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Scholarly Communication: Daily Summaries Delivered
by New Books Network
Discussions with those who work to disseminate research
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- 6 days ago48 min
Librarians as Researchers: Developing Our Scholarly Identities with Paul C. Campbell and Sarah Nagle
Librarians as Researchers: Developing Our Scholarly Identity (Bloomsbury, 2025) edited by Paul C. Campbell and Sarah Nagle is designed to empower librarians to develop their research skills and embrace their identities as scholars. Many librarians, particularly those in academic libraries, are expected to engage in research and scholarly output. However, unlike disciplinary faculty, most librarians have not completed a PhD program, and many have never designed or participated in original research upon embarking on their career. This edited volume provides inspiration and support for academic librarians looking to develop or refresh their research skills and develop their scholarly identities. The focus of this book is toward empowering librarians as researchers, rather than librarians supporting student or faculty research. This book provides a venue for librarians to share their knowledge on different aspects of research as well as build community for other librarians to actualize their own identities as researchers. The existing literature and research in the realm of librarian identity development often touches on librarian identities in the face of emerging technologies and new library types, or how librarians can support research at their institutions. However, there is a gap in the literature around librarians developing their own identities as researchers. Librarians have a unique role in the scholarly community; we often sacrifice our own research interests so that we can provide support and instruction to others, whether it be faculty, students, or the public. But the library world holds immense opportunity for developing and executing original research. Additionally, conducting research is beneficial to librarians' individual practice as well as the library community as a whole. This edited volume will provide guidance as well as actionable methods for librarians to develop foundational research philosophies, create communities of practice, and hone practical skills in a wide range of research areas.Guests: Paul C. Campbell is an Assistant Professor and the Social Science & Assessment Librarian at Kent State University Libraries. Sarah Nagle is the Creation and Innovation Services Librarian at Miami University in OhioHost: Dr. Michael LaMagna is a Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- 1 weeks ago47 min
Mary Beth Weber and Melissa De Fino, "Library Technical Services: Future Forward" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Library Technical Services: Future Forward (Bloomsbury, 2025) edited by Mary Beth Weber and Melissa De Fino looks at the future of technical services post-pandemic and at the brink of technological disruptions through a diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility lens. Libraries have undergone a tremendous transformation that has been driven by multiple factors that include technological developments, and societal impacts such as declining college enrollment and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has introduced changes to how technical services professionals work and provide services. Whereas the library is often perceived by users as a building to house print books and journals, the reality is that the library encompasses both physical and virtual spaces. For many users, the library's online catalog and website are their first (and perhaps only) experience with the library. Our user community is global, and technical services work has evolved to serve users with a growing array of electronic resources, including e-books, databases, and e-journals. These resources differ from their print counterparts in that they cost more, require licenses and contracts that must continually need to be renegotiated and renewed, must comply with accessibility standards, and require different skill sets to catalog. The virtual spaces and services libraries provide are built on the foundation provided by technical services librarians. Assessment is an important, yet often overlooked, aspect of technical services work, and is addressed in this book. It is critical for collection development and acquisition of electronic resources. It is also an important component of the work of electronic resources librarians, who monitor usage and trends. Developing an appropriate skill set for technical services work is essential for success. This includes knowing the standards for the work performed, awareness of emerging standards, and remaining relevant.Guests: Mary Beth Weber is the inaugural Coordinator for Training and Mentorship for Rutgers University Libraries. In this capacity, she serves as an advisor to the Faculty Mentoring Program, collaborates with colleagues to identify, develop, and implement a continuous program of enrichment activities to meet the needs of the Libraries' personnel. She previously served as the Head of Central Technical Services for 