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 | Library Journal for Sale as Reed Elsevier Says It Will Divest B2B Publishing Business
Reed Elsevier today announced plans to sell Reed Business Information (RBI), the parent company of Library Journal and sister publications Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, and Críticas. In a statement, Reed Elsevier CEO Crispin Davis said that the company was divesting its advertising-based business-to-business publishing unit and moving more aggressively into a "risk management business," fueled by a $4 billion acquisition of ChoicePoint, a company that provides data and analytics to the insurance industry. Davis did not identify potential buyers for RBI, and had no timeline for the sale, but expected "a strong level" of interest in RBI from both "strategic and private equity buyers."
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Indiana University Library Publishes First Faculty E-Journal
In what librarians are calling "a turning point in scholarly publishing" the Indiana University (IU) library this week published the university’s first "faculty-generated" open access electronic journal, the Museum Anthropology Review. The journal, edited by Jason Baird Jackson, associate professor in IU’s Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, was chartered last February as part of a pilot project within the library’s larger scholarly communication initiative, IUScholarWorks, designed to offer faculty "a low-cost solution to the administrative and publishing functions."
In an editorial on the journal’s web site, Jackson detailed—and praised—the library’s contributions. "Almost as soon as we began publishing last February, we started partnering with remarkable, visionary librarians," Jackson wrote. "Our first step together was to establish a system by which contributions to Museum Anthropology Review could be archived, preserved and made available digitally via our campus digital repository. This allowed me to assure authors that, whatever else might happen to this site or the journal generally, their hard work would remain available into the future."
As a community, Jackson added, IU librarians took a special interest in learning open access publishing. "I presented two library seminars on the project and on the wider state of journal publishing in anthropology and folklore," Jackson wrote. "These were among the most exciting discussions that I have experienced in a campus context."
IU’s Ruth Lilly Dean of Libraries Patricia Steele told the LJ Academic Newswire that from its inception in 2006, the IUScholarWorks program was designed support endeavors like Jackson’s open access e-journal, and said future endeavors may extend to a partnership with the IU Press and a repository for the Indiana University Archives relating to the history and culture of IU. "Our goal," Steele said, "was to be in the position to lead the change when faculty members were ready."
With other recent developments, such as the NIH public access mandate and last week’s historic open access mandate at Harvard University, more faculty members, at IU and nationwide, appear ready for change. Steele said last week’s announcement by Harvard was "exciting" and that she would like to think a similar initiative was indeed possible at IU. "Certainly Harvard’s action may help generate conversations that would have taken much longer to establish," she told the Newswire.
Meanwhile, by offering faculty at IU a range of scholarly publishing options—including journal publishing tools—IU offers yet another glimpse of a future in which libraries play a more active, upstream role in scholarly communication. "If we think broadly about the future of library collections and how we go about building them," she said, "partnering with faculty at all stages of their research, writing, and, publication becomes logical."
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| U. of Illinois Rare Book and Manuscript Library Closes To Fight Mold
The Rare Book and Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, will close on Feb. 25 to combat a mold outbreak that has spread throughout the vault. While only a fraction of the library’s collection were discovered to have active mold blooms, Tom Teper, associate university librarian for collections and associate dean of libraries, told reporters that mold spores had "permeated the entire vault." But while it might take some libraries years to recover from a mold outbreak, Teper said the UI library would aggressively fight the outbreak and plans to reopen by the first week of May.
According to a UI news release, Texas-based BMS Catastrophe has been contracted to clean the collection—at a cost of up to $800,000. "There is also a significant contribution from the University Library in the form of services and faculty, staff and student time being put into managing the project," Teper noted. BMS Catastrophe began cleaning the ventilation systems, believed responsible for the outbreak, last week. Teper said he has been impressed by and thankful for the university’s quick and aggressive response to the mold problem. "This could be a very demoralizing time, but their timely response has been very heartening," he told reporters. "This type of recovery operation is the type of project one doesn’t want to repeat."
The UI’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library comprises roughly 300,000 volumes valued in excess of $1 billion, including the papers and letters of Carl Sandburg, H.G. Wells, and Marcel Proust and first editions of titles by Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.
