Acquisitions in the New Information Universe, by Jesse Holden

Jesse Holden, Acquisitions in the New Information Universe: Core Competencies and Ethical Practices. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2010. 135 pages. ISBN 9781555706968.

I read Acquisitions in the New Information Universe in my quest to understand acquisitions activities better than I do. While the book wasn't exactly what I had expected, I still found it to be an interesting discussion of how acquisitions practices have changed now that much of the information we're purchasing or licensing is electronic. Author Holden makes it clear in the first chapter that we need to make a paradigm shift in acquisitions. No longer can we be content with knowing where to buy something, but we also need to be aware of the many ways to provide access to specific information. This change in responsibilities is increasing the competency level expected of acquisitions staff.

Chapter 2 includes useful discussions about services that vendors provide, vendor relationships, and selecting a vendor. Chapter 3 provides information about the many formats in which information is available, and provides some background on traditional and emerging acquisitions workflows. In Chapter 4, Holden discusses the services that acquisitions units provide, and encourages the systematic collection and analysis of feedback to continually improve those services. In Chapter 5, the author encourages us to "radicalize" acquisitions. By this he means that we must "move definitively away from models that are based on the fixed linearity of process or standardization of information objects." (p. 108). He stresses that we must base our practices on service needs, use vendors and technological solutions when possible, and explore collaborative efforts to "leverage resources and streamline workflow." (p. 109).

I found this book to be an interesting and stimulating discussion on the state of acquisitions today. I think it would be most appropriate for someone who is already familiar with acquisitions processes. Students or others who want to learn about basic acquisitions processes and best practices might find Liz Chapman's Managing Acquisitions in Library and Information Services to be a better introduction. Nevertheless, this is a valuable contribution to the literature.

Managing Acquisitions in Library and Information Services, by Liz Chapman

Liz Chapman, Managing Acquisitions in Library and Information Services. Revised edition. London: Facet Publishing, 2004. 150 pages. ISBN 1856044963.

As a fairly new division head, overseeing not only cataloging and catalog management, but also acquisitions and the systems department, I'm trying to learn more about the areas that I'm less familiar with. To that end, I've identified two books on managing acquisitions that we had in our library, including this one. I know it's a bit dated, but I wanted to read both, and I decided to read them in chronological order, so that I could see what has changed in that area.

Chapman's book is a good general overview of the acquisitions process. It's organized into ten chapters. After an introduction, there are chapters devoted to pre-order searching, the publishing environment, and ordering non-book formats. Chapman also discusses working with suppliers, the actual ordering process, and ordering items that are out of the mainstream, like standing orders, blanket orders, electronic resources, out of print and used materials, etc. She devotes a chapter to the receiving process, and then discusses issues related to finances, such as managing invoices and payments.

Much of the information is still current, but there have also been many changes since this book was published in 2004. I consider this book a useful resource if it's in your collection already, but I would seek out a more recent book on this topic if I were purchasing something. I plan to read Acquisitions in the New Information Universe: Core Competencies and Ethical Practices by Jess Holden next, and will be able to compare and contrast the two books.

Say it with Data, by Priscille Dando

Priscille Dando, Say it with Data: A Concise Guide to Making Your Case and Getting Results. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2014. 132 pages. ISBN 9780838911945.

This is an excellent introduction to gathering and using statistics and other information to support your library's efforts, whether they are to garner more financial support or are in support of other initiatives. Although not obvious from the title, this book is aimed primarily at school and public librarians. All of the examples that Dando uses to illustrate her points are from school or public libraries. That being said, however, the principles that she describes for gathering, using, and presenting statistics would be applicable in any sort of library.

Say it with Data has six chapters. Topics include: determining need, message, and audience; effective communication; working with statistics; survey techniques; focus group methodology; and how to best present the data that you gather. There are also a number of appendices with checklists for surveys or focus groups, and examples of surveys for specific audiences, such as public library patrons, students, or teachers. The book is well-written and includes both a bibliography and an index.

Even though the book is geared towards public and school libraries, it would also be useful for department heads in larger libraries. I could envision its use in cataloging, acquisitions, systems or other operational departments as they perform assessment and look for ways to effectively present the results. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in assessment and looking for ways to present the results in a meaningful way to their stakeholders, whether they are library administration or others.

