InPre s s Press Embraces E-Publishing The In Print

InPre s s
FALL 2009
Volume 7
Number 2
News From The JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY PRESS
Press Embraces E-Publishing
In Print Brian Shea, JHU Press Staff
Dr. Ronald Lesser is clearing out the filing
cabinets that line one wall in his office in the Meyer
Building at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Some of the
research articles and notes from the cabinets have
ended up in the shredder. It’s not that he finds
those items useless. He has just found a more convenient way to store them that works thanks to the
tablet PC he can carry along with him in his work
as a professor of neurology and neurosurgery.
Lesser, a member of the Press’s Faculty Editorial
Board, has started to scan printed research into
PDF documents. Between his Fujitsu Tablet PC
and the Amazon Kindle he recently received, he
can consult and make notes on articles and books
while seeing patients. “The biggest advantage is
simplicity and access. That is very important for
me,” Lesser says. He hopes to uncover similar benefits as he explores his new Kindle.
New digital technologies present both challenges
and opportunities to academic publishers like the
Johns Hopkins University Press, and the Press’s electronic publishing initiatives reflect
a strong commitment to innovation. About 400 Press titles are available electronically in libraries through licensing agreements with NetLibrary, ebrary, and the ACLS
E-Book History Project, according to Books Division marketing director Becky
Brasington Clark. “We’ve worked with these programs for years,” says Clark.
“They make it possible for library patrons worldwide to access our books online.
Users can browse, search, take notes, and export citations.”
Most of the Press’s 3000-title backlist can be discovered and browsed through Google
Book Search and Amazon’s Search Inside the Book. Clark is most excited about
the recent agreement with Amazon Kindle. About 200 JHU Press titles are available for download onto Amazon’s popular device, with more on the way. “It’s great
that people can now read such books as The 36-Hour Day and Brainteaser Physics
on Kindle,” she says. “We’re reaching new readers and disseminating knowledge in
innovative ways.”
Online
Digital publishing continues to be a strength for the Press’s Journals Division. The
nearly 70 journal titles published by the Press appear in Project MUSE as part of the
more than 400 titles in the online journal collection, allowing readers to electronically access the most current research as well as past articles.
But the latest innovations aren’t only digital. Project MUSE recently unveiled a new
feature called Custom Print. This allows users to create their own print-on-demand
publication from articles available in the Project MUSE database. The program was
announced in July and features only one journal at this time from the University of
Nebraska. Mary Rose Muccie, Project MUSE director, said plans call for adding more
journals to the list in the coming months. The ability to offer personalized “books”
from journal collections has a great deal of potential, she says.
All of these projects support customers like Ron Lesser who want convenient ways
to collect information, lessen their reliance on print, and still benefit from the expertise of academic publishers. But the technology doesn’t end with PDFs and personalized print jobs. Opportunities continue to expand as new gadgets become available.
Users may eventually have an opportunity to access JHU Press publications through
an iPhone application.
“Our size is a great asset,” notes JHU Press director Kathleen Keane. “We have
increased our investment in electronic publishing every year. We want to give
people options.”
InPress
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In
the News
Google on Trial
Commentary by JHU Press Director Kathleen Keane
Reviews Awards Links
Press Director Becomes AAUP President
Everybody knows the Google story. Since 1998, they have built a great search engine
and a $21 billion dollar advertising business. We admire Google’s inventiveness and
we’ve been happy to contract with them for marketing services. About four years ago,
Google developed a plan to scan many thousands of books held in the collections of
several major academic libraries and use the files to build a vast database. The goal
for the libraries was to make the book content freely available to all. The goal for
Google was to make profit selling advertising space adjacent to this online material.
While sympathetic to the goal of making books available electronically to more
readers, publishers and authors had serious concerns about how Google had
interpreted existing copyright laws. We also questioned how Google would pay
for the use of others’ intellectual property. As a result, the Authors Guild and five
publishers (through the Association of American Publishers) sued Google in 2005.
After three years of discovery and negotiation, the parties agreed in 2008 to a class
action settlement which is now under review in district court in New York.
What does all this mean for the JHU Press? Google scanned the contents of
thousands of JHUP-published books without our permission. That’s a problem
because we need to protect the intellectual property that our authors create. We
also need to protect our ability to recover our publishing costs through sales revenue.
