Re: Peter Brantley's blog

[sgt3@psu.edu]

Indeed, and I just contributed two postings to this discussion 
myself. Peter Brantley and Chuck Hamaker as commentator both 
argue that the editorial process in book publishing is not well 
understood by librarians (and, I would add, by administrators and 
faculty, too) unless any of them have actually served on a press 
editorial board. I agree, and I made an effort to illuminate this 
complex process (which has no counterpart in the arena of 
academic journal publishing, as Paul Courant notes in his 
comment) in an article in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing 
titled "The 'Value Added' in Editorial Acquisitions" in which I 
articulated nine functions that an acquiring editor plays in the 
system of scholarly communication When librarians aspire to 
become publishers, they would do well to understand what it is 
they are getting into and what is required to be successful in 
this domain. The article is accessible here:

<http://www.utpjournals.com/jsp/jsp302.html>

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


>Very interesting blog post by Peter Brantley:
>
>http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/shimenawa.php/2007/06/08/on_scholarly_communication_and_universit
>
>The topic is the relationship between university presses and 
>libraries and the challenges of publishing in the years ahead. 
>Peter is the head of the Digital Library Federation.
>
>Joe Esposito