Caveat Lector

If my fangirly tribute posts squick you, now would be a good time to move on.

I first started skimming the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography updates when I was a wee conversion peasant at Impressions in the late ’90s. (I’m not entirely sure, but I don’t think those updates existed in weblog format at the time; I remember there being a mailing list. I wasn’t on it. I just checked back every couple of weeks or so.)

I didn’t understand a lot of what floated by at the time; my focus was too narrow for that. Still, SEPB made me subliminally aware that there was more to e-publishing than the ebook hype I was caught up in, and that these weird creatures called “academic libraries” were implicated. I can’t honestly say that SEPB is the reason I’m a librarian, never mind the kind of librarian I am—but I can and do maintain that SEPB opened my mind to let the possibility in.

My path hasn’t (yet) crossed his at a conference, so I don’t know whether his low-key, formal online self-presentation corresponds to his offline demeanor. (I’m cautious about assumptions of this nature, having found—from both sides of the act of judgment!—that the degree of congruence varies widely.) All I can say is that it’s easy, probably much too easy, for a new entrant to the field not to realize what a powerhouse Charles W. Bailey Jr. has been and still is.

Because the SEPB is moving, I heard about Bailey’s resignation from the University of Houston libraries from several different mailing lists at once. (Typical of him to center his announcement on the SEPB rather than himself.) It was several hours at least before the same announcement appeared on his weblog, and a whole day before Liz Lawley asked what I (not being any sort of friend or acquaintance) didn’t dare ask: what next?

Bailey’s answer is equivocal, suggesting perhaps a done but unannounced deal… but I look forward to clarification, because I expect it’s good news for scholarly communication. Anything that enhances Bailey’s impact on the world is.