Against the Grain V38#4

Daniel L. Huang-Talbot

Acquisitions Librarian;  Library Resources Specialist, Lehigh University - Arts and
Libraries Division;
Lived Places Publishing
<daniel@livedplacespublishing.com>
https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-huang-talbot-08277446/

BORN AND LIVED:  I was born in Allentown, but the Billy Joel song was really about Bethlehem, PA where I was raised as a hyperactive Cub Scout.

EARLY LIFE:  My original background is in the museum field with a specialization in public history and Chinese-American military experiences.  My favorite library experience was working for Lehigh’s Special Collections department cataloging photographs including one of the actor Don Most!

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES:  I’ve worked in academic libraries for almost twenty years and was mentored by interlibrary loan technicians who instilled in me a deep respect for patron-centered access.  During my time with the Pennsylvania Library Association as the Regional Chair, I learned much about the community-centered focus and efficiencies required for small libraries.  My current research focus is on building those efficiencies for libraries of any size in a way that centers the patron as the library’s purpose. 

FAMILY:  My wife and I live in the Pocono Mountains, a little bit southwest of where The Office is set.

PHILOSOPHY:  It’s better to be the technowizard geek who lives authentically rather than a life of regrets.  Publishers are actually our esteemed colleagues who speak a very different techno-language. 

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT:  I met my elementary school librarian at a library conference, and she was greatly pleased that I had gone into the business to help people learn.  She asked if it was still my goal to read every book in every library and milk the Pizza Hut BOOK IT! program.  If I should leave a legacy in libraries, I would want it to be that I read a lot and helped others read a lot about what spoke to their unique human spark.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS:  The academic book industry is headed for a collision with patron expectations where libraries will find themselves expected to provide books as a service rather than serving as a repository of books.  The book “big deal” will give way to microtransactional purchases and highly niche publishers.  Whichever current big player develops an SaaS option for facilitating these transactions and network-level collection collaboration will skyrocket to the top.

Kathleen McEvoy

Senior Policy Fellow
The EveryLibrary Institute
Riverside, IL  60546
www.everylibraryinstitute.org

BORN AND LIVED:  I was born and live in Massachusetts.  I have lived in North Carolina;  Washington, DC;  Virginia;  New Hampshire;  and Illinois.

EARLY LIFE:  I am the second of four children.  I went to high school at a small prep school and, after graduating with 90 people, I wanted to go far away and ended up at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro where I studied political science and communications.  My last semester was spent at Georgetown University at the Institute for Political and Economic Systems where I interned at the Voice of America.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES:  I stayed in DC, and my first job was researching a book for a former Congressman at the Library of Congress at a desk overlooking the Reading Room.

I interned at a local AM/FM combo radio station in Massachusetts and was hired as a reporter.  I moved to a larger station in Manchester, New Hampshire where I had a two-hour airshift and covered local news and the statehouse as well as (what was at the time) the first in the nation presidential primary.  New Hampshire’s size, news environment, and politics make it one of the hardest places for candidates to campaign.  I was recruited to the station’s FM morning show, where I woke up really early, laughed a lot, and commented on popular and political culture. 

My husband took a job with a library vendor, and we moved to the Chicago area where our youngest daughter was born.  When we moved back to Massachusetts, my friend from Georgetown and the Library of Congress, asked if I’d join his PR firm.  I later followed my husband into the library space where I worked for a technology and content provider.  I eventually focused on fighting claims of “pornography in schools” which led me to government relations and lobbying.  Database-related legislation were subsumed into the larger book ban and censorship efforts that we are still experiencing. 

I began working with EveryLibrary, the political action committee for libraries and now work as a Senior Policy Fellow at the EveryLibrary Institute.  I focus on the impact of public policy and legislation on academic libraries, scholarly research, and publishing.  I also edit and contribute to a column for Against the Grain called “Seeing the Whole Board” which attempts to connect the dots between academic libraries and the larger world.

This work dovetails with work I do in the AI governance space.  I am a Senior Advisor at Bizcom Group, is a Toronto-based company led by my same Georgetown colleague.  We are building tools and services that provide a connected view of AI governance efforts.  In what can only be called a full-circle moment, our first pilot program is to bring the tools and governance framework to a Canadian university.  My first question was, “Are you talking to the University Librarian?”

FAMILY:  I met my husband, Bob Schufreider, at that first radio station in Massachusetts, and we married and had two daughters.  They are three of my favorite people.  Bob has worked with libraries for more than three decades and handles government accounts for SpringerNature.  Our daughter Hannah went to DePaul University and stayed in Chicago which is where my husband grew up.  Hannah works in insurance compliance and has an amazing aptitude for this exacting work.  Our daughter Grace moved to Los Angeles to attend Loyola Marymount University.  She worked in film and television until coming back east to get a master of fine arts in creating writing at Boston University.  She works at Boston University and is a published short story author who is finalizing her first novel.

IN MY SPARE TIME:  I read a lot.  I love finding authors and reading their entire backlist.  I followed my mother and her mother into the garden.  They focused on flowers, and I focused on food and have been waging a lengthy battle against varmints.  I now have what I call a food prison with fencing and netting.  Bob calls it Alfalfatraz. 

