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 w w w. p ress.jhu.edu Learn more about the Press online: • Press Advisory Board • Subject Area Catalogs • Faculty Editorial Board • HFS Clients • InPress Archive The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218 Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAI D Baltimore, MD Permit NO. 1717 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. )? C H L ( er tor a r e l e c Collid ac n o r icle d t a r ora b H p s e s w i g e r w a an -S ms the L lider is Franco i 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 ol rcu i he C t c r a n e o h d r t state universities, five of its private colleges, and two historical societies. It i n d a w - Kentucky’s su r e H e n l p e o e a g i publishes books in a variety of academic fields and is known for its very popular titles c r t h c s a a a L n er l i l p i r o a w l on the history and of Kentucky, the Ohio Valley region, the Upper South, and n t u i I s, Appalachia. Visit theculture rc eg Conversation i . n c b s o In e s t l o i UP of Kentucky online at kentuckypress.com. —Alicia Catlos i t o r r t m p to a 7 ou f r 1 o e l y e l s l c fu ac beam latr. This With Don Lincolnof New Journals e The Journals Division will welcome three titles to its catalog e r e n c Author of The Quantum Frontier: The Large Hadron Collider this fall: Book History, Hispania, and Studies in American Fiction. o w What is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)? t Book History is an annual and is the official publication of the e t Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & PublishThe Large Hadron Collider is a new particle accelerator ing (SHARP).The quarterly Hispania is the official journal of about to begin operations under the Franco-Swiss border. circu the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese This accelerator is circular in shape with a circumference of n i (AATSP). Studies in American Fiction, which is published twice g fully 17 miles. It will accelerate two beams of protons, cirin a year, was previously published by Northeastern University’s culating in opposite directions, and collide them head-on English Department. The journal features influential essays in the center of four large particle detectors. The goal is to oppoon emergent writers, as well as on canons and American recreate the conditions of the early universe and study the e t literary classics. —Brian Shea i moment of creation itself. It is much larger than the nexts largest accelerator, which is the Fermilab Tevatron, which has a circumference of about 4 miles and is located about 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 tions, a n d 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 jmh@jhu.edu. 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 jmh@jhu.edu. 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: inpress@press.jhu.edu 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.