The Art of the Data Center, by Douglas Alger

The Art of the Data Center: A Look Inside the World’s Most Innovative and Compelling Computing Environments. By Douglas Alger. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc., 2013. 360 pages. ISBN 9781587142963.

I’m marginally involved in the University Libraries’ migration to a new data center at the University at Albany, SUNY, so I was very interested in reading this book on state-of-the-art data centers. Author Douglas Alger interviewed key managers and leaders at eighteen data centers in the United States, Canada, and Europe to learn about how their data centers were developed and managed.

Alger spotlights these eighteen data centers with photographs, essential details, a few background paragraphs, and interview questions and answers. The photographs highlight the architectural details, as well as the layouts of the data centers. They also show some of the equipment that supports the data centers, such as generators and environmental control equipment. Essential details include the name of the organization, location, when it went online, notable features, time to design and build, size, power, tier (if applicable), cabinet locations, power density, infrastructure delivery, structural loading, and fire suppression system.

The bulk of the book consists of the interviews with key personnel. Alger asks questions that get at important design elements and how decisions were made. He addresses green efforts, cooling techniques, energy sources, the use of virtualization, challenges, and what developers would do differently. Many of the data centers that he showcases are LEED certified. Some of the buildings were retrofitted and others were built to specification. One data center is housed in a former church; another is inside a former particle accelerator. Some of the data centers are fairly small, and others are quite large. Power sources range from natural gas to wind to solar. Some are single tenant data center, and others are multi-tenant. I was impressed with the variety of approaches to all of the key design features. Many decisions are made based on geography: whether the data center is being built in a hot or cold climate, in a disaster-prone area, and what kinds of power sources are most economical.

The weakest part of the book, for me, was the interview structure. I found it difficult reading many pages of interviews. It struck me that short quotes from interview subjects are not difficult to read, but long unedited quotes are annoying. Interview subjects repeat themselves and sometimes their sentences don’t make any sense. A statement that one might overlook in a conversation makes no sense when it’s written down. Sometimes I wasn’t sure what they were trying to say. It would have been much better if someone had heavily edited their responses, or simply asked them to respond to the questions in writing in the first place. That would still probably have needed editing, but not necessarily as much.

The data centers that Alger spotlights in this book are:

·         ACT
·         Affordable Internet Services Online
·         Bahnhof
·         Barcelona Supercomputing Center
·         Calcul Québec
·         Cisco
·         Citi
·         Digital Realty Trust
·         eBay
·         Facebook
·         Green House Data
·         IBM
·         Intel
·         IO
·         NetApp
·         Syracuse University
·         Terremark
·         Yahoo!

 

 

The Information Society, 6th ed., by John P. Feather

The Information Society: A Study of Continuity and Change, 6^th ed. By John P. Feather.  London: Facet Publishing, 2013. 218 pages. ISBN 9781856048187.

In the five years since the last edition of The Information Society was published, much has changed in the information landscape. Author John Feather has provided an excellent update to this widely-used textbook used in information studies, librarianship, and communications courses. In it he addresses all forms of information, from text to mass media and television.

 

The Information Society is organized into four sections; three of them investigate information from historical, economic, and political viewpoints, and the fourth discusses the information profession. This is an engaging discussion of a topic that is of interest to all information professionals. It is well-written and would be a useful addition to any professional library.

 

A longer review of The Information Society has been published in the Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship, v. 25, issue 4 (2013), pages 333-334.

 

Academic and Professional Publishing, edited by Robert Campbell, Ed Pentz, and Ian Borthwick.

Academic and Professional Publishing. Edited by Robert Campbell, Ed Pentz, and Ian Borthwick. Oxford: Chandos, 2012. 496 pages. ISBN 9781843346692.

 

The academic publishing industry has seen rapid change and technological development in the past two decades. Academic and Professional Publishing is a highly informative analysis of the state of this industry. Its twenty chapters were authored by experienced professionals and leaders in the publishing industry and address all aspects of publishing for the academic and professional community. According to its editor, it is written primarily for “publishing professionals and interested stakeholders," but will also be of interest to academic librarians and others interested in what is commonly referred to as scholarly communication.

