Academic literature on the topic 'Academic libraries Victoria'

Twitter is used by different library types to communicate and engage with their community. This case study focuses on content choices in tweets and the level of engagement generated, in the context of two different types of library. The current study attempts to examine the contents of Library Twitter account of two libraries (academic and public) with the aim of evaluating in a comparative mode, their themes and levels of user engagement. This research used a mixed method research approach. For quantitative approach, this study analyzed 100 Tweets from each library, i.e. RMIT University Library and State Library of Victoria. Also, the study analyzed a number of tweets and levels of engagement by recording numbers of likes, replies and retweets. The qualitative aspect analyzed each Tweet to determine engagement level and type of content shared by each library. The results demonstrate that the public and academic libraries publish different types of content. The varied nature, audience and mandate of each library appear to influence the focus of their tweets. Also, the results show that the level of engagement is a factor of the numbers of tweets in any theme. The limitation of this study is the data set contained only 100 tweets for each library. Moreover, the number of users and registered library accounts had probably increased since the study was conducted.

<strong>Abstract: Introduction:</strong> The objective of this project was to determine whether or not a hospital library reference collection is still necessary or justified. Two academic hospital libraries moved all reference books to the general collection to see whether increased access to these materials would increase their use. <strong>Description:</strong> All reference books were updated to circulating status and shelved in the circulating collection. As these items were used, statistics were gathered in the integrated library system (ALMA). Statistics were gathered from August 2014 to January 2015. Circulation statistics for equivalent periods prior to and during the project were compared to determine whether changing access to the collection increased use. <strong>Outcomes:</strong> Uses of the reference collection items doubled at Seven Oaks General Hospital (SOGH) and more than tripled at Victoria General Hospital (VGH). The percentage of reference titles used tripled at SOGH and doubled at VGH. <strong>Discussion:</strong> The change to circulating status significantly increased access to and use of the reference collection. This borrowing policy change for the reference collection will be recommended to the other hospital libraries within the University of Manitoba.

My aim in this essay is to provide a categorical map to the landscape of digital resources available to enrich scholarship on Victorian literature and culture. But I also want to reflect for a moment on the general state of digital scholarly work within the larger institutional structures of our disciplines. For over a decade now, digital resources relevant to the study of nineteenth-century literature and culture have been proliferating, becoming part of the way we live now as scholars and teachers. Yet reviews of such resources in standard channels have thus far been rare. There are a number of reasons for this state of affairs, all related primarily to the fact that digital projects have developed outside the well-settled infrastructure that has supported the academic book. This infrastructure is familiar to us, involving a network of institutions that includes publishers, libraries, scholarly societies, humanities departments, and academic journals like Victorian Literature and Culture. The scene of production of digital scholarship is, by contrast, variable and dynamic, involving experimental platforms, emergent collaborations, competing standards, rapidly-evolving technologies, and unfamiliar genres. Perhaps most crucially, digital scholarly resources in our field have only recently (with the advent of NINES [http://www.nines.org] in 2005) begun to receive systematic peer-review, of which post-publication reviews in academic journals have been a part. Because digital projects are more process than finished product (i.e., they are never “done” in the way a book is), they have tended to elude the reviewers. As a result of this unsettled environment, digital scholarship still abides in the shadows of the printed monographs, articles, and editions by which we have long measured achievement in the field.

"Academia" Publishing House (1922–1937) books are an example of high publishing culture.For many years, the products of the publishing house have been the subject of close attention on the part of bibliophiles and collectors in many countries of the world. The reason for this interest is literary impeccability and excellent decoration. To reach unprecedented artistic heights became possible thanks to the work of the best Soviet professional artists. All the existing printing methods, the best printing houses, and graphic art techniques were used while creating these books. The history of the publishing house, covered in rare publications, alongside with triumphal events, victories at international book competitions, is full of dramatic and even tragic pages. It can be called the publishing house of repressed editors, authors, and books.Almost all the managers of Academia, many employees were subjected to repressions, were sentenced to capital punishment. Their names were extorted from the output of the entire book circulation; introductory articles were cut out, publications were discontinued, sometimes, entire print runs of books were destroyed. In modern libraries, copies of such "repressed" books have been miraculously preserved. That is why it is difficult to overestimate their historical and cultural value – genuine documentary witnesses of historical events of almost a century remoteness.The history of the Academia Publishing House is intertwined with Irkutsk, since the stuff included people whose fate related to the city on the Angara: the last head of the “Academia”, Yakov Davidovich Yanson, after the October revolution held leadership positions in the government in Irkutsk; the founder of the Soviet school of folklore and anthrax studies, Irkutsk professor Mark Konstantinovich Azadovsky also collaborated with the publishing house “Academia”.The article is the first to observe the questions of valuable collections formation and preservation in the Irkutsk Regional Universal Scientific Library named after I. I. Molchanov-Sibirsky (IRSUSL), the former library of the Irkutsk Pedagogical Institute and the library of the Irkutsk Regional Art Museum named after V. P. Sukatchev (IRAM). Collecting bit-by-bit book masterpieces, librarians study, popularize them at exhibitions, presentations, lectures, showing the authentic Russian book art culture.

