An occasional newsletter from the editors of Feeding the Elephant: A Forum for Scholarly Communications.
Financial Health of Colleges & Universities
Kelly Grotke, “Are Endowments Damaging Colleges and Universities?,” The American Prospect, https://prospect.org/education/are-endowments-damaging-colleges-and-universities/
“Endowments are supposed to help institutions weather periods of financial difficulty. Instead, they’ve become a source of it.”
Shawn Gilmore, “State of the Profession: How We (Should) Govern Now,” Academe, Winter 2021, https://www.aaup.org/article/state-profession-how-we-should-govern-now#.YCVEshZ7k2w
“Each of our institutions is grappling with this new situation through governance systems that likely weren’t created to handle changes of this magnitude or designed to come to decisions on such short timelines. And yet here we are—operating with systems, many of which serve us well in ordinary times, that are pushed to the point of failure.”
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
UK Publishers Association, Diversity Survey of the Publishing Workforce 2020, https://www.publishers.org.uk/publications/diversity-survey-of-the-publishing-workforce-2020/
“The 2020 survey is the most comprehensive ever undertaken of the UK publishing workforce, with a total of 14,122 employees from 71 businesses taking part.”
“How Can We Better Publish Black Writers in Translation?,” Words Without Borders, January 2021, https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/january-2021-how-can-we-better-publish-black-writers-in-translation (h/t Publishing Perspectives)
“US-based translator Aaron Robertson, Mozambique-based publisher Sandra Tamele, and Haiti-based writer Évelyne Trouillot write on the meaningful changes we need to better publish Black writers from around the world in the twenty-first century.”
Scholarly Publishing
“The Other Side of the Desk with a UP Editor: A Discussion with Kim Guinta,” New Books Network, December 24, 2020, https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-other-side-of-the-desk-with-a-up-editor-a-discussion-with-kim-guinta
The Academic Life podcast spoke with Kim Guinta, Editorial Director at Rutgers University Press about “the publishing process (from the author side), what makes a strong proposal, common mistakes to avoid when approaching a university press, and advice for both aspiring and seasoned authors.”
Libraries & Librarianship
“Understanding Infodiversity: An Interview,” IFLA, January 12, 2021 https://www.ifla.org/node/93576 (h/t H-HistBibl)
Interview with Jonathan Hernández-Pérez, Associate Researcher at the Institute for Library and Information Research (IIBI) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) about the concept of infodiversity, adopted by many, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, as a tool for exploring and explaining trends and developments. From the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA).
Copyright & Intellectual Property
IPX, http://ipxcourses.org/ (h/t Bonnie Russell)
Free public access to two courses on intellectual property developed by Professors William Fisher and Ruth Okediji: CopyrightX and PatentX.
Digital Humanities
Nick Statt, “Twitter is opening up its full tweet archive to academic researchers for free,” The Verge, January 26, 2021, https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/26/22250203/twitter-academic-research-public-tweet-archive-free-access (h/t H-HistBibl)
“Twitter says it will no longer require researchers pay for premium or enterprise developer access and will instead make the ‘full history of public conversation’ — what the company refers to as its full-archive search endpoint — available to any researcher or developer who applies as part of the launch of a new academic research track.”
Random Bits
@emilypawley (Dr. Emily Pawley) et al, “Let’s play ‘think of climate crisis jobs that aren’t ‘wind turbine and solar panel installer!’...,” Twitter, February 16, 2021, https://twitter.com/emilypawley/status/1361876746870611977 (h/t Johanna Schuster-Craig)
A collective Twitter brainstorm of the different kinds of workers that will be needed to address the climate crisis. We wonder: How will scholars, publishers, and librarians be a part of the response?
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