Topics addressed include trends in journal publishing, the rise of open access, the peer review process, the "scholarly ecosystem," and developments in digital publishing. More practical concerns such as journal and monograph publishing business models, editorial and production workflow, and standards important to the publishing business (ISBN, ISNI, ORCID and others) are addressed. Also discussed are citation analysis and bibliometrics, the user experience, pricing models, the role of libraries, ethics, copyright, and career opportunities.

I found this book to be an interesting and valuable collection on all aspects of academic and professional publishing.

 

A longer review of this book has been published in Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship 25:3 (2013): 252:253.

 

 

Research Methods in Information, 2nd edition, by Alison Jane Pickard

Research Methods in Information, 2nd ed. By Alison Jane Pickard. Neal-Schuman, 2013, 361 pp., ISBN 978-1-55570-936-5. 

I found this book to be highly useful. As someone who is interested in research but who never had a formal research class, a book like this filled in a lot of the gaps for me. Although I read it from cover to cover in order to write a review for Catholic Library World, I know that I will be going back to it for ideas on expanding my research. Research Methods in Information includes practical exercises that will help the researcher learn the concepts that the author presents. Pickard has a clear and effective writing style. This is an excellent introduction to research methods, and could be used as a textbook in a research methodology course. It would make an excellent addition to any professional or personal library where there is interest in conducting research.

 

A longer review of this book appears in Catholic Library World 84:1 (2013): 59.

Staff Development: A Practical Guide, edited by Andrea Wigbels Stewart

Staff Development: A Practical Guide, 4^th ed. Edited by Andrea Wigbels Stewart, Carlette Washington-Hoagland, and Carol T. Zsulya. ALA Editions, 2013, 219 pp., ISBN 978-0-8389-1149-5, $53.20 (paper).

No library can ignore the need for staff development. The library and information technology field is growing and changing too rapidly for anyone to easily keep up with all of the changes. Library managers need to approach staff development proactively, and plan for an ongoing program of development and growth. This book will help library managers conduct a needs assessment and implement a staff development program in their libraries or departments.

Staff Development is a well-written and thoughtful collection of papers that address all aspects of staff development in libraries, and it would be an excellent addition to any professional library.

 

A longer review of this book appears in Catholic Library World 84:1 (2013): 60.

Cart's Top 200: Adult Books for Young Adults by Michael Cart

Cart’s Top 200: Adult Books for Young Adults, Two Decades in Review, by Michael Cart. Chicago: ALA Editions, 2013. 126 pages. ISBN 9780838911587

 

I've been a big fan of young adult books ever since I took a class on Young Adult Resources when I was in library school. The class was taught by Mary K. Biagini, one of the most enthusiastic and energetic of my library school professors. I remember one of our assignments was to read one book each by three authors who were at that time the most popular adult novelists for young adults. The three authors were Stephen King, V.C. Andrews, and Danielle Steel. I read The Shining (very good), Flowers in the Attic (OK), and Changes by Danielle Steel (not so great). I can't believe that I remember that!

 

Cart's Top 200 is an effort by Michael Cart to collect the top books that he believes would most appeal to young adults. Librarians can use his list to evaluate their collections, purchase books that would enhance the collections, and promote these books that appeal to the YA crowd. This book would be appropriate for any librarian managing a YA collection, whether in a school or public library. It's also a great reference for anyone interested in good fiction and non-fiction. If you're a big fan of lists, like me, you will enjoy going through and checking off the books you've already read and others you would like to read! Not that I need more to add to my pile of books to read...

Knowledge Into Action, by Danny P. Wallace and Connie Van Fleet

Knowledge Into Action: Research and Evaluation in Library and Information Science. By Danny P. Wallace and Connie Van Fleet. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2012. 388 pages. Soft cover $55.00. ISBN 9781598849752.

 

There's a lot of pressure these days for libraries to conduct assessment and evaluation, to demonstrate their value to their communities, whether they are academic, public, or another type of library. This book is a thorough introduction to research and evaluation in libraries. A large part of the book is dedicated to a variety of research methods, including historical, descriptive, and experimental methods. Some attention is also given to bibliometrics and citation analysis. Knowledge Into Action will prove to be a useful resource for librarians who are interested in conducting evaluation in their own libraries.