Bright, Amy. Before We Go. Red Deer: Red Deer Press, 2012. Print. Before We Go is the bright debut of young adult novelist, Amy Bright. There is much to admire about this novel such as the quality of writing, the well-developed characters, and a carefully orchestrated plot. Bright’s story is set in Victoria, British Columbia and begins on New Year's Eve with 17-year-old Emily visiting her dying grandmother in hospital. Her grandmother’s imminent death is particularly poignant for Emily as she was raised by her grandparents when years before, Emily’s mother opted to pursue a career as a journalist in Vancouver leaving Emily in Victoria. With the death of her grandfather occurring a year ago, Emily’s routine of school, hospital, and home has left her lonely, isolated, and distant. However, this changes when Alex, a cancer patient at the hospital, asks Emily to join him and his sister, Lucy, for New Year’s Eve. Emily doesn’t know that Alex is dying from cancer and that his planned escape from the hospital is his last chance to be a normal teenaged boy. There is excellent chemistry and a genuine connection among the three main characters. It is apparent that Lucy loves Alex dearly and is torn between taking him back to the hospital and honoring his wish for one last adventure. Their night on the town takes them to several places and eventually to a New Year's Eve party. Through a series of flashbacks, the reader learns that the meeting between Emily and Alex is not coincidental and that family secrets have brought them together and will shape their lives and change them in ways none of them could have expected. The entire novel takes place over the course of one day and the use of flashbacks keep the reader engaged and provides further context for the character’s current situation. The ending of the story is abrupt, heart-breaking, and surprising. While the title of the book is layered with meaning, unfortunately, the cover art in this edition does not adequately convey the story. The novel would also benefit from additional editing. Overall, Before We Go is a recommended read for those who enjoy good, contemporary stories. Recommended: 3 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Tami OliphantTami Oliphant works as a research librarian at the University of Alberta Libraries and for the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta. She earned her Master of Library and Information Studies from the University of Alberta and her doctorate from the University of Western Ontario. She has worked in academic libraries, public libraries, communications and planning, and as a sessional lecturer and researcher at the University of Alberta and the University of Western Ontario.

Leach, Sarah. Slug Days. Illustrated by Rebecca Bender. Pajama Press Inc., 2017. On slug days, Lauren feels “slow and slimy." Nothing seems to go her way. Her classmates yell at her. Her teachers are short with her. She feels like she has no friends, and that no one likes her. On butterfly days, however, everything is great; Lauren makes her classmates laugh, works on special project with her mother, and gets to eat her favourite ice cream. As a young girl with Asperger Syndrome, an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who has trouble understanding social cues and coping with change, Lauren has more slug days than butterfly days. Canadian author Sara Leach and illustrator Rebecca Bender provide invaluable insight into the daily struggles of children living with an ASD. As Lauren navigates through a regular week involving school and time at home, the reader is made aware of the difficulties she faces in effectively communicating with her parents, peers, and teachers. Often taking things literally, Lauren misunderstands directions and advice, which often gets her into trouble. At times, Lauren becomes frustrated and angry. While she recognizes the onset of such feelings, she has trouble controlling her behaviour. Without focusing on the disorder itself, this story provides for the reader a first-person perspective of a child on the spectrum. Bender’s lively illustrations complement the text, increasing comprehension for younger readers. While there are bouts of humour throughout the book, there is a general air of sadness that follows Lauren from the beginning of the story to the end. Apart from Ms. Lagorio who helps Lauren practice conversing with others, the adults in Lauren’s world have a seemingly poor understanding of her condition, as well as her “plan” for avoiding strong emotional reactions and conflict, a reality for many children living with an ASD. This chapter book is highly recommended for public and elementary school libraries, as well as parents and educators alike. Highly Recommended: 4 stars out of 4Reviewer: Victoria Eke Victoria is an Academic Library Resident at the University of Alberta’s John W. Scott Health Sciences Library. Victoria’s interest in health-related children’s literature was piqued during a field trip to the Family Resource Library at The Montreal Children’s Hospital.