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| Leaked Deposition Suggests Bush Library Deal in Place at SMU
Plagued by a variety of complications, including lawsuits, faculty protests, and a potential insurrection in the Methodist Church, an official announcement of the George W. Bush Library at Southern Methodist University (SMU) still awaits. But in a deposition in a long-simmering lawsuit, the deal is all but done. According to a report in the Dallas Morning News, Mark Langdale, a Bush friend and former ambassador to Costa Rica, told lawyers that "only minor questions of wording remain" and a deal for the library, and a controversial accompanying policy center, could be announced by the end of the month. Once the final announcement is made, "fundraising, design and construction" would begin, to be completed within five years. Robert A.M. Stern Architects have been tabbed to design the complex.
The deposition was taken in long-running lawsuit filed by the owner of a property, the University Gardens, alleging that the university forced them to sell so their land it could be included in the library deal. SMU has denied the allegations, and the outcome of the suit is not expected to have any bearing on the library deal. Nevertheless, the suit has played a part in long-delaying an announcement that was expected more than a year ago. SMU was named the sole finalist for the Bush library in December 2006. The Bush Library at SMU is expected to be the most ambitious presidential library in history: Bush and his supporters have set a $500 million fundraising goal for the project.
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Best Sellers in Language, June 2007–present, as compiled by YBP Library Services
(13 digit ISBNs in brackets)
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Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
Pinker, Steven
Viking
2007. ISBN 0670063274 [9780670063277]. $29.95
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First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language
Kenneally, Christine
Viking
2007. ISBN 0670034908 [9780670034901]. $26.95
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Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About the Mind
Fox, Margalit
Simon & Schuster
2007. ISBN 0743247124 [9780743247122]. $27.00
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Um...: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean
Erard, Michael
Pantheon
2007. ISBN 0375423567 [9780375423567]. $24.95
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Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact
Yip, Virginia
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521836174 [9780521836173]. $85.00
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Style: Language Variation and Identity
Coupland, Nikolas
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521853036 [9780521853033]. $85.00
-
Rosetta Stone and the Rebirth of Ancient Egypt
Ray, J.D.
Harvard University Press
2007. ISBN 0674024931 [9780674024939]. $19.95
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Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power
Errington, James Joseph
Blackwell
2008. ISBN 1405105690 [9781405105699]. $84.95
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Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction
Van Patten, Bill
Lawrence Erlbaum
2007. ISBN 0805857370 [9780805857375]. $110.00
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Language, Culture and Identity: An Ethnolinguistic Perspective
Riley, Philip
Continuum
2007. ISBN 0826486282 [9780826486288]. $150.00
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Sound Change and the History of English
Smith, J.J.
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0199291950 [9780199291953]. $85.00
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Child Language: The Parametric Approach
Snyder, William
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0199296693 [9780199296699]. $99.00
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Horse, the Wheel and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World
Anthony, David W.
Princeton University Press
2007. ISBN 0691058873 [9780691058870]. $35.00
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Gestural Origin of Language
Armstrong, David F.
Oxford University Press
2007. ISBN 0195163486 [9780195163483]. $39.95
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Language in the British Isles
Britain, David
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521791502 [9780521791502]. $95.00
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Talking Voices: Repetition, Dialogue, and Imagery in Conversational Discourse
Tannen, Deborah
Cambridge University Press
2007. ISBN 0521688965 [9780521688963]. $85.00
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Language in the Media: Representations, Identities, Ideologies
Johnson, Sally
Continuum
2007. ISBN 0826495486 [9780826495488]. $150.00
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Writing Matters: Rhetoric in Public and Private Lives
Lunsford, Andrea
University of Georgia Press
2007. ISBN 0820329312 [9780820329314]. $24.95
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Bilingualism: A Social Approach
Heller, Monica
Palgrave Macmillan
2007. ISBN 1403996776 [9781403996770]. $102.00
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Local Histories: Reading the Archives of Composition
Donahue, Patricia
University of Pittsburgh Press
2007. ISBN 0822959542 [9780822959540]. $24.95
Library Journal Academic Newswire
Contributing Editor: Andrew R. Albanese
Phone: 646-746-6852 E-mail: aalbanese@reedbusiness.com
Editor: Francine Fialkoff
Phone: 646-746-6807 E-mail: fialkoff@reedbusiness.com
Executive Editor: Rebecca Miller
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News Editor: Norman Oder
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