Social Spheres (Asynchronous Session)
Journals as Gatekeepers: Structures, Policies, and Practices to Build Trust View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lyzette Hoffman
Publishing endorses research and therefore allots journals a gatekeeper function in the knowledge economy. Which structures, policies, and practices can assist a journal in this gatekeeping function? In a case study measures taken by a journal to strengthen its position among similar journals, distinguishing itself as a gatekeeper to be trusted and supported, is examined. The measures taken include, among others, the diversifying of reviewers and restructuring of the editorial board. Comparing the new measures implemented within the journal structures, policies and practices with other journals and results found in the literature, recommendations could be made regarding best practices for improving the gatekeeper function of a journal.
“Post-Truth" Childhoods : Newer Editions of Familiar Texts Adjust to Contemporary Reader Expectations View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Wendy Stephens
With the advent of twenty-first century Caldecott winners like The Hello Goodbye Window and the Newbery award-winning Next Stop on Market Street, the literature used to construct childhood in the U.S. increasingly reflects the multicultural realism of the republic. The We Need Diverse Books movement has organized around changing representations accessible to young readers and stressing authorial voices from potentially marginalized populations. Simultaneous with this has an exclusion of problematic authors, most publicly manifest in the 2018 ballot decision by the membership of the American Library Association’s Association for Library Services for Children (ALSC) to expurgate Laura Ingalls Wilder’s name and reinaugurate its honor for lifetime achievement in children’s literature as “the Legacy Award.” More insidious are the changes to text and image themselves, as subsequent generations of editors have reacted to shifting public sentiment and altered the original editions to make them more palatable. This paper focuses on Caddie Woodlawn by Carole Ryrie Brink, the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and the text and illustrations of Abraham Lincoln by Ingri and Edgar Parin d’Aulaire. In the current politicized American climate, parental and professional nostalgia keep these problematic representations around in sanitized form. From alteration of original lithography to shifting emphases in illustration, the discussion focuses on the evolving editions of these works and postulates how some of the design and production decisions publishing houses have made to update older works sometimes goes well beyond reflecting changing social norms to create an ought-world challenging historicity.
The Ubiquity and Obsolescence of Papercuts in Books View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pamela See
This paper questions the continued agency for movable books during the post-digital era. During the thirteenth century the first movable books, featuring volvelles, emerged in Spain. Able to make calculations, they were considered precursors to computers. During the Renaissance, 'turn-up' books were integral to medical education due to a shortage of cadavers. It was not until the nineteenth century that the genre was applied to children's literature. Lothar Meggendorfer was a pioneer of movable books. In 1850, he was only three years of age when Fredrich Froebel introduced "papier-falten" as an "occupation" to his kindergartens. The term "pop-up" was coined by Blue Ribbon Publishing in New York during the 1930s. They would remain a mainstay of early childhood education for several decades. Reflective of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, "haptic" has become a dirty word. In the preceding decade, parents and teachers alike began to prefer e-books. They presented both a corpus of literature and read out loud. Notices of completed tasks were automatically sent. This study explores the question: Have computers supplanted their medieval counterparts?
