Post by Dawn Durante, assistant editorial director of the University of North Carolina Press and member of the Feeding the Elephant Editorial Team
Feeding the Elephant is always looking for new content that sustains conversations about scholarly communications in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. We are all volunteers working to support dialogue within, between, and among the worlds of publishing, libraries, academic organizations, and academia, and we are particularly seeking perspectives and contributions from librarians and information science experts. We welcome queries from contributors at any career stage, from early career to the most professionally established people, and whether affiliated or independent.
General Topics
The forum is broadly interested in topics that college and university libraries face related to scholarly communications. In the past, the forum has featured pieces on library publishing and the relationship among the library, the academy, and scholarly communication, and has facilitated conversations between librarians and publishers. We welcome suggestions for any pertinent topics and are especially interested in publishing posts about the following:
- Collection strategy
- Accessibility/inclusivity of resources and spaces
- Protecting user privacy while tracking OA and eBook usage
- Information literacy in the age of disinformation
- The role of faculty status/rank of librarians in career trajectory and engaging with faculty
- Development and encouragement of OERs and other open resources
- CC licenses and general copyright issues
- Librarians and DH projects
- Diversity and equity issues in academic libraries and institutions
- Digital preservation
- Changing relationships between libraries and publishers related to open access
If you have a topic in mind that is not listed above, we would still love to hear from you about your ideas. Posts typically range from 800 to 1200 words, and we work with authors on flexible timelines. The Elephant editorial collective offers support and feedback on all pieces, and we are happy to collaborate on developing topics and ideas for posts with those interested in contributing but unsure what to write about..
Working with Your Librarian
Do you do work related to libraries and wish there was something that staff, faculty, or students knew about library resources related to their work and other scholarly communication? Pitch us a topic for our Working with Your Librarian series.
Book Reviews
Feeding the Elephant is also looking for book reviewers to contribute book reviews related to publishing, information sciences, data, and librarianship. Currently, we are particularly interested in volunteers with relevant expertise to review these books:
- Along Came Google: A History of Library Digitization by Deanna Marcum and Roger C. Schonfeld (Princeton, 2021)
- Book Traces: Nineteenth-Century Readers and the Future of the Library by Andrew M. Stauffer (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
- The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information by Craig Robertson (Minnesota, 2021)
- Foundations of Social Justice by Nicole Cooke (American Library Association, 2023)
- Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (Norton, 2022)
- Writing the Revolution: Wikipedia and the Survival of Facts in the Digital Age by Heather Ford (MIT Press, 2022)
If you are interested in reviewing a book, podcast, documentary, or other cultural production not on this list, we welcome suggestions!
Have something to say on this topic? Reply to this post! Or email the Elephant about writing for us. We welcome submissions from stakeholders on all sides of scholarly publishing. Find us on Twitter @HNetBookChannel and use the hashtag #FeedingTheElephant. You can also find us on Mastodon at @FeedingTheElephant@h-net.social.
Publishing in the Archives Profession 