 

A longer review of this book has been submitted to Collection Building.

 

 

Improving Access to Graphic Novels Through Tagging

Wendy West, “Tag, You’re It: Enhancing Access to Graphic Novels,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 13:3 (2013): 301-324.

Graphic novels are all the rage and increasingly being collected by academic libraries. Author Wendy West considers the question of access to graphic novels in this thoughtful paper. West investigates the use of subject terms, whether supplied by catalogers or users, in records for 59 popular and highly rated graphic novels in 38 Association of Research Libraries’ online catalogs or search interfaces that allow “tagging” (i.e., assigning of subject terms by a user). She found that such practices increased the circulation of graphic novels; however, “their use is limited across the study’s library population.” (p. 314) West concludes by proposing a broadening of these practices in the next generation of library catalogs, and suggests additional research on what motivates academic library users to tag.

Fostering a Culture of Assessment

Amos Lakos, Shelley E. Phipps, “Creating a Culture of Assessment: A Catalyst for Organizational Change,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 4:3 (2004): 345-361.

In this thoughtful paper, authors Lakos and Phipps discuss organizational culture and the need to incorporate assessment into that culture. They define a culture of assessment as “an organizational environment in which decisions are based on facts, research, and analysis, and where services are planned and delivered in ways that maximize positive outcomes and impacts for customers and stakeholders.” (p. 352)

I am particularly interested in assessment as part of everyday work, which the authors encourage. They tell us that “A major challenge to overcome is the everyday, unexamined workflow. If left alone, it presents a daily barrier to creative experimentation and problem solving. Processes and services should be continuously evaluated for efficiency and effectiveness.” (p. 353)

Three areas that Lakos and Phipps recommend that we focus on are 1) leadership, 2) creating a systems thinking environment, and 3) encouraging openness, integrity, and trust. The systems thinking environment that they advocate is the SIPOC Model (Suppliers, Input, Processes, Output, Customers), based on research by W. Edwards Deming. “The SIPOC Model is an effective framework for understanding and analyzing how organizations work.” (p. 358)

I am interested in the practical strategies that we can take to create a culture of assessment. One way that it could start is by coming up with a list of issues, concerns, workflows, etc. that might be problematic. This is where it’s necessary to encourage openness, so that people don’t feel defensive or bad about whatever the current situation is. Even if a workflow appears to be working fine, it could still be open for review. It’s critical for the leader to be open-minded and not defensive. If the leader demonstrates that he or she is open to constructive criticism or questioning, that makes it safe for others to open themselves to review as well. 

Focus Groups as a Library Assessment Tool

Graham R. Walden “Focus Group Interviewing in the Library Literature: A Selective Annotated Bibliography, 1996-2005,” Reference Services Review 34:2 (2006): 222-241.

Focus groups have been widely used to evaluate library services to their customers. In this paper, author Graham Walden conducted a thorough literature review on the use of focus groups in libraries, and found that they have been used to evaluate services across libraries functions, including administration, cataloging, reference, information literacy, and more.

Historically, focus groups came into use in the 1920s in social science research. It gained broader use as time passed, eventually coming into application in libraries. Walden describes the four steps of the focus group process: planning, recruiting participants, conducting the discussions sessions, and analyzing and reporting the results.

In this literature review, Walden discusses one book, three book chapters, and twenty-one papers published in 15 journals. This review and the publications discussed in it will be very helpful to anyone considering or planning a focus group-based research project. Walden’s discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of each paper will guide others in planning their projects. For example, several of the papers reported that they had used in-house moderators in their focus groups. This is viewed by Walden as a weakness, as focus group members might not be completely honest in front of someone they know. Another weakness he found with several of the studies was the practice of taking notes rather than recording the sessions.

My interest in focus groups is less on their use to evaluate library services to students or faculty, and more on their use in determining service quality within the library. Might focus groups be applicable to evaluate services that technical services or library systems units might offer to the rest of the library? Ultimately, the faculty, staff, and students are all our customers, but often our immediate customers are the librarians and staff within the library; that is, our colleagues. Our organizations might be small and we might not have funds to hire an outside moderator. Is it possible to conduct focus groups within our libraries that will still provide us with useful feedback about the services we offer? Are we offering the services our customers want? How well are we meeting their needs? Are there things we should be offering that we’re not? Are there things they would like us to do that we don’t currently do? Are there things we could be doing better?