McDonald, Megan. Judy Moody and the Right Royal Tea Party. Illustrated by Peter H. Reynolds. Candlewick Press, 2018. The multi-volume Judy Moody series continues here as Judy attempts to complete a grade three assignment: create a family tree. Learning that one of her British ancestors was “Mudeye” Moody, rescuer of a prisoner from the Tower of London during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, Judy embellishes: the rescuer was a young prince; the prisoner was a princess; she, herself, is akin to royalty, a future Queen. There is, however, a rival for her title, her schoolmate, Jessica Finch. Jessica, too, has British roots. She, too, claims kinship with Mudeye Moody. Jessica’s Mudeye, however, was a rat catcher who rescued his lady from the Tower in the time of Queen Victoria. Unaware that more than two centuries elapsed between the reigns of Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria, the two girls decide that Mudeye Moody, the one-and-the-same, is their mutual ancestor. They ally; they are “step sisters.” They will keep secret Judy’s relationship to the rat catcher, but, together, they will stage a “Right Royal Tea Party.” Judy Moody is a domineering child. No constitutional monarch is she; she is a despot, her younger brother the target of her bullying. In both conversational and narrative passages, scatology is the norm. Judy and her friends belong to the “Toad Pee Club.” They meet in the “Toad Pee Tent.” Her younger brother’s Siamese Fighting Fish is named “Prince Redmond the Farter.” It communicates, of course, by ”farting.” Throughout the book, the young brother is referred to as “Stink.” (There is never any adult censure of this talk.) Dubious diction continues in Judy’s letter to the current Queen Elizabeth. She asks: “...Did you ever ride a hinny? (That’s a cross between a horse and a donkey, not a hiney?) … P.S. Sorry if I’m not supposed to say hiney in a letter to the Queen.” (Among its various uses, “hiney” is slang for “buttocks.” It is, as well, a derogatory 20th-century term for a German soldier.) Questions spring to mind as one reads this book: does the writing merely reflect the anal obsessions of children, or does it encourage them? The same could be asked about bullying behaviours. It is also curious that the historical dates of Elizabeth I (who died in 1603) and Queen Victoria (who came to the throne in 1837) are never given. There are natural opportunities within the story to do so: Peter Reynold’s illustration of “Famous Women Rulers” is one such opportunity; the Moody family’s trip to Wolff Castle is another. Of course, if Judy and Jessica discover the dates, they must give up their assumptions about Mudeye; he would have to have lived for more than two centuries to perform his dual acts of gallantry. Are the presumed readers (upper primary, lower elementary school children) thought to be too immature to appreciate this absurdity? Or must they be kept in ignorance lest the contrivance of the plot be revealed? In Canada, school children are taught that the Queen is a constitutional monarch, a symbol of national unity, not a ruler. Because she lives in England, she has a Canadian representative who performs her ceremonial duties. A Canadian Judy Moody might dream differently—perhaps pretending that she is an astronaut like Governor General Julie Payette. While much imagination went into the premise of this book, it lacks thoughtful, well considered composition. However popular the Judy Moody books, this entry in the series is weak. Not recommended: 1 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Leslie Aitken Leslie Aitken’s long career in librarianship included selection of children’s literature for school, public, special and academic libraries. She is a former Curriculum Librarian of the University of Alberta.

Kyi, Tanya L. Seeing Red: The True Story of Blood. Illus. Steve Rolston. Toronto: Annick Press, 2012. Print. Seeing Red is an informative, humourous, gory, and decidedly irreverent treatment of a subject close to all of our hearts. Canadian author Tanya Lloyd Kyi is best known for the 50 Questions series for young readers, featuring topics as diverse as fire, poison and underwear. The very clever illustrations, by award-winning comic and graphic novel artist Steve Rolston, are presented in shades of black, grey, and (naturally) blood red. The main narrative provides a fascinating overview of the red stuff, human and otherwise, and the central role it has played in history, culture, and science. Alongside the text in each chapter, the reader is treated to a comic book featuring (in a nod to Bram Stoker) a boy named Harker who keeps a notebook of his blood-filled adventures as he finds himself at the centre of the topic under discussion. And throughout, the author provides a wealth of related trivia and factoids using insets on subtle background graphics of red blood cells and band aids. Individual chapters focus on ritual and religion, coming of age, food and drink, family ties and genetics, medicine and forensics, and the human fascination with violence. And while not following a strict chronology, the author clearly demonstrates how human understanding of this vital fluid has developed throughout history. The chapter Rites of Passage should be of particular interest to pre-teens, with its graphic descriptions of how various cultures have developed painful and bloody initiation rituals to mark a boy’s transition to adulthood, and of the wide range of celebrations and taboos surrounding a girl’s first menstrual period. The ever-popular vampire is featured no more prominently than any other topic in the text, with only a couple of sections in the chapter Sips and Suppers that discusses the utility of blood in all manner of drinking and dining. But the introduction of a cute young female vampire to Harker’s story midway through the book will no doubt appease any disappointed Twilight fans. Pop culture references abound, and the author’s black humour skewers major religions and historical figures alike. A discussion of hemophilia features an illustration of Queen Victoria handing a jumbo pack of bandages to her daughter with the words “Don’t forget your dowry dear.” There’s no lack of gory detail in this book, from Aztec priests ripping beating hearts from the chests of their captives, to classifications of blood spatter velocities and how they correspond to different levels of violent injury. This book would be a great addition to any public or school library. Each chapter ends with a few questions from Harker’s notebook that may provide some interesting starting points for classroom discussion: “Is it okay to sacrifice animals for religious reasons? How is that different than killing for meat, or hunting for sport?” The reader is provided with a list of titles for further reading, and a selected bibliography. And with its fairly in-depth indexing, Seeing Red provides a handy reference to a lot of bloody information. Highly recommended: 4 out of 4 stars Reviewer: Elizabeth WallaceElizabeth Wallace is the Collections Manager in the Science and Technology Library of the University of Alberta. She holds an undergraduate degree in Geography and Environmental Studies, and an MLIS, both from McGill University. She has been a Science and Engineering librarian for her entire professional career, working in both public and academic libraries in the U.S. and Canada.