2008-2025, and her new role is the result of a large-scale reorganization undertaken by Rutgers University Libraries. Weber has had a long career in technical services, overseeing both resource description and acquisitions, and collaborating with collection development librarians. She representedRutgers on the Big Ten Academic Alliance’s Heads of Cataloging Committee from 2014-2025. Other offices she has held include serving as editor-in-chief for Library Resources and Technical Services, one of ALA Core’s official journals, for nine years. In addition to three books she has published with Bloomsbury, she co-authored Fundamentals of Collection Development and Management, 5th edition, with Peggy Johnson. She may be contacted via her LinkedIn profile. She earned her MLS from Clarion University of Pennsylvania and earned my BA from Michigan State University, where I had a double major of English and Art History. Melissa De Fino is Team Lead for Cataloging and Metadata Services and Metadata Librarian for Special Collections and Audiovisual Materials at Rutgers University Libraries. She has worked at Rutgers for more than 20 years, beginning her career there as a Special Collections Cataloger. Her research focuses on the evolution of technical services librarianship. Melissa is the co-author, with Mary Beth, of Virtual Technical Services: A Handbook, has published several peer-reviewed articles, and served for five years as editor of the “Tech Services Online” column in Technical Services Quarterly. She holds a Master of Library and Information Science and an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Rutgers University, as well as a B.A. in English from Fordham University.Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is a Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advert
- 2 weeks ago55 min
Laura Portwood-Stacer, "The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors" (Princeton UP, 2021)
Welcome to The Academic Life. You are smart and capable, but you aren’t an island and neither are we. So we reached across our mentor network to bring you podcasts on everything from how to finish that project, to how to take care of your beautiful mind. Wish we’d bring on an expert about something? DM us your suggestion on Twitter: The Academic Life @AcademicLifeNBN.In this episode you’ll hear about: what a book proposal is and isn’t, why you have to write one, the importance of seeking the right “fit” for your manuscript, how to pitch a quirky book, the difference between a book’s topic and its argument, how to summarize your project in just one sentence, and a discussion of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors (Princeton UP, 2021)Our guest is: Dr. Laura Portwood-Stacer, an experienced developmental editor and publishing consultant for academic authors. She is the author of The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors.You have to write a book proposal to get published, but most scholars receive no training on how to do so, and you may have never even seen a proposal before you’re expected to produce your own. The Book Proposal Book cuts through the mystery and guides you step by step through the process of crafting a compelling proposal and pitching it to university presses and other academic publishers. Whether you’re hoping to publish your first book or you’re a seasoned author with an unfinished proposal languishing on your hard drive, The Book Proposal Book provides honest, empathetic, and invaluable advice on how to overcome common sticking points and get your book published. It also shows why a well-conceived proposal can help lead to an outstanding book.Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, the co-producer of the Academic Life podcasts, and a historian of women and gender.Listeners to this episode might be interested in:The Book Proposal Book: A Guide for Scholarly Authors, by Laura Portwood-StacerDr. Portwood-Stacer’s Manuscript and Editing WorkshopsDr. Portwood-Stacer’s websiteHandbook for Academic Authors, by Beth LueyWriting and Publishing Your Book: A Guide for Experts in Every Field, by Melody HerrFrom Dissertation to Book, by William GermanoThe Chicago Manual of Style: The Essential Guide for Writers, Editors, and PublishersStory Craft: The Complete Guide to Writing Narrative Nonfiction, by Jack HartThe Business of Being a Writer, by Jane FriedmanThis episode was originally published on 8/12/2021 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
- Sep 3, 202659 min
The Grant Writing Guide: A Road Map for Scholars
