NASIG 2012: Managing E-Publishing — Perfect Harmony for Serialists

Presenters: Char Simser (Kansas State University) & Wendy Robertson (University of Iowa)

Iowa looks at e-publishing as an extension of the central mission of the library. This covers not only text, but also multimedia content. After many years of ad-hoc work, they formed a department to be more comprehensive and intentional.

Kansas really didn’t do much with this until they had a strategic plan that included establishing an open access press (New Prairie). This also involved reorganizing personnel to create a new department to manage the process, which includes the institutional depository. The press includes not only their own publications, but also hosts publications from a few other sources.

Iowa went with BEPress’ Digital Commons to provide both the repository and the journal hosting. Part of why they went this route for their journals was because they already had it for their repository, and they approach it more as being a hosting platform than as being a press/publisher. This means they did not need to add staff to support it, although they did add responsibilities to exiting staff in addition to their other work.

Kansas is using Open Journal Systems hosted on a commercial server due to internal politics that prevented it from being hosted on the university server. All of their publications are Gold OA, and the university/library is paying all of the costs (~$1700/year, not including the .6 FTE staff hours).

Day in the life of New Prairie Press — most of the routine stuff at Kansas involves processing DOI information for articles and works-cited, and working with DOAJ for article metadata. The rest is less routine, usually involving journal setups, training, consultation, meetings, documentation, troubleshooting, etc.

The admin back-end of OJS allows Char to view it as if she is different types of users (editor, author, etc.) to be able to trouble-shoot issues for users. Rather than maintaining a test site, they have a “hidden” journal on the live site that they use to test functions.

A big part of her daily work is submitting DOIs to CrossRef and going through the backfile of previously published content to identify and add DOIs to the works-cited. The process is very manual, and the error rate is high enough that automation would be challenging.

Iowa does have some subscription-based titles, so part of the management involves keeping up with a subscriber list and IP addresses. All of the titles eventually fall into open access.

Most of the work at Iowa has been with retrospective content — taking past print publications and digitizing them. They are also concerned with making sure the content follows current standards that are used by both library systems and Google Scholar.

There is more. I couldn’t take notes and keep time towards the end.

revelations

Go, 80’s Girl!

Listening to Jodi Jett, one is reminded of the subdued yet aggressive voice of Liz Phair. According to Jett, she had never heard of Phair when she first began playing her music out in the local clubs, a fact which I find nearly unbelievable. I suppose one could chalk it up to her Midwestern childhood and the bland nature of commercial radio in rural locations. After giving Revelations a spin, other comparisons sprang to mind, such as fellow New York rocker Halley DeVestern and the understated stylings of Beck’s sparser tunes. The other name that is frequently mentioned in her press material is Lou Reed, but I am not familiar with his music.

Before I received her CD, I listened to a few tracks on her MySpace page. The one that stood out and made me listen to the rest is “’80s Girl.” The song gives shout outs to the fashion and the hit songs of the American 1980s, ensuring it to be popular among those old enough to remember them.

Go, go ’80s girl
We are the world with your big teased hair
And your short short’s Nair
Your Michael J. hands and your parachute pants,
Your Madonna bras and shopping malls
Go ’80s girl

The video expands upon the theme, showing us the ’80s Girl trying to keep it real in the new Millennium. Once my amusement at her predicament passed, I began to think about how this song is in many ways a warning to anyone stuck in a particular frame of mind when the rest of the world has moved on. While it may be merely amusing to consider a woman stuck in the ’80s fashion scene, it is more serious when one realizes that our current political situation in the United States seems to indicate that our leaders are stuck in the ’80s global politics scene. If only it were that they they had hung onto their parachute pants and Aqua Net. . . . But I digress.

The other gem on the CD is “Bedford Avenue.” The percussion provides the perfect build and drive to move the song forward, saving it from the wistfulness of the electric guitar line. The lyrics are almost a Cinderella style fairytale, minus the happy ending. Bedford Avenue is presented as a romantic memory frozen in time rather than a particular place. The lovers cherished the moment knowing that it would be gone by sunrise. It was a relationship doomed from the start, but the pair entered into it nonetheless. A mistake that is made far too often. Ah, Ms. Jett, soothe our pain!

If Dorothy Gale had been a rocker instead of a girl with some funky shoes, perhaps she would have written an ode to her home in Kansas instead of running off to some wizard. “No Place Like” home gives a nod to the Oz tale while providing a mouthpiece for Jett’s homesick ruminations: “wandering — no place to go — somewhere over the rainbow.”

The most touching song on the album is the low-fi “Heaven To Me.” It could be taken as a sappy song to a lover until one realizes it’s about a parent-child relationship. “Yeah, I like to play and I like to sing, but, Baby, you in my arms – that’s heaven to me.” The bass-heavy acoustic guitar and cello (played by Jane Scarpantoni) bring a dark sweetness to the song not found on most of the other tracks.

My only complaint with the album is that Jett’s vocals are much the same throughout. Her range is limited, almost monotone. Some folks might groove on that, but after a while I get bored and stop listening to the lyrics.

An Interview with Susan Werner

“I believe that we can be a diverse society of extraordinary creativity and innovation and vitality and freedom, and those things are the best things that we can be.”

Susan Werner, PatriotMy introduction to the music of Susan Werner was in the fall of 1999 when a friend who produced a local acoustic music radio show lent me copies of Time Between Trains and Last of the Good Straight Girls. I was instantly enchanted with the sincerity and wit that Werner brings to her music. Her last album was a thematic collection of songs that sound like they are from the 20s and 30s, but are all orginal and new. Recently, Werner made available for download a song she describes as an alternative national anthem. “This is a song that takes the National Anthem and turns it on his head,” says Werner. “It’s Francis Scott Key meets Arlo Guthrie.” I had the pleasure of speaking with Werner about the song a few weeks ago.