Should Google begin to sell electronic copies of the books they scanned, we need
to make sure that we receive some of the proceeds and meet our responsibility to
pay author royalties on those sales. Under terms of the settlement agreement, JHU
Press will be able to dictate how Google may use our intellectual property, and we
will have a share of the revenues. We also have the option, where appropriate and
when contracts allow it, to agree that Google-scanned works be made available for
free. There is no doubt that Google provides an array of valuable and powerful
services. But, as publishers, our aim is to work with them to mutual benefit. This
settlement ensures that.
As other articles in this issue of InPress indicate, the JHU Press is an active participant
in the digital revolution, but we do so as an active advocate for copyright law.
I’ve been grateful to hear opinions on this matter from some of our authors
who have been following the case.
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JHU Press director Kathleen Keane began a one-year term as president of the
Association of American University Presses (AAUP) on June 20 at the group’s annual
meeting in Philadelphia. “I am honored to accept this position,” noted Keane, “and I
am proud of the AAUP’s on-going efforts to advance scholarly publishing and serve
the very accomplished and collegial community of university presses.” Established
in 1937, the AAUP helps its 134 member presses fulfill their common commitments
to scholarship, the academy, and society. Read about the Press director in the JHU
Gazette (June 22,Vol. 38, No. 38) at gazette.jhu.edu. Read her remarks to the AAUP
annual meeting and learn more about member presses at aaupnet.org.
Rave Reviews
From Lincoln to Prozac to baseball, Hopkins books grab
the attention of leading review publications:
Abraham Lincoln: A Life by Michael Burlingame
“No review could do complete justice to the magnificent
two-volume biography that has been so well-wrought
by Michael Burlingame.”
—Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic Monthly
Happy Pills: From Miltown to Prozac by David Herzberg
“Read this book. It will make you even more thoughtful
about your next prescription for antidepressants.”
—British Medical Journal
The Baltimore Elite Giants: Sport and Society in the Age of
Negro League Baseball by Bob Luke
“[Luke] hit it out of the park.”
—Washington Times
And this is just a sample of the broad and impressive coverage that Press publications routinely receive. Read more
reviews at press.jhu.edu/books. —Claire McCabe Tamberino
University Press of Kentucky Joins HFS Client Roster
On April 1, 2009, Hopkins Fulfillment Services welcomed the University Press of
Kentucky as a new client. The Press represents a consortium that includes all of
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e r e n c Author of The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider
this fall: Book History, Hispania, and Studies in American Fiction.
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in the center of four large particle detectors. The goal is to
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diAwards and Prizes
40 miles west of Chicago. Over 7,000 scientists from 85
countries are currently collaborating to build this equiprecBook awards are a big deal. They speak to the quality of the publication, the imporment, including 88 institutions from the U.S. alone. The single largest U.S. contributor is Fermilab, my home research institution.
What can we learn from the LHC?
The LHC will allow us to collide subatomic particles together with enough energy
to recreate temperatures last seen in the universe under a trillionth of a second after
the moment of creation (10–13 seconds). Such temperatures have not been generally
present for about 14 billion years. To be able to study the behavior of matter that far
back in time goes a very long way towards answering “How did we get here?” From
a practical point of view, we can point to such technologies as radiation therapy for
cancer and the superconducting magnets for medical MRI scans. For another spinoff, we could also point to ultra fast electronics and trans-Atlantic communications.
Indeed, the World Wide Web was born at CERN, the Swiss laboratory that hosts
the Large Hadron Collider.
When the LHC was activated last fall, some in the media talked about a black hole
destroying the Earth. Is this possible?
No. Not one tiny bit...
—Kathy Alexander
Read the complete interview with Don Lincoln at press.jhu.edu.
tance of the research involved, and the prestige of the publisher. That’s why we’re
doubly proud of three of our most recent titles that are now two-time book-prize
winners. Contested Paternity, by Rachel Fuchs, won the Western Association of
Women Historians’ Frances Richardson Keller-Sierra Prize and the Southern Historical
Association’s Charles E. Smith Award.Ann Smart Martin’s Buying into the World of Goods
won the Business History Conference’s Hagley Prize in Business History and the Fred
Kniffen Award from the Pioneer America Society/Association for the Preservation
of Landscapes and Artifacts. And Mary Ellen Hayward’s Baltimore Alley Houses took a
Heritage Book Award from the Maryland Historical Trust and the Vernacular Architecture Forum’s Abbott Lowell Cummings Prize.