The Grant Writing Guide: A Road Map for Scholars (Princeton UP, 2023) is an essential handbook for writing fundable grants. This easy-to-use guide features writing samples, a glossary of important terms, answers common questions, and explains pitfalls to avoid. Dr. Betty Lai focuses on skills that are universal to all grant writers, not just specific skills for one type of grant or funder. She explains how to craft phenomenal pitches and align them with your values, structure timelines and drafts, communicate clearly in prose and images, solicit feedback to strengthen your proposals, and much more. This incisive book walks you through every step along the way, from generating ideas to finding the right funder, determining which grants help you create the career you want, and writing in a way that excites reviewers and funders. This episode explores: how to align your values and interests with a grant opportunity; why most of us will end up needing a grant; things you can learn from a grant proposal that succeeded, and from one that didn’t; what your grant reviewer really needs from you and why; and how to use the funder’s guidelines and terminology to your advantage. Guest: Dr. Betty S. Lai is an associate professor in the Lynch School of Education and Human Development at Boston College. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, among others. Her work has been recognized with awards from the American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Foundation. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is the producer of the both Academic Life podcast and the show’s weekly newsletter. She is a writing coach and developmental editor for academics. Listeners to this episode may be interested in: Where Does Research Begin Project Management For Researchers Find Your Argument The Book Proposal Book The Dissertation To Book Workbook The Top Ten Struggles in Writing A Book Manuscript and What To Do About It Make A Meaningful Life Dealing With Rejection Mindfulness Facing Failure Subatomic Writing Becoming The Writer You Already Are Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 325+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! This episode was originally published on Feb 2, 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Aug 26, 202626 min
How to Write a Book Proposal and Make Your Manuscript Work with Laura Portwood-Stacer
Are you a scholar sitting on a manuscript that you think could be a book — but you have no idea where to start? In this episode of The Publishing Playbook, host Sarah Russo sits down with Laura Portwood-Stacer, founder of Manuscript Works and author of two books about academic publishing: “The Book Proposal Book” and “Make Your Manuscript Work.” Laura shares what pulled her out of academia and into editorial consulting, and why “publish or perish” no longer guarantees the payoff it once promised. She breaks down the essential elements of a strong academic book proposal, the real differences between the types of publishers out there, and why authors and editors are on the same team more often than they realize. Laura also dishes on whether academic authors actually need a literary agent, and how generative AI is reshaping trust in publishing. Plus: what it was really like competing on “Jeopardy!” For more information on Laura’s work, please visit Manuscript Works. Books mentioned in this episode: “The Book Proposal Book” by Laura Portwood-Stacer “Make Your Manuscript Work” by Laura Portwood-Stacer “Trans Technologies” by Oliver Haimson (both Laura and the Page One team worked with Oliver on his book) “The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” by Bettany Hughes Key Moments 00:00 – “That’s Not the Answer” 😤Laura names the fantasy that finishing a book will magically change your life, and why that unrealistic expectation sets writers up for disappointment. 03:25 – “Publish or Perish” Isn't So Simple Anymore 📚Laura explains why the old academic career formula has broken down: you can do everything right and still lose the job, the promotion, or the department. 07:12 - The Anatomy of a Strong Book Proposal 📝Laura walks through exactly what publishers are looking for, breaking down the unspoken checklist most scholars never see. 10:40 – “You’re on the Same Team” 🤝Laura pushes back on the idea that authors and editors are adversaries, arguing most writers misunderstand just how aligned they actually are with their publisher. 16:37 - Trade, Academic Trade, or Monograph? 🎯Sarah and Laura unpack the three buckets publishers sort academic books into, and why so many authors overestimate how “trade” their book really is. 20:33 - Do You Actually Need an Agent? 🙋Laura levels with authors chasing representation: most scholars publishing with university or academic presses don’t need one at all. 21:13 - AI Has Made Everyone a “Paranoid Reader” 🤖Laura gets candid about how generative AI is eroding trust between editors and authors — and why she resents having become an accidental AI expert. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Aug 14, 20261h 10m
Linda Williams and eds. Christine Gledhill et al., "Melodrama As Provocateur" (Duke UP, 2026)