Continue reading “An Interview with Susan Werner”

this land is your land

A geographic meme, courtesy of Sorcha. Also, places where US paper currency I have spent in the past four and a half years have gone. bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now… Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado … Continue reading “this land is your land”

A geographic meme, courtesy of Sorcha. Also, places where US paper currency I have spent in the past four and a half years have gone.

bold the states you’ve been to, underline the states you’ve lived in and italicize the state you’re in now…

Alabama / Alaska / Arizona / Arkansas / California / Colorado / Connecticut / Delaware / Florida / Georgia / Hawaii / Idaho / Illinois / Indiana / Iowa / Kansas / Kentucky / Louisiana / Maine / Maryland / Massachusetts / Michigan / Minnesota / Mississippi / Missouri / Montana / Nebraska / Nevada / New Hampshire / New Jersey / New Mexico / New York / North Carolina / North Dakota / Ohio / Oklahoma / Oregon / Pennsylvania / Rhode Island / South Carolina / South Dakota / Tennessee / Texas / Utah / Vermont / Virginia / Washington / West Virginia / Wisconsin / Wyoming / Washington D.C /

Go HERE to have a form generate the HTML for you.

KY to WA – day two

In the morning, I awoke refreshed, although I would have enjoyed sleeping a few more hours.

In the morning, I awoke refreshed, although I would have enjoyed sleeping a few more hours. This past week’s work of packing, errands, and trip preparation has left me with little time for sleep, and the lack was starting to catch up with me. My body reminds me regularly that I am getting older and am not as resilient as I was in high school and college. Our friends had prepared a satisfying breakfast, which concluded with pictures of their trip to see their daughter and son-in-law in Germany earlier this month. Their daughter is my age, and we grew up together like sisters, only I always got along with her much better than my biological sister (who also liked Cara better than me, so we’re even). Reluctantly, we got back in the car and continued on west towards Cheyenne, our final destination for day two.

Around noon, we decided to stop for lunch, and pulled into an Applebee’s. As we were finishing our meal, Dad overheard the man in the next table say something about, “Would the Eastern Kentuckian stand up.” I thought he had mis-heard the man, since I hadn’t heard him say it. We listened to them a bit more, and I could hear the man saying something about a thing on a car and I realized he must have noticed my front plate which has Eastern Kentucky University written on it. I went over and asked him, and it turns out that he used to teach at Morehead University! He is retired now and was with his wife on a trip to Colorado. Who would have thought that we would be sitting in a western Kansas Applebee’s next to someone who used to live in Morehead?

The rest of western Kansas was uneventful. We stopped at the welcome area just inside of Colorado to stretch our legs, use the facilities, and I located the first geocache of the trip. We passed up three on day one because we were already running late for our twelve hour drive, so it was nice to finally be able to stop and hunt for one.

Kiya had recommended we stop in Ft. Collins for dinner, but we were so close to Cheyenne and our motel room for the night that we just kept on going. This proved to be a good thing. After we checked in and unloaded the car, we went out on the town to find dinner and discovered both the wonderful Chinese/Sushi restaurant where we dined that evening and the quaint caf

KY to WA – day one

I’m uploading the following entries several days after having written them, and they will be “published” on the dates they were written. Hope no one minds. It took me a couple of days to find a wi-fi hotspot in town and to get the pictures ready.

I’m uploading the following entries several days after having written them, and they will be “published” on the dates they were written. Hope no one minds. It took me a couple of days to find a wi-fi hotspot in town and to get the pictures ready.

We started off about a half and hour later than planned, which was indicative of our timing for the rest of the day. Shortly after we got on the interstate, Dad realized he’d forgotten his cell phone in Mom’s car, and she realized the same thing and called me to let me know. We pulled off at the next exit and she met us there. After another goodbye, we were on our way west.

Earlier, Alex had his first experience with being given a pill since he was too young to remember, and by then he was pretty well drugged out, although still conscious enough to complain when we had some sudden braking around high traffic metro areas. The poor thing was also so distraught that he had peed in his carrier. Thankfully, I had an old towel in there which absorbed it, and the smell was restricted to his corner of the back seat. I tried coaxing him out a couple of times when we’d stop, but he wasn’t having anything to do with budging from where he was.

Around noon (local time), we stopped for lunch in St. Louis at an Indian restaurant with a NASIG friend of mine who works at a library nearby. The food was yummy and it was a nice oasis in the middle of a long stretch of driving. On the way in and out of the city, Dad and I reminisced about our many family vacation trips to St. Louis. It’s been twelve years since the last one, I think. I wondered what it would be like to explore the city as an adult without my parents.

We had taken much longer for lunch than we planned, and it was nearly two in the afternoon (local) before we got on the road again. Many pit stops later, we arrived weary and road-worn in Newton, Kansas, around nine-thirty in the evening. Old family friends live there, and it was our only night of the trip not spent at a Motel 6. We stayed up for another hour or so catching up with each other, by which point I was about to collapse with exhaustion.

Alex had recovered from the car trip, and after exploring the house and making use of the litter box, he relaxed into his adorable self and made friends with everyone. I was surprised by how little he ate and drank, considering he hadn’t had anything all day, but it’s probably a good thing. He can survive for several days with a small diet, and not having food in his stomach will help with the motion sickness.

I took him upstairs with me so he’d know where I was sleeping and went to bed. I slept quite soundly and got up sometime in the middle of the night in a haze and stumbled to the bathroom. There is a down side to drinking over a gallon of water in one day.
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