The academic journal is obsolete. In a world where there are more titles than ever, this is a comment on their form – especially the print journal – rather than their quantity. Now that you can get everything online, it doesn’t really matter what journal a paper appears in; certainly it doesn’t matter what’s in the same issue. The experience of a journal is rapidly obsolescing, for both editors and readers. I’m obviously not the first person to notice this (see, for instance, "Scholarly Communication"; "Transforming Scholarly Communication"; Houghton; Policy Perspectives; Teute), but I do have a personal stake in the process. For if the journal is obsolete then it follows that the editor is obsolete, and I am the editor of the International Journal of Cultural Studies. I founded the IJCS and have been sole editor ever since. Next year will see the fiftieth issue. So far, I have been responsible for over 280 published articles – over 2.25 million words of other people’s scholarship … and counting. We won’t say anything about the words that did not get published, except that the IJCS rejection rate is currently 87 per cent. Perhaps the first point that needs to be made, then, is that obsolescence does not imply lack of success. By any standard the IJCS is a successful journal, and getting more so. It has recently been assessed as a top-rating A* journal in the Australian Research Council’s journal rankings for ERA (Excellence in Research for Australia), the newly activated research assessment exercise. (In case you’re wondering, M/C Journal is rated B.) The ARC says of the ranking exercise: ‘The lists are a result of consultations with the sector and rigorous review by leading researchers and the ARC.’ The ARC definition of an A* journal is given as: Typically an A* journal would be one of the best in its field or subfield in which to publish and would typically cover the entire field/ subfield. Virtually all papers they publish will be of very high quality. These are journals where most of the work is important (it will really shape the field) and where researchers boast about getting accepted.Acceptance rates would typically be low and the editorial board would be dominated by field leaders, including many from top institutions. (Appendix I, p. 21; and see p. 4.)Talking of boasting, I love to prate about the excellent people we’ve published in the IJCS. We have introduced new talent to the field, and we have published new work by some of its pioneers – including Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall. We’ve also published – among many others – Sara Ahmed, Mohammad Amouzadeh, Tony Bennett, Goran Bolin, Charlotte Brunsdon, William Boddy, Nico Carpentier, Stephen Coleman, Nick Couldry, Sean Cubitt, Michael Curtin, Daniel Dayan, Ben Dibley, Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, John Frow, Elfriede Fursich, Christine Geraghty, Mark Gibson, Paul Gilroy, Faye Ginsberg, Jonathan Gray, Lawrence Grossberg, Judith Halberstam, Hanno Hardt, Gay Hawkins, Joke Hermes, Su Holmes, Desmond Hui, Fred Inglis, Henry Jenkins, Deborah Jermyn, Ariel Heryanto, Elihu Katz, Senator Rod Kemp (Australian government minister), Youna Kim, Agnes Ku, Richard E. Lee, Jeff Lewis, David Lodge (the novelist), Knut Lundby, Eric Ma, Anna McCarthy, Divya McMillin, Antonio Menendez-Alarcon, Toby Miller, Joe Moran, Chris Norris, John Quiggin, Chris Rojek, Jane Roscoe, Jeffrey Sconce, Lynn Spigel, John Storey, Su Tong, the late Sako Takeshi, Sue Turnbull, Graeme Turner, William Uricchio, José van Dijck, Georgette Wang, Jing Wang, Elizabeth Wilson, Janice Winship, Handel Wright, Wu Jing, Wu Qidi (Chinese Vice-Minister of Education), Emilie Yueh-Yu Yeh, Robert Young and Zhao Bin. As this partial list makes clear, as well as publishing the top ‘hegemons’ we also publish work pointing in new directions, including papers from neighbouring disciplines such as anthropology, area studies, economics, education, feminism, history, literary studies, philosophy, political science, and sociology. We have sought to represent neglected regions, especially Chinese cultural studies, which has grown strongly during the past decade. And for quite a few up-and-coming scholars we’ve been the proud host of their first international publication. The IJCS was first published in 1998, already well into the internet era, but it was print-only at that time. Since then, all content, from volume 1:1 onwards, has been digitised and is available online (although vol 1:2 is unaccountably missing). The publishers, Sage Publications Ltd, London, have steadily added online functionality, so that now libraries can get the journal in various packages, including offering this title among many others in online-only bundles, and individuals can purchase single articles online. Thus, in addition to institutional and individual subscriptions, which remain the core business of the journal, income is derived by the publisher from multi-site licensing, incremental consortial sales income, single- and back-issue sales (print), pay-per-view, and deep back file sales (electronic). So what’s obsolete about it? In that boasting paragraph of mine (above), about what wonderful authors we’ve published, lies one of the seeds of obsolescence. For now that it is available online, ‘users’ (no longer ‘readers’!) can search for what they want and ignore the journal as such altogether. This is presumably how most active researchers experience any journal – they are looking for articles (or less: quotations; data; references) relevant to a given topic, literature review, thesis etc. They encounter a journal online through its ‘content’ rather than its ‘form.’ The latter is irrelevant to them, and may as well not exist. The Cover Some losses are associated with this change. First is the loss of the front cover. Now you, dear reader, scrolling through this article online, might well complain, why all the fuss about covers? Internet-generation journals don’t have covers, so all of the work that goes into them to establish the brand, the identity and even the ‘affect’ of a journal is now, well, obsolete. So let me just remind you of what’s at stake. Editors, designers and publishers all take a good deal of trouble over covers, since they are the point of intersection of editorial, design and marketing priorities. Thus, the IJCS cover contains the only ‘content’ of the journal for which we pay a fee to designers and photographers (usually the publisher pays, but in one case I did). Like any other cover, ours has three main elements: title, colour and image. Thought goes into every detail. Title I won’t say anything about the journal’s title as such, except that it was the result of protracted discussions (I suggested Terra Nullius at one point, but Sage weren’t having any of that). The present concern is with how a title looks on a cover. Our title-typeface is Frutiger. Originally designed by Adrian Frutiger for Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, it is suitably international, being used for the corporate identity of the UK National Health Service, Telefónica O2, the Royal Navy, the London School of Economics , the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Conservative Party of Canada, Banco Bradesco of Brazil, the Finnish Defence Forces and on road signs in Switzerland (Wikipedia, "Frutiger"). Frutiger is legible, informal, and reads well in small copy. Sage’s designer and I corresponded on which of the words in our cumbersome name were most important, agreeing that ‘international’ combined with ‘cultural’ is the USP (Unique Selling Point) of the journal, so they should be picked out (in bold small-caps) from the rest of the title, which the designer presented in a variety of Frutiger fonts (regular, italic, and reversed – white on black), presumably to signify the dynamism and diversity of our content. The word ‘studies’ appears on a lozenge-shaped cartouche that is also used as a design element throughout the journal, for bullet points, titles and keywords. Colour We used to change this every two years, but since volume 7 it has stabilised with the distinctive Pantone 247, ‘new fuchsia.’ This colour arose from my own environment at QUT, where it was chosen (by me) for the new Creative Industries Faculty’s academic gowns and hoods, and thence as a detailing colour for the otherwise monochrome Creative Industries Precinct buildings. There’s a lot of it around my office, including on the wall and the furniture. New Fuchsia is – we are frequently told – a somewhat ‘girly’ colour, especially when contrasted with the Business Faculty’s blue or Law’s silver; its similarity to the Girlfriend/Dolly palette does introduce a mild ‘politics of prestige’ element, since it is determinedly pop culture, feminised, and non-canonical. Image Right at the start, the IJCS set out to signal its difference from other journals. At that time, all Sage journals had calligraphic colours – but I was insistent that we needed a photograph (I have ‘form’ in this respect: in 1985 I changed the cover of the Australian Journal of Cultural Studies from a line drawing (albeit by Sydney Nolan) to a photograph; and I co-designed the photo-cover of Cultural Studies in 1987). For IJCS I knew which photo I wanted, and Sage went along with the choice. I explained it in the launch issue’s editorial (Hartley, "Editorial"). That original picture, a goanna on a cattle grid in the outback, by Australian photographer Grant Hobson, lasted ten years. Since volume 11 – in time for our second decade – the goanna has been replaced with a picture by Italian-based photographer Patrick Nicholas, called ‘Reality’ (Hartley, "Cover Narrative"). We have also used two other photos as cover images, once each. They are: Daniel Meadows’s 1974 ‘Karen & Barbara’ (Hartley, "Who"); and a 1962 portrait of Richard Hoggart from the National Portrait Gallery in London (Owen & Hartley 2007). The choice of picture has involved intense – sometimes very tense – negotiations with Sage. Most recently, they were adamant the Daniel Meadows picture, which I wanted to use as the long-term replacement of the goanna, was too ‘English’ and they would not accept it. We exchanged rather sharp words before compromising. There’s no need to rehearse the dispute here; the point is that both sides, publisher and editor, felt that vital interests were at stake in the choice of a cover-image. Was it too obscure; too Australian; too English; too provocative (the current cover features, albeit in the deep background, a TV screen-shot of a topless Italian game-show contestant)? Running Order Beyond the cover, the next obsolete feature of a journal is the running order of articles. Obviously what goes in the journal is contingent upon what has been submitted and what is ready at a given time, so this is a creative role within a very limited context, which is what makes it pleasurable. Out of a limited number of available papers, a choice must be made about which one goes first, what order the other papers should follow, and which ones must be held over to the next issue. The first priority is to choose the lead article: like the ‘first face’ in a fashion show (if you don’t know what I mean by that, see FTV.com. It sets the look, the tone, and the standard for the issue. I always choose articles I like for this slot. It sends a message to the field – look at this! Next comes the running order. We have about six articles per issue. It is important to maintain the IJCS’s international mix, so I check for the country of origin, or failing that (since so many articles come from Anglosphere countries like the USA, UK and Australia), the location of the analysis. Attention also has to be paid to the gender balance among authors, and to the mix of senior and emergent scholars. Sometimes a weak article needs to be ‘hammocked’ between two good ones (these are relative terms – everything published in the IJCS is of a high scholarly standard). And we need to think about disciplinary mix, so as not to let the journal stray too far towards one particular methodological domain. Running order is thus a statement about the field – the disciplinary domain – rather than about an individual paper. It is a proposition about how different voices connect together in some sort of disciplinary syntax. One might even claim that the combination of cover and running order is a last