The centerpiece of Melodrama as Provocateur (Duke UP, 2026) is an essay by Linda Williams (1946–2025). Williams was Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. Her highly influential work reframed some of cinema’s most neglected or denigrated genres from a feminist perspective, including documentary, pornography, horror, and melodrama. Melodrama is the focus of what would become Williams’s final project. In the last few years of her life, she was working on a project that traced melodrama’s divergent fortunes in France and the US—and argued for its enduring relevance in contemporary life and culture. Williams's work on this project was curtailed when she suffered a stroke, the complications of which led to her death in 2025. In the wake of her passing, some of her friends, collaborators, and admirers joined together to make a book that honors and memorializes her. Not only sharing Williams’s unfinished work with the world, Melodrama as Provocateur also expands on that work through a series of essays by scholars working in melodrama studies across time, place, and media. For New Books in Film, Alix Beeston sits down with the three editors of Melodrama as Provocateur: Christine Gledhill, an esteemed scholar of film and feminism who is presently a Visiting Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Leeds; Laura Horak, Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University; and Elisabeth R. Anker, Professor of American Studies and Political Science and Director of Film Studies at the George Washington University. Celebrating the model of incisive and generous research, teaching, mentorship, and collaboration Williams provided, the editors of Melodrama as Provocateur discuss the unique shape of a scholarly book generated in response to a colleague’s unfinished labor. They also take up some of Williams's provocations, including the political possibilities of melodrama in contemporary culture—from Trumpian discourse to trans cinema and beyond—and explore the kinds of labor, thought, and feeling necessary for studying melodrama as a form that moves or provokes us. Like their book, a work forged in grief and loss, Gledhill, Horak, and Anker's conversation casts film and media scholarship as an act of collectivity and love: a bid for a better kind of world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Aug 6, 202659 min
In The Scholar’s Workshop: Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship
For centuries, many of the world’s most influential thinkers relied on helpers who performed tasks such as taking dictation, correcting, indexing, composing, and endless copying. In the Scholar’s Workshop: Hidden Histories of Collaboration and Authorship (Princeton UP, 2026) introduces readers to these unsung scribes, assistants, and collaborators, showing how the scholarly enterprise is rarely as solitary as we tend to think. Dr. Blair traces how the learned have relied on helpers since antiquity, discussing how and when these amanuenses became visible in manuscript and occasionally in print and explaining why they were uniquely positioned to shape the posthumous legacy of their principal. Taking an in-depth look at the later Renaissance, she reconstructs the private lives and academic pursuits of leading figures from the period such as the renowned humanist Erasmus, the reformer Martin Bucer, and Paris professors Adrien Turnèbe and Petrus Ramus. Dr. Blair paints multifaceted portraits of the servants, students, and family members who assisted in their work, drawing on sources ranging from scholarly texts in both draft and published forms to correspondence, annotations, biographical accounts, and household rules. Panoramic in scope, In the Scholar’s Workshop challenges conventional views about authorship and attribution while affirming the enduring importance of collaboration in scholarly work today. Guest: Dr. Ann Blair is the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor in the Department of History at Harvard University. Her books include Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information Before the Modern Age and (with Paul Duguid, Anja-Silvia Goeing, and Anthony Grafton) Information: A Short History. Host: Dr. Christina Gessler is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and show host of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist for listeners: Once Upon A Tome The World She Edited Monsters in the Archives Your Art Will Save Your Life The Artists Joy Becoming The Writer You Already Are The Other Side of the Desk Reflection in Motion Working with Academic Librarians Archival Etiquette The AI Mirror Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
- Jul 31, 20260
The YIVO Library in New York: Personal Reflections on Its History and Collections
In the mid-1930s a group of New York Yiddishist intellectuals established the Central Jewish Library and Press Archive, whose collections became the nucleus of the YIVO Library when the Institute relocated from Vilna to New York in 1940. Over the succeeding decades, the Library grew by leaps and bounds, thanks to the dedication of its librarians and supporters. It emerged as a “collection of collections,” absorbing the extensive personal libraries of prominent Yiddish writers, scholars, and book collectors. Crucially, after 1945 the Library also recovered large portions of the Vilna YIVO’s prewar holdings along with thousands of rabbinic works from Vilna’s Strashun Library. Throughout its history, the YIVO Library has been a beehive of scholarship and bibliography, which has been fostered by such outstanding figures as Mendl Elkin and Dina Abramowicz. In this presentation, Zachary M. Baker will offer some personal reflections on the legacy that the YIVO Library’s founders and builders have left behind. View the bibliography for this talk: here This lecture originally took place on February 19, 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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