Category: General

Call for Nominations: ALHHS Publication Awards

ALHHS 2016-17 Call for Publication Awards Nominations

The Archivists and Librarians in the History of Health Sciences (ALHHS) is currently seeking nominations for its three Publication Awards.

Nominations can be from one of three categories:

  • Monographs published by academic or trade publishers.
  • Articles published in journals, trade or private periodicals of recognized standing.
  • Online resources produced predominantly by ALHHS members.

All nominations must meet the following criteria:

  • Published within 3 years of the award date.
  • Author(s) must be ALHHS member(s) in good standing.
  • The nominated monograph, article, or electronic resource is related to the history of the health care sciences or works on the bibliography, librarianship and/or curatorship of historical collections in the health care sciences.

Nominations that meet each of the above criteria will be considered by the Publications Award Committee. The Committee will look for the following benchmarks of excellence when evaluating qualifying nominations: quality and style of writing, contribution to the field, and relevance to the profession.

Up to one Publication Award in each category will be presented at the 2017 annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee. Winners do not need to be present to win.

To nominate a work, please send 3 copies of a printed work (photocopies or PDFs of articles are acceptable) or the URL for an online resource to the Awards Committee Chair. Please include along with all nominations a cover letter giving the item’s complete citation (including all authors, publisher, and publication date) and the category under which the nomination falls (i.e. Monograph, Article, or Online Resource). Authors may nominate their own works. Re-nominations are also allowed, so long as the nominated publication still falls within the 3-year time period.

The deadline for nominations is Friday, January 6, 2017. For more information, please contact Awards Committee Chair: Emily Novak Gustainis, Emily_Gustainis@hms.harvard.edu or 617-432-7702.

Many thanks,

The ALHHS Publications Awards Committee
Emily R. Novak Gustainis, Chair
Phoebe Evans Letocha
Lucy Waldrop

2015 Publications Mander Jones Awards Recipients Announced

From the Australian Society of Archivists:

Congratulations to the 2015 Publications Mander Jones Award recipients who today were presented with a certificate.

Category 1A: (Not awarded)

Category 1B: Joanne Evans, Sue McKemmish, Elizabeth Daniels & Gavan McCarthy: Self-determination and archival autonomy: advocating activism, Archival Science, 15(4), 337–368

Category 2A: World War I Writers’ Group Ku-Ring-Gai Historical Society: Rallying the troops: A Word War I commemoration, Vol II

Category 2B: Nathalie Nguyen: Memory in the Aftermath of War: Australian Responses to the Vietnamese Refugee Crisis of 1975
Canadian Journal of Law and Society, Vol. 30 No. 2 (2015): 183-201

Category 3: (Joint winners)

  1. National Archives of Australia Graeme Powell with Stuart Macintyre: Land of Opportunity: Australian post-war reconstruction
  2. National Archives of Australia: Tracking Family:
a guide to Aboriginal records relating to the Northern Territory

Category 4: Methodist Ladies’ College (WA) Archives Year 8 WIAN students 2015: What’s in a name?

Category 5: Joanne Evans, Sue McKemmish, Elizabeth Daniels & Gavan McCarthy: Self-determination and archival autonomy: advocating activism Archival Science, 15(4), 337–368

Category 6: Michael Jones: Joining the Dots: Building Connections within GLAM Organizations in Juilee Decker (ed.) Collections Care and Stewardship: Innovative Approaches for Museums Rowman & Littlefield, Maryland and London, 2015, pp. 91-98

Category 7: (Not awarded)

Category 8: (Not awarded)

Please participate in NISO Publications Portfolio Survey

I received this email and while it’s not necessarily about scholarly publishing per se, I encourage anyone interested to participate. It’s great when publishers ask for input!

NISO, the National Information Standards Organization, is undertaking a substantive review of our publications portfolio to determine our best focus and attention in the future. To help us fully understand the broader impacts of the various standards, recommended practices, technical reports, white papers and other documents that NISO has published, we want include as much community input to this process as possible.

All community members are invited to participate in our publications portfolio survey athttps://www.surveymonkey.com/r/niso-portfolio. The survey will be open throughNovember 20.

