BEA 2010: Water-Cooler Takeaways
Martha Cornog, Margaret Heilbrun, Anna Katterjohn, and Heather McCormack Jun 3, 2010On everyone's favorite E word (ebooks)...
If you're a public librarian already sick of the word ebook, get comfortable being really uncomfortable. Several panels on digital media [link to takeaways piece] reinforced my hunch that 2010 will go down as the year librarians' voices were finally heard in the ebook debates. No less than Macmillan CEO John Sargent arranged a private meeting during BEA with eight librarians (including LJ reviewer Robin Nesbitt). Rumor has it he wants to do right; he just needs a lot more education. That could be where Overdrive's ubiquitious CEO Steve Potash comes in. His plans to monetize OPACs with a "buy-it-now" button blew my mind. Details to come at ALA Annual in Washington, DC.-Heather McCormack
...graphic novels: Doonesbury turns 40, plus a cornucopia of YA crossover...
Doonesbury still rules! On its 40th anniversary, with two November books, Doonesbury and the Art of G.B. Trudeau by Brian Walker (Yale) and 40: A Doonesbury Retrospective (Andrews McMeel), Gary Trudeau remains one of a kind. Nonfiction graphic newbies may get most of the attention (lots of librarians swallowed the hype for David Small's Stitches at BEA 2009), but Trudeau still shows us that in deftly mixing gravity with levity he has concocted lasting treasures.-Margaret Heilbrun
Comics with cross-generational appeal popped up at numerous booths and panel. Announced at Fantagraphics, the long-awaited Volume 2 of the all-ages charmer Castle Waiting is expected at year's end. Over at Papercutz, I talked with Rick Parker, artist for Harry Potty and the Deathly Boring. While the writing is pure tween-appeal wordplay, the art speaks to dude Parker's generation with his style-wise tribute to Mad magazine's Kurtzman and Elder, cameos of comics luminaries worked into the backgrounds, and sly echoes of underground comix and Fantasia's Sorcerer's Apprentice.-Martha Cornog
...librarians and filthy lucre...
At metadata expert extraordinaire Laura Dawson's hush puppy party in her Park Slope, Brooklyn, backyard, more than one stranger to Library Land commented on the rising rock star status of librarians in publishing. (I've sensed as much since early spring, when the debate for a sustainable ebook model for public libraries finally gathered steam.) Of course, to hear others say, "Librarians have the power of filthy lucre," felt a little strange given all the tragic shutterings and budget cuts, but we're on to something. Thank you...Marilyn Johnson?-Heather McCormack
...academic titles of note...
Just in time for the 2500th anniversary, Yale University Press is ready with The Battle of Marathon (September), in which Peter Krentz will tell us that the Athenian army wasn't so organized after all! Somewhere, Herodotus is saying "I told you so!" But when it comes to anniversaries, Yale didn't want to wait until 4461 to give Eisenhower's famous "military industrial complex" speech full contextualization. Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military Industrial Complex by James Ledbetter (January 2011) gives Ike his due after merely 50 years.-Margaret Heilbrun
...and quality control on the panels.
I gotta admit, I didn't learn much in the general publishing sessions I attended. "The New Guidebook Publishing for Tomorrow's Wired World" and "The Future of Food Writing and Cookbook Publishing" panelists concluded there needs to be curation of user-generated content by an authoritative voice and that there is still room for print and digital. Have we heard this before? If BEA isn't about the panels, what is it for? There need to be session tracks for different interests and different levels of knowledge, and the focus of each session and the panelists need to be delineated more carefully in advance. [See the longer version of this piece.]-Anna Katterjohn
