NASIG Newsletter

COMMITTEE UPDATE – PUB/PR
[Ed. note: Excerpt from the committee report for the September Executive Board meeting.]

PUBLICATIONS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
Glen Wiley, Chair
September 2008

NARRATIVE OF ACTIVITIES SINCE THE ANNUAL REPORT

CONTINUING ACTIVITIES
Kathryn Johns-Masten, our committee’s co-chair, makes ongoing changes to the Speakers and Consultants Directory when requested by NASIG members.  Last year, our committee reworked the submission form, changed the order and naming of the profile fields, resolved some inconsistencies, removed old members’ entries, and resolved problems with the user input/update form.  I am planning on having the committee send out more general requests for participants through out the year such as announcement in the “What’s New” section of the NASIG website.

As part of our charge to proactively encourage publication of serials-related literature, we solicit for current topics and knowledge authors for new NASIGuides.  We have a posted list of potential topics on the web page, but are also willing to consider suggestions for appropriate new topics.  Our committee is currently brainstorming for new topics and willing be discussing possibilities.  We still have several NASIGuides pending.  Individual committee members are assigned to track and follow up on the progress of these guides.  The potential guides are on MARC fields for serials, Serials and Institutional Repositories, and FRBR Implicatons for Serials, Claiming for serials, and electronic resources workflow.

Since the duties of the NASIG Publicist have now been shifted to our committee, one of our new committee members, Marilyn Carney, has accepted that role for a year.  As Rick Anderson said, “she has a PR background and should do an excellent job.”  Marilyn Carney, Kathryn Johns-Masten, and I are currently working on a revamp of the Publicist’s Manual, which is now two years old and includes quite a bit of information.  For example, NASIG’s recent switch of Internet service provider from Bee.net to ArcStone is not currently reflected in this manual.  We hope to have an updated copy of the Publicist’s Manual to our board liaison by October.

Last year, we wrote a publicity message for a preconference on “Emerging Trends, 2.0 and Libraries” to be sent out to various listservs.  This is our first example of being asked to write publicity messages.  Our committee is currently trying to think of ways in which we may be more active in the future.

In order to meet NASIG’s obligation to provide content to the UKSG’s Serials E-news, our committee is asking authors of NASIGuides and of particularly good articles in the NASIG Newsletter to grant permission for them to be published by UKSG as well.  This is an ongoing effort.

COMPLETED ACTIVITIES
The appointment of Marilyn Carney as NASIG Publicist, above.

I have set up Joseph Thomas, a PPR committee member, with working with the editors of ALCTS and the NASIG Newsletters.  Joseph will try to get more NASIG content/announcements into the ALCTS Newsletter Online.  It could be a regular feature in the News “From the Profession” section or perhaps one of the articles from our “Other Serials News”.  We may send information to ALCTS on upcoming conferences and events (such as workshops and classes), as well as opportunities such as scholarships or awards.  The ALCTS Editor can list the events in their calendar and also run a news item about workshops.  The editor would also be happy to run a report on the NASIG conference, including reports on sessions that took place during the conference, if someone from NASIG is interested in writing a report.  She can also announce new publications produced by NASIG (print as well as virtual), or guidelines or policies that will be helpful to ALCTS members.  Lastly, the editor is also open to suggestions.

Also, I arranged for Nancy Olsen, a PPR committee member, to be working with Jill Emery of NASIG and Bill Cohen with Haworth/Taylor & Francis Group about NASIG taking on editorial responsibility for Serials Librarian.   Nancy has been in journals publishing for more than 20 years and has recently joined SAGE from Wiley-Blackwell, where she oversaw their Life Sciences journals group.  She works with many editors on many journals and was happy to help guide this project. However, I am unaware of any progress with these talks.