LISNews: Librarian News

Open Road Media is banking its future on digital publishing — and it's starting with old books first. The company is digitizing "back list" books — titles written long before e-books, or e-rights, even existed — and selling old classics with aggressive multi-platform marketing campaigns.

Full story on NPR

Who Will Referee the Referee? — The ACS As Publisher and “Approver”
"How big a deal is this? The conflict of interest is blatant in the case of Chemical Abstracts and Journal of Chemical Education, and it is somewhat subtler in regard to the “Highly Recommended” journal list, 63% of which is comprised of ACS titles. But in both cases the conflict is real, and seems to have gone largely (though not entirely) without public comment up until now. It may be that ACS is handling these conflicts honorably, but how can we know for certain? At the very least, this issue seems to bear more and wider discussion."

On editing & updating standards
"What is important about these excerpts (and in my opinion, I don’t believe these systems or approaches to be unique to West) is that they get to an underlying issue not being asked of lawyers and legal researchers generally, that is, what do you, the consumer, consider to be a quality update to a legal treatise? It’s rare to find lawyers talking about such things, and law librarians had a perfect opportunity to do so at the recent AALL Vendor Colloquium, but instead limited their focus to pricing and subscription models, vendor communications, digital v. print, etc. Honestly, what difference does all of that make if you don't know what standards vendors use to measure the underlying quality of the product?"

For the first time, PW will publish a special supplement ahead of this year's American Library Association's annual conference set for June 23-28 in New Orleans. The pre-ALA issue will be published May 30 and will include features on library funding, the e-book loan controversy and an overview of the meeting program, in addition to other pieces on the show. "Our subscribers have been telling us they want more coverage of the library market and the ALA supplement is part of our commitment to act on that request," said PW publisher Cevin Bryerman who will handle advertising inquiries at cbyerman@publishersweekly.com. Andrew Albanese will be overseeing the supplement's editorial content and can be reached at aalbanese@publishersweekly.com.