vestige of collegiate collectivism in an era of competitive academic individualism. Now all that matters is the individual paper and author; the ‘currency’ is tenure, promotion and research metrics, not relations among peers. The running order is obsolete. Special Issues An extreme version of running order is the special issue. The IJCS has regularly published these; they are devoted to field-shaping initiatives, as follows: Title Editor(s) Issue Date Radiocracy: Radio, Development and Democracy Amanda Hopkinson, Jo Tacchi 3.2 2000 Television and Cultural Studies Graeme Turner 4.4 2001 Cultural Studies and Education Karl Maton, Handel Wright 5.4 2002 Re-Imagining Communities Sara Ahmed, Anne-Marie Fortier 6.3 2003 The New Economy, Creativity and Consumption John Hartley 7.1 2004 Creative Industries and Innovation in China Michael Keane, John Hartley 9.3 2006 The Uses of Richard Hoggart Sue Owen, John Hartley 10.1 2007 A Cultural History of Celebrity Liz Barry 11.3 2008 Caribbean Media Worlds Anna Pertierra, Heather Horst 12.2 2009 Co-Creative Labour Mark Deuze, John Banks 12.5 2009 It’s obvious that special issues have a place in disciplinary innovation – they can draw attention in a timely manner to new problems, neglected regions, or innovative approaches, and thus they advance the field. They are indispensible. But because of online publication, readers are not held to the ‘project’ of a special issue and can pick and choose whatever they want. And because of the peculiarities of research assessment exercises, editing special issues doesn’t count as research output. The incentive to do them is to that extent reduced, and some universities are quite heavy-handed about letting academics ‘waste’ time on activities that don’t produce ‘metrics.’ The special issue is therefore threatened with obsolescence too. Refereeing In many top-rating journals, the human side of refereeing is becoming obsolete. Increasingly this labour-intensive chore is automated and the labour is technologically outsourced from editors and publishers to authors and referees. You have to log on to some website and follow prompts in order to contribute both papers and the assessment of papers; interactions with editors are minimal. At the IJCS the process is still handled by humans – namely, journal administrator Tina Horton and me. We spend a lot of time checking how papers are faring, from trying to find the right referees through to getting the comments and then the author’s revisions completed in time for a paper to be scheduled into an issue. The volume of email correspondence is considerable. We get to know authors and referees. So we maintain a sense of an interactive and conversational community, albeit by correspondence rather than face to face. Doubtless, sooner or later, there will be a depersonalised Text Management System. But in the meantime we cling to the romantic notion that we are involved in refereeing for the sake of the field, for raising the standard of scholarship, for building a globally dispersed virtual college of cultural studies, and for giving everyone – from unfavoured countries and neglected regions to famous professors in old-money universities – the same chance to get their research published. In fact, these are largely delusional ideals, for as everyone knows, refereeing is part of the political economy of publicly-funded research. It’s about academic credentials, tenure and promotion for the individual, and about measurable research metrics for the academic organisation or funding agency (Hartley, "Death"). The IJCS has no choice but to participate: we do what is required to qualify as a ‘double-blind refereed journal’ because that is the only way to maintain repute, and thence the flow of submissions, not to mention subscriptions, without which there would be no journal. As with journals themselves, which proliferate even as the print form becomes obsolete, so refereeing is burgeoning as a practice. It’s almost an industry, even though the currency is not money but time: part gift-economy; part attention-economy; partly the payment of dues to the suzerain funding agencies. But refereeing is becoming obsolete in the sense of gathering an ‘imagined community’ of people one might expect to know personally around a particular enterprise. The process of dispersal and anonymisation of the field is exacerbated by blind refereeing, which we do because we must. This is suited to a scientific domain of objective knowledge, but everyone knows it’s not quite like that in the ‘new humanities’. The agency and identity of the researcher is often a salient fact in the research. The embedded positionality of the author, their reflexiveness about their own context and room-for-manoeuvre, and the radical contextuality of knowledge itself – these are all more or less axiomatic in cultural studies, but they’re not easily served by ‘double-blind’ refereeing. When refereeing is depersonalised to the extent that is now rife (especially in journals owned by international commercial publishers), it is hard to maintain a sense of contextualised productivity in the knowledge domain, much less a ‘common cause’ to which both author and referee wish to contribute. Even though refereeing can still be seen as altruistic, it is in the service of something much more general (‘scholarship’) and much more particular (‘my career’) than the kind of reviewing that wants to share and improve a particular intellectual enterprise. It is this mid-range altruism – something that might once have been identified as a politics of knowledge – that’s becoming obsolete, along with the printed journals that were the banner and rallying point for the cause. If I were to start a new journal (such as cultural-science.org), I would prefer ‘open refereeing’: uploading papers on an open site, subjecting them to peer-review and criticism, and archiving revised versions once they have received enough votes and comments. In other words I’d like to see refereeing shifted from the ‘supply’ or production side of a journal to the ‘demand’ or readership side. But of course, ‘demand’ for ‘blind’ refereeing doesn’t come from readers; it comes from the funding agencies. The