—Brendan Coyne
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MUSE News
Current and archival issues of the Project MUSE newsletter are available in PDF format on the MUSE web site at muse.jhu.edu/new/newsletter.html.
Press Calendar
Talks Book Signings
Events
September 30 Exhibit Talk and Reception
Fitzgerald’s Smart Set Fiction: The Stories FSF Wrote for the New Yorker of his Day
How do you
support the
Press?
6:00 p.m. @ The George Peabody Library
Buy a book
Subscribe to a journal Attend an
event Become a friend Donate Give
books and journals as gifts Use Project
MUSE Create an endowment Make a
October 8
bequest Sponsor a publication Invite
Hopkins Club Lunch & Lecture Series
With Tom D. Crouch,
friends Share Press publications
Sign-up for mailings
12:30 p.m. @ The Johns Hopkins Club
Connect online
Join the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society (meeting in Baltimore for the first time), Friends of
the Press, and Friends of the JHU Libraries for a reception and talk by Dr. Sharon
Hamilton on Mencken, Fitzgerald and The Smart Set magazine. The talk highlights the new Peabody Library exhibit, A View of the Parade: H. L. Mencken
and American Magazines. As editor of The Smart Set, Mencken published
Fitzgerald’s first professionally sold story, Babes in the Woods, in 1919.
The event features a display and sale of JHU Press books by and about
Mencken and on Baltimore literary and cultural history. Admission:
By invitation
author of Lighter Than Air: An Illustrated
History of Balloons and Airships
An award-winning aeronautical historian and the senior
curator of the Division of Aeronautics at the Smithsonian’s
National Air and Space Museum,Tom Crouch explores fascinating history that
starts with Archimedes’ discovery of the principle of buoyancy and continues
with the latest in sport balloons and plans for future airships. Admission: $20;
Hopkins Club members contact the Club to make reservations; non-members contact
Jack Holmes to attend as a Friend of the Press.
October 12, 14, and 16
The Froth! Tour—Book Talks and Beer Tastings
With Mark Denny, author of Froth! The Science of Beer
Baltimore 10 / 12, New York 10 / 14, Washington 10 / 16
Hosted by the Press and the Johns Hopkins Alumni Association, physicist and homebrewer Mark Denny introduces the tasting of several styles of beer while offering
a witty and informative account of the history and science of beer making. Information about times, admission prices, and event locations is available at alumni.jhu.
edu/calendar; for more information, contact Jack Holmes.
November 10
Hopkins Club Lunch & Lecture Series
With Peter Rabins, M.D., co-author of The 36-Hour Day: A Family Guide
to Caring for People with Alzheimer Disease, Other Dementias, and Memory Loss
in Later Life
12:30 p.m. @ The Johns Hopkins Club
For information about
attending events sponsored
by the Friends of the Press,
contact Jack Holmes at
410-516-6928
or [email protected].
November is Alzheimer Awareness Month, and the co-author of the Press’s best-selling book (two million copies
sold in four editions!) discusses the latest developments in Alzheimer research and in the care of people with the
disease and related illnesses. Admission: $20; Hopkins Club members contact the Club to make reservations; non-members
contact Jack Holmes to attend as a Friend of the Press.
December 8 Book Talk and Reception
With Alfred Sommer, M.D., M.H.S.
author of Getting What We Deserve: Health and Medical Care in America
6:00 p.m. @ JHU’s Bloomberg School of Public Health
Humorous, sometimes acerbic, and always well informed, Al Sommer’s thoughtprovoking new book aims to change the way we look at health care. The Press and
the Bloomberg School of Public Health co-host a talk by the School’s former dean
about his timely and provocative assessment of the state of public health in America.
Admission: By invitation.
