Publications Committee Report - Updated Dec. 2006

Report of the Publications Committee to the Executive Committee of the ASEH

December 2006

By Jay Taylor, Simon Fraser University

The ASEH Publications Committee wishes to announce an agreement with JSTOR to electronically archive all back issues of Environmental History and its predecessor journals Environmental History Review and Environmental Review, published from 1977 and 2002.  As part of the agreement, JSTOR will also archive the Forest History Society’s predecessor journals Forest & Conservation History, Journal of Forest History, and Forest History published from 1957 to 1995.  As has been the case for several years now, however, current issues of Environmental History published since 2003 will continue to appear on the History Cooperative site.

This project has been several years in development, involving numerous discussions with the ASEH Executive Committee, the FHS Board of Directors, the Executive Directors of the two organizations, and the two primary online storage systems for history journals.  The arrangement was finally concluded with JSTOR this fall with the help of a generous grant from the Lawrence Foundation.  JSTOR estimates that the conversion process will take two years.  The journals will be placed in one of JSTOR’s broad arts and sciences collections that focus on the humanities, but the actual title of this collection, which will include a number of other recent history journal acquisitions, has not yet been determined.

From the beginning of this process, a central concern about the move to online journals has the issue of accessibility.  The Executive Committee has maintained a longstanding concern about resisting the gating of the History Cooperative collection, but there have been increasing pressures to create at least a rolling gate because of insufficient subscriptions to the History Cooperate collection.  These same issues affect the move to JSTOR, but they have been mitigated in two important ways.  First, the new collection is likely to be readily available to members who affiliated with schools and other institutions that will subscribe.  In consideration of the many ASEH and FHS members who are not affiliated with such libraries and organizations, however, the ASEH has also secured as part of the agreement with JSTOR a separate members subscription to the collection for $15.  Thus members of the ASEH will be assured of ready access to the entire run of journals by the two organizations, which, for younger members and members at institutions without full runs, the ASEH membership is becoming an even more valuable research tool.

Report of the Publications Committee to the Executive Committee of the ASEH

April 2006

 In early September 2005, Joseph Taylor and Stephen Pyne had a series of conversations about the poor recognition of EH outside academia. Taylor proposed a two-prong strategy of having the Library of Congress (LOC) create a separate index entry for the field in its cataloguing system and opening a conversation with publishers and book sellers about how to better promote the field, organization, and authors.  In response, Pyne appointed Taylor to explore these issues, and in early October the ASEH’s Publications Committee was re-formed with the addition of Kathleen Brosnan (University of Houston) and Frank Smith (Cambridge University Press).

The committee began by contacting the LOC about the catalog entry issue.  We wrote to Beacher Wiggins, Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access, outlining our concerns and proposing a separate index entry and formal classification policy.  Wiggins forwarded the request to Librarian William Deiss, who responded affirmatively, agreeing on the index entry and noting that the LOC already informally listed environmental history in the GF section with Human Ecology.  The committee deliberated on the LOC’s response and forwarded its comments to Pyne.  This was transmitted to the ASEH Executive Committee last fall, which approved the matter in late 2005.  The decision was relayed to Deiss, who confirmed the new policy.

The committee then arranged a meeting of publishers representatives and booksellers to discuss ideas about marketing EH more effectively.  On Thursday, March 30, ten press representatives and the committee members accepted invitations to gather at the ASEH conference in St. Paul.  The conversation, held on Thursday at lunch, revolved around two principal questions:

• How can publishers and the ASEH brand environmental history more effectively?

• Are there ways to get booksellers to highlight the field within stores?

The group revealed little enthusiasm for engaging booksellers.  Bookstores are changing rapidly, moving away from marketing narrow categories and employing less and less “book people.”  Marketing strategies are also changing.  Data offered by the marketing departments of several publishers exposes surprising trends.  One representative noted that 50 to 60 percent of all academic titles from that press are now sold to electronic wholesalers such as Ingraham and Amazon.  Traditional bookstores play an ever declining role in disseminating texts and creating awareness of scholarship.  Promotion increasingly relies on mass media.  Publicists try to create author name brands by gaining the ear of prominent journalists or arranging features in national publications and websites.  Readers are thus more likely to learn about authors before books.

These remarks framed a series of suggestions to the Publication Committee, most of which involved creating resources and networks via the internet.  These ideas included creating

• A speakers bureau for environmental history similar to the Distinguished Lectureship Program of the OAH (http://www.oah.org/activities/lectureship/2005/index.html), which would promote important scholars and generate revenue for the organization.  One point that all agreed on was the necessity of the President, Executive Director, and Executive Board maintaining a close control of such a program to ensure that it puts its best face forward in all situations.

• An experts list of cross-listed authors and topics on the ASEH website.  This resource could be linked to Google, the American Association for University Professors (AAUP), and the Society for Environmental Journalists (SEJ) (http://www.sej.org/resource/).  It seems significant that the same idea was independently suggested by a plenary speaker representing the SEJ on Thursday evening.

• Brief topical bibliographies, again cross-listed with other organizations such as the AAUP and SEJ, that will make the ASEH more of a one-stop resource for journalists and researchers.  Models for this include the National Humanities Center’s Teacher Serve site (http://www.nhc.rtp.nc.us:8080/tserve/tserve.htm) and the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest (http://www.washington.edu/uwired/outreach/cspn/).

• An environmental history blog patterned after the environmental economics blog (http://www.env-econ.net/), but as one participant noted, this would require the ASEH to move quickly to reserve that name online.  It was not clear how this would differ from the existing listserv on H-Net, but several publishers were very enthusiastic about the idea.

• An online guide for authors and advisors in environmental history on the ASEH website.  This would serve as a more specialized and directed version of the resources now available through the American Historical Association’s website, which are, in any case, not easily accessible to high-school and undergraduate students or other non-academic parties interested in undergraduate and graduate programs.

The aim of each proposal is to make the ASEH more accessible and serviceable to non-academic users.  This does not mean dumbing down or prostrating the field to interest groups, but it does require deliberate consideration about how we can be useful to teachers, journalists, think tanks, and environmental organizations.  Participants encouraged the ASEH to reach out to groups and to learn about their demands.  We need to understand what sort and forms of data are most helpful, how to cultivate contacts, and how best to speak to different intellectual consumers.  There are a number of opportunities for the ASEH to make itself a relevant and vital resource, and many of the above strategies dovetail with the new website project.

The participants also peppered the committee with many narrower suggestions.  These ideas included having the ASEH commission articles on perennial topics such as “How to Finish Your Dissertation,” “How to Write a Publishable Book,” “Thinking about Your Audience,” and “How to Speak to Journalists.”  Several publishers representatives wanted to remind us that members should think of themselves as emissaries of the field, and that it was okay to volunteer blurbs to publishers for particularly useful teaching texts.  Several participants also volunteered to be on panels about subjects such as “How to Sell Your Book,” “Writing Style,” “Writing Books,” and “Mentoring Dissertations.”  The committee will confer with the 2007 program chair about arranging such a panel.

Finally, one representative was very helpful at the beginning of the meeting by pointing out the distinction between big plans and little plans.  In practice most participants had little use for the big, sweeping vision of change, and all thought that, in practical terms, small steps to enhance the profile of the ASEH will be much more likely to produce long-term results.

Joseph Taylor, Chair

Kathleen Brosnan

Frank Smith