SSH Minutes 2008 Annual
From WESSWeb
- WESS Social Sciences & History Discussion Group
- ALA Annual Conference - Anaheim, California
- Saturday, 28 June 2008, 4:00-5:30pm
- Hyatt Regency Orange County Hotel, Madrid Room
Attending: Gordon Anderson (chair), University of Minnesota; Eileen Bentsen, Baylor University; Kate Brooks, University of Minnesota; John Cullars, University of Illinois at Chicago; Dick Hacken, Brigham Young University; Heidi Hutchinson, University of California-Riverside; Thea Lindquist (secretary/chair elect), University of Colorado-Boulder; Heidi Madden, Duke University; Rebecca Malek-Wiley, Tulane University; Gene McClain, University of South Carolina; Claude Potts, University of California-Berkeley; Louis Reith, Georgetown University; Chella Vaidyanathan, University of Miami; Lisa Wettleson, University of Wisconsin-Madison
I. Welcome & Introductions/News from Institutions
The Chair called the meeting to order, and attendees introduced themselves.
II. Review of Meeting Minutes from June 2007 and January 2008
Minutes from these meetings were amended and approved.
III. New item. We need to move the SS&H DG list serve to a new location.
Heidi Madden will see if her institution, Duke University, can host the listserv.
Volume 11 (covering publication year 2005) will appear at ALA Annual. Work has already begun on selections for Reference Reviews Europe Annual 12 (2006). Our source of German-language reviews, the on-line review journal Informationsmittel (IFB), may not continue past IFB 15 (2007 publication year). How do we plan for future issues of RREA and RREO - Reference Reviews Europe Online? The floor is open to ideas.
RREA editor Gordon Anderson introduced the most recent issue, RREA 11 (2005), which contains 221 abstracted reviews. RREA is generously supported by Casalini Libri for the contribution it makes. The reference-work reviews are first published in German in IFB, then RREA editors select most of these titles and assign them to a group of North American academic librarians competent in German. These colleagues then translate and condense these reviews for publication in RREA and on line at RREO.
RREA 12 (2006) will include original as well as abstracted and translated reviews. Those interested in writing original reviews should contact Gordon or Rebecca Malek-Wiley, RREA’s original reviews editor. Cross-references between related entries are given. Graduate students are eligible to contribute, though up until now abstractors have mainly been librarians.
What could be done to improve RREA? Briefer reviews are one way that it might be made more current. More reviews of lesser-known titles and in languages not covered in other review sources would also be a draw. Some of the contributors who write brief reviews for the “New Publications of Note” section in the WESS Newsletter plan to write longer ones for RREA. Ways to drum up more volunteers include contacting New Publications of Note contributors more systematically and sending out titles needing abstractors on WESS discussion group listservs. Casalini is willing to donate French, Spanish and Italian titles for review. Selecting which titles to review from IFB is a challenge. RREA mainly focuses on European imprints.
RREA can be an extremely useful tool for retrospective collection development of reference collections, especially special and large reference collections. Its currency will need to improve, however, for it to succeed.
RREO and abstractors’ guidelines are linked from the WESSWeb homepage.
The group discussed further ways to take RREA into the future, for instance combining the 2006 and 2007 issues of RREA and making individual reviews available more quickly online to gain more currency. A current awareness tool – like RSS feeds – could be used to notify subscribers when new reviews are added. Editorial oversight will be maintained. This is important to abstractors who want to use their reviews for evaluation and promotion.
The group agreed that RREA in print serves a valuable archival function. If it were more current, for instance by adding reviews online as they are completed, it would likely be used more often as a selection tool. Since foreign-language reference titles are usually not shared or necessarily supplied on approval plans and are unlikely to be included in electronic reference packages, RREA is important as a tool to build local reference collections.
Ideas for promoting RREA included enhancing keyword-searchability in RREO (currently PDFs), sending out ticklers on appropriate listservs and placing ads/pieces in publications like Reference Quarterly, both of which might also encourage volunteers. Reference selectors may not have the language skills and thus could use RREA.
Summary:
• Increase currency by posting reviews online as they are completed
• Release the print issue later – print is still the source of record and has retrospective selection potential
• Raise awareness through RSS feeds, posting on lists, etc.
• Reach out to groups outside of WESS, like RUSA
• Expand coverage outside of the main Western European languages
Adjourned 5:30pm.
Respectfully submitted, Thea Lindquist