December 9
Holiday Book Signing and Madeira Tasting
5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. @ Homewood Museum on the JHU Campus
Celebrate the season, meet Press authors, and get a jump on holiday shopping at the annual Holiday Book Signing at beautiful Homewood Museum. Authors of the Press’s popular regional books will be available to personally
inscribe a selection of wonderful gift books and the Museum Shop will be fully stocked with holiday selections.
The event also features a display of Press books published during the year written or edited by members of the
Johns Hopkins faculty. A complete list of participating authors will appear in the next newsletter. Admission: Free
and open to the public.
Become a Friend.
From publishing innovations to
award-winning scholarship, keep up
with what’s new at America’s oldest
university press. Use the envelope
provided to become a Friend of the
Press. Stay connected and help
advance scholarly publishing at
Johns Hopkins. Read more at
press.jhu.edu/friends or contact
Jack Holmes at 410-516-6928
or [email protected].
Make a connection.
Visit the Press online: press.jhu.edu
Place an order:
Books: 1-800-537-5487
Journals: 1-800-548-1784
Follow the Press on Twitter and Facebook:
twitter.com/jhupress
facebook.com/jhupress
Learn about Project MUSE:
muse.jhu.edu
Visit our booth at academic meetings:
press.jhu.edu/news/exhibits.html
Donate to the Press online:
press.jhu.edu/friends
Join the InPress mailing list or make a
comment: [email protected]
Get a discount: InPress readers can receive
a 25% discount on books when ordering
directly from the Press. By phone or online,
refer to discount code “HINP.”
Press Events
May 20, 2009
Michael Burlingame, author of Abraham Lincoln: A Life
at the Maryland Historical Society
The Press, the Maryland Historical Society, and the Baltimore Chapter of the JHU Alumni Association hosted Michael Burlingame at the MdHS campus in Baltimore for a talk about his magisterial (and best-selling)
biography of Abraham Lincoln. The book was twenty years in the making and has been warmly received
by scholars and Lincoln enthusiasts.
1. Professor Burlingame has clearly enjoyed the many talks he has given about Lincoln this year.
2. A packed house at the MdHS. 3 & 4. Guests enjoyed meeting the author and having books
signed after the talk. See more photos at press.jhu.edu/friends/lincoln.html
June 30, 2009
Mike Gesker, author of The Orioles Encyclopedia
at the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards
Orioles Magic was in full force at Baltimore’s Sports Legends Museum for the launch of The Orioles
Encyclopedia, by Mike Gesker. Hosted by the Press and the JHU Alumni Association, the reception
and book signing drew an appreciative crowd of families and fans. After the event, most in attendance went next door to Camden Yards to see the O’s play the Red Sox—a notable game that featured a rain delay followed by an historic 11 to 10 comeback win by the Orioles.
1. Genie Wessel, Mike Gesker, Kathleen Keane, and Bob Brugger. 2. Mike Gesker received congratulations from many friends and fans. 3. Mark McKown, Ashley McKown, Tony Kopera, and
Colleen Condon, with the Babe outside Camden Yards. 4. Discerning fans always take a copy of
InPress to the ballpark. See more photos at press.jhu.edu/friends/orioles.html
I n Pr e s s
FALL 2009
Voume 7, Number 2
InPress is the quarterly newsletter of
the Johns Hopkins University Press.
Editorial Committee: Becky Brasington Clark, Brendan Coyne,
Colleen Condon, Jack Holmes, Kathleen Keane,
Melanie Schaffner, Brian Shea, Claire McCabe Tamberino
Contributors: Kathy Alexander, Alicia Catlos, Anne Whitmore
Photographers: Colleen Condon, Will Kirk
Designer: Susan Ventura
With comments or suggestions, or to add your name to
our mailing list, contact:
InPress
Office of the Director
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Endnote
Garrett Ward Sheldon
The John Morton Beaty Professor of Political Science, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise
“Every time I receive a JHUP catalogue, I am so
pleased and proud to be associated with such a
high-quality press. The combination of real academic scholarship, medical studies, regional interest, and fascinating periodicals is unmatched by any
other university press. The thing that strikes me
is that they are all consistently interesting and important publications. I do not know how you do
it, but I am very grateful such an excellent university press exists.”
Professor Sheldon’s most recent book with the Press is The Political Philosophy of James Madison, published in 2002.