A focus group that consists of co-workers who know each other, and moderated by someone they know, and which is not recorded or transcribed, may not be scientifically valid in the same way as a focus group that meets those standards, but could it still be useful from a managerial perspective?

 

 

Library Assessment with a Suggestion Box

Cecile M. Farnum, Catherine Baird, Kathryn Ball, “Can I Make a Suggestion? Your Library’s Suggestion Box as an Assessment and Marketing Tool,” Partnership: The Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research 6:1 (2011): 1-21.

An assessment tool that many libraries make use of is the suggestion box. In this paper, the authors describe their study of how suggestion boxes were used in academic libraries, how they’re managed, and whether the feedback they get from those suggestion boxes were used in planning or decision making.

They conducted a survey of Canadian academic libraries and found that libraries use both online and physical suggestion boxes. Of the twenty-five responding libraries, 96 percent of them use a suggestion box in some form. Most of the libraries respond to at least some of the suggestions that were made, however, most could not say whether the suggestions were used for decision-making in any way. They found that libraries were more likely to do so if the suggestion box was on their homepage or if they posted responses to suggestions publicly.

Suggestions boxes are often used to submit complaints. The authors encourage readers to think of complaints in a more positive way; they can be used to help the organization improve its services. They suggest a number of ways to improve the suggestions received: information should be gathered regarding the category of complaint, demographic data, library information, and ranking information about the importance or level of annoyance of the complaint.

The authors also suggest that libraries assess how they deal with complaints and encouraged them to increase their response rate, take action to resolve issues, and tailor their responses to be “warm.” By this they mean, for example, not simply citing a policy in response to a complaint, but recognizing that something might be bothersome or inconvenient, and promising to review the policy.

This article provides readers with an understanding of how suggestion boxes are used at academic libraries as well as a lot of good ideas for how the use of a suggestion box could be improved and used as a public relations or marketing tool.

I’ve been thinking about how a suggestion box could be used to improve the work of technical services and library systems. Our customers are not only the faculty, staff, and students of our university, but also the librarians and other staff that work in other parts of the library. Is there a way for them to provide anonymous suggestions to us, to improve the services that we offer? Or would it be better to use another approach to gather their information, like a customer service survey or focus groups?

Literature Review on Library Assessment

Jon R. Hufford, “A Review of the Literature on Assessment in Academic and Research Libraries, 2005 to August 2011,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 13:1 (2013): 5-35.

One of my favorite topics is library assessment, so I was pleased to see this article in a recent portal issue. While the article is very thorough and interesting, I’ll say right off the bat that I was disappointed that the author excluded the assessment of acquisitions and technical services from his review.

This is, however, a prodigious review of the literature of assessment as it relates to libraries. Hufford reviews both monographic and journal literature, including some important works published before 2005. He describes the greater emphasis placed on assessment of higher education in recent years, much of it generated by the Commission on the Future of Higher Education’s 2006 report A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of United States Higher Education. There have been many efforts by a number of organizations, such as the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Association for College and Research Libraries (ACRL), the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), and others to develop and encourage ways in which libraries could conduct assessment of their activities, services, and physical spaces.

I would like to have seen technical services activities represented in this literature review, but that may have made the project too big or the resulting paper too long. Because assessment is such a hot topic in the area of technical services, it would make a great project for someone!

Trends in Library Publishing

S. Craig Finlay, Chaoqun Ni, Andrew Tsou, and Cassidy R. Sugimoto, “Publish or Practice? An Examination of Librarians’ Contributions to Research,” portal: Libraries and the Academy 13:4 (2013): 403-321.

In recent years I’ve become very interested in library science research and publication, so this article in the current portal: Libraries and the Academy caught my attention. The authors analyzed over 4,000 articles in 20 top library and information science journals between 1956 and 2011. They looked at authorship; specifically whether the authors were practitioners, non-practitioners (in other words, teaching faculty), or a combination. They also looked at the topics of the papers published and their correlation with their status as practitioners or not.

