I just got added to the book-review panel for a newish journal, during which process I learned a thing or two.
One: gee, it wasn’t hard! I saw a call for reviewers, looked over their list of books, emailed the review editor my CV with a link to my HigherEdBlogCon paper as a writing sample, and that was that—I was in. My first book to review (and a couple-three bloggers’ ears should be burning right now) is coming in the mail as soon as the review editor gets it.
The length and time limits on reviews are such that I’ve got three weeks to write a typical CavLec blogpost (minus the typical CavLec snark and sentence fragmentation) on each book. I can do that. Thinking about it, I realized that the snobs who decry bloggery for its brevity aren’t considering an awful lot of writing forms and venues in which brevity is a virtue.
Two: The open-access situation in library-related journals is bad, but not hopeless. Almost none are gold, but plenty are green. ALA, for example, offers two licenses for its divisional journals and newsletters, one of which (the “license agreement”) leaves copyright with the author. Putting my repository-rat hat on, I note that the other one (the “assignment agreement”) appears to forbid placement of material in institutional or disciplinary repositories, and so I urge folks to use the license agreement.
Haworth is green. Elsevier is green. Emerald is green. That plus ALA is a big whacking lot of US library journals right there. So if you’re writing in these venues, but you’re not using your local institutional repository, E-LIS, or DLIST, you should be. No excuses. Just do it.
I looked this up because I have obvious ethical and career concerns about contributing my work to journals that are passively or actively working against open access. I absolutely wouldn’t contribute to an Elsevier journal despite its greenness, for instance, because Elsevier is lobbying the living daylights out of Congress to keep FRPAA from passing. Nor I won’t contribute to a journal that yoinks my copyright and leaves me nothing, neither—but a green journal is all right with me; I don’t require gold.
(If anybody’s got a good list of the anti-FRPAA lobby and its contributors, I’d surely like to see it.)
Three: Walt Crawford’s First Have Something to Say should be on the desk of every librarian who wants or needs to publish but is nervous or lacking in clue about it. This short, reassuring volume systematically treats publishing venues, guidelines for different kinds of writing, the roles that librarians can fill in addition to authoring, how to get started before you’ve made your name, and how to avoid publication pitfalls. I was particularly gratified to see a chapter on speaking, since I still think that a neglected skill in librarianship.
It’s written in Walt’s kindest and most approachable style. Regular blog-readers (of his blog or many others) will feel immediately at home with it. It’s also notably honest; Walt isn’t afraid to explain where his knowledge ends or where he differs from received wisdom. I picked up MPOW’s copy of the book, but I am inclined to grab one for myself when I next have a few spare shekels.
No, this isn’t the kind of review I’m going to write for the journal—but y’all are my friends, so naturally I write differently for you. Ignore my non-leet reviewing skillz and go pick up the book, hm?
