Journals & Magazines

Jennifer Garner tells Oprah Magazine, that when she was a young’n growing up in West Virginia she always wanted to be a librarian.

“I had a very rich imaginary world,” said Garner, who is 37. “And my dream was to grow up to be a librarian, because I had a librarian named Mrs. McCann who I thought was the most magical woman on the planet. She used to publish little versions of my stories, typing them on manila folders and illustrating them with pictures of me and my teddy bear.”

In a break with tradition, The Associated Press plans to prevent members and customers from publishing some AP content on their websites. Instead, those news organizations would link to the content on a central AP website — a move that could upend the consortium’s traditional notions of syndication.

That’s one revelation from a document we obtained (labeled “AP CONFIDENTIAL — NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION”) that offers new insight into how the AP is planning to reinvent itself on the Internet according to Neiman Lab, Harvard University.

The seven-page briefing, entitled “Protect, Point, Pay — An Associated Press Plan for Reclaiming News Content Online,” was distributed to AP members late last month. It provides greater detail about the tracking device that will be attached to AP content and describes their plans to create topic pages around news stories to rival Wikipedia and major aggregation sites. And in an hour-long interview last night, the AP’s general counsel, Srinandan Kasi, also shed light on how the consortium views reuse of its material across the Internet.

NY Times: Shorthand wasn’t always just for secretaries and court reporters, Leah Price writes in her essay on the history of shorthand in the London Review of Books.

Before the 1870s, it was used more for writing down one’s own thoughts or discretely noting the conversation of others. Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton and Charles Dickens used it, as did legions of “spirit-rappers, teetotalers, vegetarians, pacifists, anti-vivisectionists, anti-tobacconists,” and other members of a “counter-culture of early adapters” who generated something of a shorthand craze in mid-19th-century Britain. Isaac Pitman, creator of the wildly successful “Stenographic Soundhand” method still used today, made arguments that don’t sound so different from the tweeting techno-evangelists of our age. When people correspond by shorthand, he declared “friendships grow six times as fast as under the withering blighting influence of the moon of longhand.”

I remember my mother with her spiral top notebook and two columns of lines writing down what seemed to me to be completely indistinguishable marks. Anyone out there know shorthand? Is it of any value today?

Reed Business Information is putting Publishers Weekly and its affiliated publications, Library Journal and School Library Journal, up for sale. The sale of the group is part of RBI’s strategy to divest most of its trade magazines in the U.S. Last year, Reed Elsevier, parent company of RBI, tried to sell all of RBI but dropped the sale when it couldn’t get the price it wanted in a depressed market for media properties.

In a related announcement, Tad Smith, CEO of RBI US, has resigned. John Poulin has been named acting CEO and he will head the sales process.

Who wants to buy some professional journals...Blake?

If information isn't online, it may as well not exist. In the latest sign that the world of traditional print has become a world of hurt, the American Chemical Society is reported to be planning to switch to an online-only publishing model for its journals.

For seven months, The New York Times managed to keep out of the news the fact that one of its reporters, David Rohde, had been kidnapped by the Taliban. Thankfully, he escaped by climbing over a wall on June 19.

Days after Mr. Rohde was kidnapped in November, editing tussles began on his Wikipedia entry.

NY Times executives believed that publicity would raise Mr. Rohde’s value to his captors as a bargaining chip and reduce his chance of survival. Persuading another publication or a broadcaster not to report the kidnapping usually meant just a phone call from one editor to another, said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. But that was pretty straightforward compared with keeping it off Wikipedia.

Wikipedia, which operates under the philosophy that anyone can be an editor, and that all information should be public, is a vastly different world. More on how the story was treated by Wikipedia from the New York Times.

Yes, Mary Jane (what happened to Virginia?), there is a Spider-Man.

According to Newswise, that’s what pop-culture guru and associate humanities librarian for Texas Tech University Libraries Rob Weiner set out to prove in an article published in the International Journal of Comic Art.

In much the same way that editor Francis Pharcellus Church proved the existence of Santa Claus in his famous 1897 New York Sun editorial, Weiner contends that Spider-Man and his costumed peers have entered mankind’s collective consciousness, filling a shared need for heroes.