NISO publishes several types of documents:
  • Standards: The most formal, “fixed” documents that NISO publishes, providing rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results. ANSI/NISO standards are approved by the American National Standards Institute and represent the highest form of stakeholder consensus.
  • Recommended Practices: “best practices” or “guidelines” for methods, materials, or practices in order to give guidance to the user. These documents usually represent a leading edge, exceptional model, or a proven industry practice.
  • Technical Reports: provide useful information about a particular topic, but do not make specific recommendations about practices to follow. They are thus “descriptive” rather than “prescriptive” in nature.
  • White Papers, Primers, etc.: contributed or solicited papers whose purpose is a call for action, a position paper, or an educational treatise on a specific issue.
Your input to this survey, which will solicit your knowledge and attitudes about our varied publications, sorted by type, would be gratefully received. More than one representative from an organization may fill it out, as we recognize that there may be various perspectives represented, and we appreciate these! We anticipate that it will take 20-25 minutes to fill out the survey. You may pause the survey and come back to it at a later time, if you are using the same computer and browser.

Thank you for your help. Please feel free to email any questions to nisohq@niso.org

Apply for Editor of RBM

Applications and nominations are invited for the position of editor of Rare Books & Manuscripts (RBM), the biannual research journal covering issues pertaining to special collections libraries and cultural heritage institutions of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). The editor is appointed for a three-year term, which may be renewed for two additional three year terms. Membership in ALA and ACRL is required at the time of appointment. Qualifications include professional experience in academic libraries, a record of scholarly publication, editing experience, an ability to meet publication deadlines, an understanding of the scholarly communication process, and a broad knowledge of the issues confronting academic libraries.

Appointment will be made by the ACRL Board of Directors following the 2017 ALA Midwinter Meeting upon the recommendation of the search committee and the ACRL Publications Coordinating Committee. The incoming editor will assume editorial responsibility in July 2017.

Nominations or resumes and letters of application, including the names of three references, should be sent to:

RBM Search Committee

c/o Dawn Mueller
ACRL
50 East Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611
dmueller@ala.org

The deadline for receipt of applications is October 1. Applications will be accepted until the position is filled.

Finalists will be interviewed by phone when the position is closed.

Bibliography of Archival History

So this came through on a couple of the listservs, and I encourage anyone to contribute.

____

Last year the Archival History Roundtable compiled a Bibliography of Archival History. The recently revised document is currently available on our microsite: http://goo.gl/nlM1lT

We are now compiling a bibliography of a Select History of the World’s Archives, 1588-1898. This new bibliography is international in scope and will include sources about archives and archival science created or published before 1899.

If you are interested in contributing citations to this project, please view our current bibliography here: https://goo.gl/VsrBZK.

Guidelines for formatting citations can be found on the Archival History Section microsite: https://goo.gl/CJZT0F.

You can make comments directly on the Google document or email me with your citations or questions at kelly.kolar@mtsu.edu.

Thank you for your help in our ongoing project!

Kelly A. Kolar
Vice-Chair
Archival History Section

New Coordinator of SAA Reviews Portal

Last December, Alexandra Orchard wrote a post about the SAA Reviews Portal. SAA just announced a new Coordinator, Gloria Gonzalez. I was excited to hear about Gloria’s appointment because of her participation in last year’s SNAP issue of Provenance. She was the reviews editor for that issue, and did a great job of thinking outside the book-review box and brought in reviews about three books, a digital platform, software, the Margaret Sanger Papers Project, and the 2015 Midwest Archives Conference.

The SAA Reviews Portal is a great opportunity to share perspectives  about non-book resources. Writing reviews is a great way to practice writing, and there are a plethora of opportunities with the Portal to explore technology and other resources pertinent to archivists. Give it a try!

from “In the Loop”

New Coordinator for The American Archivist Reviews Portal
Please welcome Gloria Gonzalez as the new Coordinator of the Reviews Portal! Gloria is the library strategist at Zepheira, helping academic and public libraries, archives, and rare book libraries incorporate principles from linked data into their work. Gloria succeeds Alexandra Orchard, who was recently named editor of Archival Issues. Interested in reviewing digital collections, websites, or other archival technology for The American Archivist Reviews Portal? Contact Gloria at gloria@zepheira.com or follow her on Twitter at @InformaticMonad to stay up-to-date on new tools and resources.

 

SAA Recap

Attending SAA is one of my favorite things. Seeing old friends, making new, hearing about projects and accomplishments, and seeing the excitement of archivists for our profession. And this year, it was great to go back to Atlanta where my publishing activities officially started.

First, I want to say thank you to those of you who told me this blog is helpful and that you read it. I’ve been doing this for just over a year and one of my upcoming goals is to do more to market it and gain more readership. So please help spread the word! I’m also hoping to get more contributors, so if you’re interested in sharing your experience or know someone who has something to say, let me know.