Reading Experience Finally, the experience of reading a journal is obsolete. Two aspects of this seem worthy of note. First, reading is ‘out of time’ – it no longer needs to conform to the rhythms of scholarly publication, which are in any case speeding up. Scholarship is no longer seasonal, as it has been since the Middle Ages (with university terms organised around agricultural and ecclesiastical rhythms). Once you have a paper’s DOI number, you can read it any time, 24/7. It is no longer necessary even to wait for publication. With some journals in our field (e.g. Journalism Studies), assuming your Library subscribes, you can access papers as soon as they’re uploaded on the journal’s website, before the published edition is printed. Soon this will be the norm, just as it is for the top science journals, where timely publication, and thereby the ability to claim first discovery, is the basis of intellectual property rights. The IJCS doesn’t (yet) offer this service, but its frequency is speeding up. It was launched in 1998 with three issues a year. It went quarterly in 2001 and remained a quarterly for eight years. It has recently increased to six issues a year. That too causes changes in the reading experience. The excited ripping open of the package is less of a thrill the more often it arrives. Indeed, how many subscribers will admit that sometimes they don’t even open the envelope? Second, reading is ‘out of place’ – you never have to see the journal in which a paper appears, so you can avoid contact with anything that you haven’t already decided to read. This is more significant than might first appear, because it is affecting journalism in general, not just academic journals. As we move from the broadcast to the broadband era, communicative usage is shifting too, from ‘mass’ communication to customisation. This is a mixed blessing. One of the pleasures of old-style newspapers and the TV news was that you’d come across stories you did not expect to find. Indeed, an important attribute of the industrial form of journalism is its success in getting whole populations to read or watch stories about things they aren’t interested in, or things like wars and crises that they’d rather not know about at all. That historic textual achievement is in jeopardy in the broadband era, because ‘the public’ no longer needs to gather around any particular masthead or bulletin to get their news. With Web 2.0 affordances, you can exercise much more choice over what you attend to. This is great from the point of view of maximising individual choice, but sub-optimal in relation to what I’ve called ‘population-gathering’, especially the gathering of communities of interest around ‘tales of the unexpected’ – novelty or anomalies. Obsolete: Collegiality, Trust and Innovation? The individuation of reading choices may stimulate prejudice, because prejudice (literally, ‘pre-judging’) is built in when you decide only to access news feeds about familiar topics, stories or people in which you’re already interested. That sort of thing may encourage narrow-mindedness. It is certainly an impediment to chance discovery, unplanned juxtaposition, unstructured curiosity and thence, perhaps, to innovation itself. This is a worry for citizenship in general, but it is also an issue for academic ‘knowledge professionals,’ in our ever-narrower disciplinary silos. An in-close specialist focus on one’s own area of expertise need no longer be troubled by the concerns of the person in the next office, never mind the next department. Now, we don’t even have to meet on the page. One of the advantages of whole journals, then, is that each issue encourages ‘macro’ as well as ‘micro’ perspectives, and opens reading up to surprises. This willingness to ‘take things on trust’ describes a ‘we’ community – a community of trust. Trust too is obsolete in these days of performance evaluation. We’re assessed by an anonymous system that’s managed by people we’ll never meet. If the ‘population-gathering’ aspects of print journals are indeed obsolete, this may reduce collegiate trust and fellow-feeling, increase individualist competitiveness, and inhibit innovation. In the face of that prospect, I’m going to keep on thinking about covers, running orders, referees and reading until the role of editor is obsolete too. ReferencesHartley, John. "'Cover Narrative': From Nightmare to Reality." International Journal of Cultural Studies 11.2 (2005): 131-137. ———. "Death of the Book?" Symposium of the National Scholarly Communication Forum & Australian Academy of the Humanities, Sydney Maritime Museum, 2005. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.humanities.org.au/Resources/Downloads/NSCF/RoundTables1-17/PDF/Hartley.pdf›. ———. "Editorial: With Goanna." International Journal of Cultural Studies 1.1 (1998): 5-10. ———. "'Who Are You Going to Believe – Me or Your Own Eyes?' New Decade; New Directions." International Journal of Cultural Studies 11.1 (2008): 5-14. Houghton, John. "Economics of Scholarly Communication: A Discussion Paper." Center for Strategic Economic Studies, Victoria University, 2000. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.caul.edu.au/cisc/EconomicsScholarlyCommunication.pdf›. Owen, Sue, and John Hartley, eds. The Uses of Richard Hoggart. International Journal of Cultural Studies (special issue), 10.1 (2007). Policy Perspectives: To Publish and Perish. (Special issue cosponsored by the Association of Research Libraries, Association of American Universities and the Pew Higher Education Roundtable) 7.4 (1998). 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.arl.org/scomm/pew/pewrept.html›. "Scholarly Communication: Crisis and Revolution." University of California Berkeley Library. N.d. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Collections/crisis.html›. Teute, F. J. "To Publish or Perish: Who Are the Dinosaurs in Scholarly Publishing?" Journal of Scholarly Publishing 32.2 (2001). 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://www.utpjournals.com/product/jsp/322/perish5.html›."Transforming Scholarly Communication." University of Houston Library. 2005. 26 Apr. 2009 ‹http://info.lib.uh.edu/scomm/transforming.htm›.