“When I started reading graphic novels, I was struck by the fact that stories about Spider-Man or Batman and Superman could have as many plot twists and turns as any story by Shakespeare, Stephen King or Leo Tolstoy,” he said. “I was struck by how good some of the writing was for these so-called “kiddie” books, and that somehow these archetypical characters like Spider-Man were replacing Odysseus and Zeus as part of modern mythology.”

A copy of Weiner’s article is available as a pdf upon request, or a copy of the journal can be purchased at the International Journal of Comic Art.

Care to guess who America's best-loved novelist is?

Yes, it's Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, who is profiled in this week's New Yorker.

Also for your audio buffs, a podcast with Lauren Collins which describes the history of the romance novel, why the genre gets no respect, and how Roberts has domesticated romance.

Follow up on a story we posted last week about the Rapid City Regional Hospital removing its librarian and closing its library (I like to think that maybe LISNews contributed to what LJ is calling the 'backlash'...)

Library Journal reports: Rapid City Regional Hospital (RCRD), SD, has ended public access to its medical library and fired its longtime medical librarian, provoking a negative reaction to the decision.

In response to a story in the Rapid City Journal June 9, some 70 people wrote about their displeasure with the hospital, bringing up salient points about the nature of libraries and librarians.

Unfortunately, closing libraries is an increasingly common occurrence in the private sector. But in this case, the public has been affected, and they’re making sure their displeasure is heard.

"A library is about INFORMATION, not about books," wrote one poster. "Librarians are skilled in helping people connect with the INFORMATION they need, AND they help to make the information accessible too," she continued.

Many posters made well-informed arguments for the profession. A past hospital employee wrote, "[Other hospitals] understand that the librarian is the key to making these electronic resources work, finding the best resources to buy, at the best prices, continuously teaching users and making the databases work well for the employees, doctors, and patients."

In case you haven't seen it...from the June 8 & 15 issue~

Cover entitled “Future Generations” by Dan Clowes, part of a second generation of American underground comix artists.

Is everything on twitter 100% accurate? Far from it. And can a journalist chronicle a court case 140 characters at a time?

Lawyers Weekly (Canada) asks us to judge for ourselves. Follow trials in Ottawa and London, ON where judges in both cases are letting journalists stream events from the courtroom to the Internet via Twitter. Here are two cases to follow: In Ottawa, the bribery trial of Mayor Larry O’Brien and in London ON, the Bandidos trial.

Many lawyers aren’t yet sure what to think. “This is evolving rapidly,” says Toronto-based Daryl Cruz, partner and leader of th litigation practice group at McCarthy Tétrault LLP. “Six months ago, we probably wouldn’t have had this conversation because it wouldn’t have crossed anybody’s mind.”

Says law librarian Connie Crosby: "It (twitter) doesn’t give a lot of room for clarifying context and giving facts" principal of Toronto-based Crosby Group Consulting. She adds that tweets can be taken out of context, as happened when somebody mistakenly attributed an inflammatory tweet about Tamil protesters to Toronto Mayor David Miller when, in fact, the comment was merely addressed to Miller. She tells us that news organizations like The Wall Street Journal are now sending their reporters guides that cover Twitter as a medium for reporting.

In most cases, unless a medical professional or researcher works for an organization that can afford subscriptions to medical journals, much research remains beyond their reach. There are thousands of different journals, and access to just the most well-regarded can run thousands of dollars a year.

Now, with Washington rushing to transform health care, a debate often limited to hospital wards, medical schools and Internet forums is pushing to the fore. It's a debate deeply rooted in beliefs about access to information -- medical research. Increasingly, a generational gap is emerging.
[Story @ AB News]

Ouch. In the May 2009 issue of Body + Soul magazine--"A Martha Stewart Publication"--"renting a book" via BookSwim is #1 on a list of "6 Simple Ways to Better Your Life and the Planet."

The magazine copy reads, "Looking for a good read? Try renting books Netflix-style with bookswim.com. It's easier than going to the library and greener than buying from the store. Log on and have your picks delivered to your door in recycled packaging."

An article in the Chronicle of Higher Education today records that Rockefeller University Press is freezing the rates of its journal subscriptions for 2010 at the 2009 levels. Although Rockefeller only publishes a few journals, "the symbolic value of the decision, however, should not be discounted".