They identified some trends in authorship, most notably that authorship by practitioners has declined somewhat since 2002. This is after a long period of steady increases in practitioner authorship, so the authors speculate that this may be an anomaly.

The authors analyzed the topics of published articles using a technique called Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). I won’t even pretend to understand how this works, but the authors conclude from this analysis that the topics of papers differed somewhat depending on whether the author was a practitioner or not. There were three areas in which there was general overlap in topicality, and three that were different. What is notable is that articles authored by librarians focused more on library services whereas articles authored by non-practitioners focused more on use, retrieval, and informatics.

The authors conclude that if present trends continue with fewer articles published by practitioners, the observed differences in their research topics “would alter the content of the literature.” (p. 417) One issue they raise is whether librarians are sharing ideas more through the use of blogs?

It is interesting to note that of the 20 top-ranking journals in the library and information science field, there were journals with much higher percentages of librarian authors, and others with higher percentages of non-librarian authors. Those journals with the highest percentage of librarian authors included College & Research Libraries, Library Resources & Technical Services, Journal of Academic Librarianship, portal, Information Technology & Libraries, and Reference and User Services Quarterly. Those with the highest percentage of non-practitioner authors included: Information Processing & Management, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Journal of Information Science, Library & Information Science Research, and Journal of Documentation.

This research raises a number of questions for me. Are the journals attracting a particular kind of author; for example, is LRTS more attractive for practitioners, and is JASIST more attractive for non-practitioners? Or are the journals themselves causing this discrepancy because of their acceptance practices? Are there opportunities for aspiring researchers and authors to fill in some of these gaps?

Introduction

Welcome to Library Research and Reviews, a blog dedicated to the review of current library science and management literature. My goal is to post 3-4 times per week, and I will be reviewing both journal, monographic, and other resources.

My research interests include cataloging, authority control, and management, but I read widely in technical services and library systems topics, as well as collection development and electronic resources management. My background is in cataloging, but I have recently moved into a position in which I am responsible not only for cataloging, but also acquisitions, catalog management, and library systems, so my research interests have broadened accordingly. In recent years I have become increasingly interested in assessment and publishing.

I review library science books for a number of journals, including Collection Building; Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services; Library Resources & Technical Services; Journal of Academic Libraries, Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship; and Catholic Library World. Books that I’ve reviewed so far this year include:

Time and Project Management Strategies for Librarians. Edited by Carol Smallwood, Jason Kuhl, and Lisa Fraser. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013. (ISBN 9780810890527)

Academic and Professional Publishing. Edited by Robert Campbell, Ed Pentz, and Ian Borthwick.  Oxford: Chandos, 2012. (ISBN 9781843346692)

Research Methods in Information, 2nd ed. By Alison Jane Pickard. Neal-Schuman, 2013, (ISBN 978-1-55570-936-5)

Cart’s Top 200: Adult Books for Young Adults, Two Decades in Review. Michael Cart. ALA Editions, 2013 (ISBN 9780838911587)

Library 2020: Today’s Leading Visionaries Describe Tomorrow’s Library. Edited by Joseph Janes. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013. (ISBN 9780810887145)

The Future of Scholarly Communication. Ed. by Deborah Shorley and Michael Jubb. London: Facet Publishing, 2013. (ISBN 9781856048170)

The Information Society: A Study of Continuity and Change, 6^th ed. By John P. Feather.  London: Facet Publishing, 2013. (ISBN 9781856048187)

Staff Development: A Practical Guide, 4^th ed. Edited by Andrea Wigbels Stewart, Carlette Washington-Hoagland, and Carol T. Zsulya. ALA Editions, 2013. (ISBN 9780838911495)

Build a Great Team: One Year to Success. By Catherine Hakala-Ausperk. ALA Editions, 2013, (ISBN 9780838911709)

Knowledge Into Action: Research and Evaluation in Library and Information Science. By Danny P. Wallace and Connie Van Fleet. Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited, 2012. (ISBN 9781598849752)

This list will give you a sense of my reading and research interests and whether or not this blog will address the types of issues that you might be interested in. I won’t be duplicating the reviews that I’ve done for other journals here, but I will likely be reviewing similar publications, both from the journal and monographic literature. I hope you will check in now and then!