This thesis examines the history of Commonwealth Government higher education policy in Australia between 1958 and 1997 and its impact on the development of two groups of academic librarians: the Association of Librarians in Colleges in Advanced Education (ALCAE) and the Committee of Australian University Librarians (CAUL). Although university librarians had met occasionally since the late 1920s, it was only in 1965 that a more formal organisation, known as CAUL, was established to facilitate the exchange of ideas and information. ALCAE was set up in 1969 and played an important role helping develop a special concept of library service peculiar to the newly formed College of Advanced Education (CAE) sector. As well as examining the impact of Commonwealth Government higher education policy on ALCAE and CAUL, the thesis also explores the influence of other factors on these two groups, including the range of personalities that comprised them, and their relationship with their parent institutions and with other professional groups and organisations. The study focuses on how higher education policy and these other external and internal factors shaped the functions, aspirations, and internal dynamics of these two groups and how this resulted in each group evolving differently. The author argues that, because of the greater attention given to the special educational role of libraries in the CAE curriculum, the group of college librarians had the opportunity to participate in, and have some influence on, Commonwealth Government statutory bodies responsible for the coordination of policy and the distribution of funding for the CAE sector. The link between ALCAE and formal policy-making processes resulted in a more dynamic group than CAUL, with the university librarians being discouraged by their Vice-Chancellors from having contact with university funding bodies because of the desire of the universities to maintain a greater level of control over their affairs and resist interference from government. The circumstances of each group underwent a reversal over time as ALCAE's effectiveness began to diminish as a result of changes to the CAE sector and as member interest was transferred to other groups and organisations. Conversely, CAUL gradually became a more active group during the 1980s and early 1990s as a result of changes to higher education, the efforts of some university librarians, and changes in membership. This study is based principally on primary source material, with the story of ALCAE and CAUL being told through the use of a combination of original documentation (including minutes of meetings and correspondence) and interviews with members of each group and other key figures.

Why Write? is the result of collaborative work from members of the Academic and Technical Writing Program, the Centre for Academic Communication, the Libraries at University of Victoria. The goal for the textbook is to provide a thoroughly Canadian resource for Academic Writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The approach we take in this interactive resource is that academic writing is fundamental to understanding how language operates as a means to understand ourselves, our worlds and each other. Academic writing is the conduit through which we solve problems, test ideas, and make change.

Why Write? is the result of collaborative work from members of the Academic and Technical Writing Program, the Centre for Academic Communication, the Libraries at University of Victoria. The goal for the textbook is to provide a thoroughly Canadian resource for Academic Writing at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The approach we take in this interactive resource is that academic writing is fundamental to understanding how language operates as a means to understand ourselves, our worlds and each other. Academic writing is the conduit through which we solve problems, test ideas, and make change.

Access to ‘all the world’s knowledge’ is an ancient aspiration; a less venerable, but equally vigorous, universalism strives for the borderless protection of authors’ rights. Late 19th-century law and politics brought us copyright universalism; 21st-century technology may bring us the universal digital library. But how can ‘all the world’s knowledge’ be delivered, on demand, to users anywhere in the world (with Internet access), if the copyrights of the creators and publishers of many of those works are supposed to be enforceable almost everywhere in the world? Does it follow that the universal digital library of the near future threatens copyright holders? Or are libraries the endangered species of the impending era, as publishers partner with for-profit Internet intermediaries to make books ubiquitously available? Does access-triumphalism therefore risk giving us not the universal digital library, but the universal digital bookstore? And, whether libraries or commercial intermediaries offer access, how will the world’s authors fare?

Joseph Burney Trapp (1925–2005), a Fellow of the British Academy, was librarian; editor and teacher; scholar of humanism, letters, and the humanities; and an enlightened but efficient administrator. His career, or rather his life from first encounter, was bound up with the Warburg Institute in London. Trapp was born in New Zealand, at Carterton, near Wellington, on July 16, 1925. His maternal grandfather had founded an agency there for registering and distributing land tenure, which his father, Burney Trapp, had joined. Trapp attended Dannevirke School, a small state boarding school where his elder sister Phyllis taught English. He went on, with a national scholarship, to Victoria University College, Wellington, graduating in 1946 in English and Greek, with subsidiary qualifications in Latin and French. From the late 1950s, Thomas More's work, both in English and Latin, became a preoccupation. It was at this time that Trapp was commissioned to edit the volume on the Apology for the Complete Works of More for Yale University Press.