the bill. "Responsible major U.S. government policy revisions must be based on a solid, researched understanding of the long-range impact of any policy changes," he noted. "This perspective is conspicuously absent from the proposed legislation."
UNM Library Coping After Fire Shuts Zimmerman Library
A fire at the University of New Mexico's Zimmerman library has shuttered the building, but library service goes on, say UNM officials. The fire, which remains under investigation, began in a basement periodicals section of the Zimmerman Library late Sunday evening, April 30th, sending smoke throughout the building, and destroying some materials. No one was injured. Library staff are just now being allowed to return to the building, so damage assessments are yet to come. But UNM Dean of Libraries Camila Alire told the LJ Academic Newswire that the library staff quickly mobilized to keep services available to students during the final week of the semester, offering both electronic access to journals and some book content. The key: being prepared. Alire said UNM had a disaster plan in place. "This is our second disaster in two years," Alire noted, citing a Christmas Eve 2004 flood in the Science and Engineering library. "Our experience from that disaster and our disaster plan prepared us to respond so quickly to this one in terms of setting up services for our users in less than 24 hours of the fire."
The library's response has been "extraordinary," said Alire. "Within 24 hours of the fire, we were able to offer students access to almost every service the library normally offers except actual circulation of books." The only service that took a little longer, she noted was a book paging service, which started six days after the fire, after the fire marshal released the building to the university. There were 200 requests for 500 books on the first day the paging service was offered. "What worked exceptionally well was the library disaster recovery team working with other staff to get all our services to our users," she said. To do so, UNM's Centennial Engineering and Science Library, the Parish Memorial Business and Economics Library, the Law Library and Health Sciences Center Library and Informatics Center extended hours to help students through finals. Reference librarians set up shop in Student Union, using the wireless network to help students locate materials and other information electronically. There is no date as of yet for when the library will reopen, but Alire is hoping for late June, and hopes the full building including the basement will be open in the fall. It will take considerable effort. "We are now able to work on the pack-out and cleanup and recovery," she reported. "We know that we have burnt and water damaged bound journals that are a total loss and then we have water damaged and dirty journals that are being packed out for treatment. The entire building is being cleaned and ozonated."
Congress Takes Aim at Smithsonian/Showtime Deal; Secretary Defends Arrangement
Lawmakers this week moved to slash as much as $5.3 million from the Smithsonian's proposed federal budget, from about $644.3 million to $639 million, amid criticism over the Institute's recent deal with Showtime Networks (see LJ Academic Newswire 4/27/06). Still, even with that cut, the Smithsonian budget would increase from last year, when it drew just over $621 million in federal funds, about 70 percent of its total budget. Meanwhile, Smithsonian Institution Secretary Lawrence M. Small defended the deal in a Washington Post article this week, saying the deal was not done without significant input and was blessed by the Museum's Board of Regents, and that despite the outcry from filmmakers and legislators, the deal would affect "a teeny, tiny fragment of the totality" of programming done at the Smithsonian.
In a fact sheet prepared about the deal, Small said the deal would in fact help get Smithsonian resources out to the public, and stressed that the Smithsonian retains the final say on whether to grant permission to filmmakers, not Showtime. "It is possible that the Smithsonian would decide to proceed with the filmmaker outside of Smithsonian On Demand, as permitted by the Smithsonian On Demand contract," notes the fact sheet. The fact sheet also defends the Smithsonian and Showtime's interest in limiting competing commercial projects. "Showtime Networks has committed to invest millions of dollars in the venture. Without an agreement to limit direct competition, no partnership with a commercial TV organization would have been possible. This is a long-term commitment on the part of the Institution to build a channel and library of programming."
Correction: BMC Does Pay Some Editors, but How It Does Also Draws Critics
In last week's LJ Academic Newswire (see LJ Academic Newswire 5/4/06) we mistakenly reported that BioMed Central (BMC) editors are unpaid. That fact caught the eye of several posters on Yale University's Liblicense-L discussion list, who said they were surprised that editors went unpaid for their efforts. In fact, under the new contract, says BMC publisher, Matt Cockerill, editors are paid with an undisclosed portion of journal revenues, gleaned from Author Processing Charges (APC). That statement, however, brought on a new round of criticism from those who questioned whether being paid based on a percentage of APC revenue presented a conflict of interest, skewing publication toward those who can pay the fee. Cockerill was quick to deflect that argument.
"The suggestion that open access journal editors are conflicted because their journal's revenue depends on article processing charges is really just the same old suggestion that open access journals in general are conflicted by article processing charges," Cockerill responded, both to LJ and to Liblicense-L. "If that is a conflict of interest, then all journals with page charges have that same conflict of interest. And since traditional publishers justify subscription price increases based on the increasing page count of their journals, traditional publishers too face the very same potential conflict of interest."
Best Sellers in Technology, June 2005-present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
Creating the Twentieth Century: Technical Innovations of 1867-1914 and Their Lasting Impact
Smil, Vaclav
Oxford University Press
2005. ISBN 0195168747. $35.00
Wired For Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship
Nass, Clifford Ivar
MIT Press
2005. ISBN 0262140926. $32.50
Hubris and Hybrids: A Cultural History of Technology and Science
Hard, Mikael
Routledge
2005. ISBN 0415949386. $90.00
Environmental Science of Drinking Water
Sullivan, Patrick J.
Elsevier Butterworth-Hein
2005. ISBN 0750678763. $59.95
Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters
Chapelle, Frank
Rutgers University Press
2005. ISBN 0813536146. $25.95
Think, Play, Do: Technology, Innovation, and Organization
Dodgson, Mark
Oxford University Press
2005. ISBN 0199268088. $109.50
Shaping Things
Sterling, Bruce
MIT Press
2005. ISBN 026219533X. $45.00
Dam! Water, Power, Politics, and Preservation in Hetch Hetchy and Yosemite National Park
Simpson, John W.
Pantheon
2005. ISBN 0375422315. $28.50
Deep Water: The Epic Struggle over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment
Leslie, Jacques
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
2005. ISBN 0374281726. $25.00
Chicago Guide to Writing about Multivariate Analysis
Miller, Jane E.
University of Chicago Press
2005. ISBN 0226527824. $65.00
Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics
Chun, Wendy Hui-Kyong
MIT Press
2006. ISBN 0262033321. $37.50
Children of the Sun: A History of Humanity's Unappeasable Appetite for Energy
Crosby, Alfred W.
W.W. Norton
2006. ISBN 0393059359. $23.95
Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building
Conca, Ken
MIT Press
2006. ISBN 0262033399. $70.00
RFID: Applications, Security, and Privacy Ed. By Simson Garfinkel
Addison-Wesley
2006. ISBN 0321290968. $54.99
Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy
Jaccard, Mark
Cambridge University Press
2005. ISBN 0521861799. $70.00
How Buildings Work: The Natural Order of Architecture
Allen, Edward
Oxford University Press
2005. ISBN 019516198X. $40.00
Enchantments of Technology
Bailey, Lee Worth
University of Illinois Press
2005. ISBN 0252029852. $50.00
Concrete Vaulted Construction in Imperial Rome: Innovations in Context
Lancaster, Lynne C.
Cambridge University Press
2005. ISBN 0521842026. $85.00
Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution
Bailey, Ronald
Prometheus
2005. ISBN 1591022274. $28.00
Design in the USA
Meikle, Jeffrey L.
Oxford University Press
2005. ISBN 0192842196. $22.50
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