There were several opportunities at SAA to talk about publishing. I went to the SAA Toast to Authors, hung out at the bookstore, and attended the Write Away! breakfast. And, of course, there were many conversations in between.

I’ve attended the Write Away! breakfast since 2011. I always enjoy seeing the new faces interested in publishing, the ideas and accomplishments of SAA, and talking with people about writing. I talked to my table about the Reference and Access book and received some good tips and ideas of content. Some were already in my plans, which was helpful to know that I’m on the right track, and some were new ideas.

One question directed at SAA was how do archivists know what are topics of interest or what others are working on where they may want contributors or co-authors? I’ve had this or similar discussions several times over the past few years, and I think it’s time we start figuring it out. I have some ideas: an email discussion group, Google spreadsheet to find ideas and collaborators, live Twitter chats, and using this blog. Please post any ideas in the comments. Talking to each other will help advance writing and publishing!

Tribute to Brenda Banks

I was saddened to hear about the passing of Brenda S. Banks. In an indirect way, she affected my interest in publishing. In 2009, I was working at the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History in downtown Atlanta. At the time, she was teaching “Administration and Use of Historical Archives” at Georgia State University in the Heritage Preservation Program. When she decided to not teach anymore, she called my colleagues to see if they were interested. Due to other commitments, neither of them could do it so they asked me. With only a couple weeks before the semester started, I agreed.

I used her syllabus and spoke to her about the class. I was excited to teach, even though I hadn’t taught before. This was 5 years after I finished library school and because at the time I was working on my PhD, I did not do much to keep up with archival literature. Teaching the class forced me, in a good way, to examine the literature and read much that I hadn’t read before. I taught the class three times and it helped me become an adjunct in the Master of Archival Studies at Clayton State University.

Naturally, it was much different reading, interpreting, and analyzing the literature as a professor than as a student, especially with several years of practical experience. With every class I taught since, I look for a wide variety of books and articles to incorporate into a syllabus to provide students with a breadth of resources. I spent hours researching and reading books and articles and gained a familiarity with specific resources plus ways to research different topics both within archival literature as well as related professions.

Teaching was one avenue that led to my interest in publishing. The knowledge of resources helped me while editor of Provenance, in that I frequently recommended literature for authors to read to help with their articles. It also proved beneficial while on the SAA Publications Board to again recommend resources to authors, but also understand gaps and needs in archival literature. And it continues to help as I write the reference book.

So thank you Brenda, for your role in leading me down this path.

Going to SAA? Opportunities to Talk about Publishing

Every year, there are opportunities to talk to SAA staff and editors about publishing. Speaking from experience, taking the initiative to speak to them can bring opportunities. At the very least, you’ll make a new connection and learn more about publishing with SAA. As I wrote a year ago, it was the SAA Write Away! breakfast that started my involvement with SAA publishing. That was five years ago and I’m still involved. And if you recognize names of authors, editors, or anyone else associated with publishing, I encourage you to introduce yourself and start a conversation.

As a former editor, I truly enjoy talking to anyone about publishing. I see everyone as a potential author and I want to motivate people to write and help them reach their potential. If you see me at SAA, I will gladly talk to you about writing a journal article, a book, or anything else about publishing. And if we don’t have time to chat at SAA, please follow up and we can schedule a time to talk. Truly, this goes for anytime, non just at or around SAA.

So go forth and converse about publishing and writing!

SAA Bookstore Hours:
8:30-5pm, Wednesday;
7:30-5:30 Thursday
7:00-5:00 Friday
8:00-10:00 Saturday

Thursday, August 4
One Book, One Profession Discussion: 12:15-1:30 Brown Bag
American Archivist Article Discussion: 12:15-1:30 Brown Bag
Toast to SAA Authors: 3:15-3:45

Friday, August 5
Write Away! Breakfast: 8:00-9:00
Office Hours, American Archivist, Publications Board, Dictionary Working Group: 12:30-1:30

 

Send Me Your Photos!

I like to post my posts to Facebook to help promote this blog. However, I have no image associated with it so it looks rather blah. I’d love suggestions on photos for the header image. If I get enough, I will rotate through them periodically. I’ve done some general Google searching but nothing struck me. I started searching DPLA and realized, who better to find cool photos than archivists? Images should be related to writing or publishing, but I’m open to suggestions. Post a link in the comments, submit suggestions, or email me at ccoest[@]gmail.com.

Thanks!