FAVORITE BOOKS:  I moved right from Little House on the Prairie to All the President’s Men, then to Robert Ludlum and Tom Clancy.  I read mysteries and thrillers.  I was just privileged to interview Karin Slaughter as part of EveryLibrary Live.  If I am not reading the latest thriller, I am reading non-fiction about AI, governance, technology, communications, cult tactics, resistance history, and philosophy.

I have a series of commonplace books, a common place where I collect quotes, book passages, new terms, and definitions.  These commonplace books or jotters help me collect and connect ideas from various subjects, put a name to a phenomenon, or understand issues and policies. I love language and terminology — agnotology, androcentrism, necropolitics, epistemic trespassing, rage farming, colonial gaze, thought stopping cliches.  They’re all in the book.

PET PEEVES:  I don’t like when people make their problems my problems or when the truth and the lie are given equal weight.  I call it “talking point smarts,” but it is also called the illusion of explanatory depth.  I’m from Massachusetts so I also have real feelings about my fellow drivers and what my friend’s husband calls the failure to merge.

PHILOSOPHY:  I try to see what happens as something that was done for me and not to me and I try to speak from the scar and not the wound which was an epigraph from a Karin Slaughter book.  I asked her about it when we spoke, and she added “it’s not until you have some perspective that you can understand it.”

Pollster Joshua Doss is someone I follow on Instagram.  He once said, “truth became a ghost story.  Facts and data used to build the world, now they just kind of haunt it … we traded accuracy for applause.  We traded accuracy for engagement … If you say something loud enough, it doesn’t really matter if it’s true, you speak a lie like it’s scripture and sooner or later people stop asking if the altar is hollow.”

I try to live up to my dad’s guiding principles which were to be of service to others and to do the right thing for the right reasons.  My colleague Allison Jenning-Roche shared her favorite poem, Marge Piercy’s “To Be of Use,” and the line, “I want to be with people who submerge in the task…” speaks to me and my advocacy work.  Philosopher Carissa Veliz has talked about duties as opportunities rather than burdens and once said, “sometimes in life you have to do what is right, whether you win or lose, there are battles that need to be fought, because the stakes are so high and you want to be on the right side of history.” 

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT:  I was privileged to be part of a panel at Charleston In Between in 2025 where I was able to talk about tactics including semantic infiltration, which describes the use of democratic language to describe undemocratic groups.  Walking past the East Gallery, the art installation born from the Berlin Wall, and then standing in what had been East Berlin and describing the use of the German Democratic Republic as an example of semantic infiltration was a real career moment for me. 

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW:  I have a book I am writing, and I’d like to finish it.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS:  The pace of change is likely unsustainable and certainly destabilizing, it’s hypernovelty or permanent whitewater.  Artificial Intelligence will impact how and what we learn and how we receive and discern information.  There is difference between what is hype — driven by the need for market capital — and what real technological advances can accomplish.  It’s not getting to Mars;  it’s solving the problems on earth.  Academia needs to play to its strength — thinking thoughts, putting forth new ideas, doing research, and reinforcing the scientific method. 

AI literacy and understanding the importance of provenance, citations, legitimate sources, the humanities, and the value of human creation are vital.  As machine-generated answers representing the best guess become what’s easiest to deliver, we should be setting new standards for archives and access.  If permanent whitewater is represented by rapids and falls, we need to navigate. 

I look at where we want to be and work toward that state — a sort of reticular activating system for the future.  People always declare what cannot happen, that it’s naive to think change is possible, and that too much money is aligned against real change.  I believe that “the best way to change the world as just one person, is not to be just one person.”  We are stronger in numbers, and it is an honor to work with smart, dedicated people who are dealing with some of the most difficult challenges of our time with gusto and a desire to know better and do better. 

Jack G. Montgomery, MLS

Librarian and Professor Emeritus (retired 2021)
Western Kentucky University Libraries
Phone:  (270) 392-8406 (Mobile)
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-g-montgomery-635b7025a

BORN AND LIVED:  Born in Columbia, SC.  In 1978, I moved to Charlottesville, VA to attend UVA.  As a librarian, I have lived and worked in Charlottesville, VA, Cincinnati, OH, Columbia, MO, Bowling Green, KY, Statesboro, GA, and finally retired to New Orleans, LA.

EARLY LIFE:  Spent my childhood and adolescence in Columbia, SC.  I graduated from the University of South Carolina in 1976 with a major in religious studies and minors in psychology and anthropology.  In 1978, I attended the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, to pursue a master’s in religious studies with a focus on Hindu studies.

GRADUATE SCHOOL:  In 1982, I went to work for the UVA Law Library as a staff member where, in 1986, I participated in a university-sponsored program for library staff to pursue an MLS at the University of Maryland at the College Park campus.  Upon graduating in 1987, I began my professional career at UVA Law School Library.

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES:  Too many to list.

FAMILY:  Spouse, Lesley R. Montgomery, MLIS, Librarian II and Catalog Librarian, Tulane University Libraries, 2022-present.  We celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary in August 2026.

IN MY SPARE TIME:  My retirement so far has been quite active.  I continue to pursue my writing and speaking on American folk healing traditions as well as my interest in recording and performing music professionally at various festivals and venues.  In my spare time, I work out at the gym and walk at the famous City Park in New Orleans.

FAVORITE BOOKS:  As a child, I wandered the stacks and read extensively in our public library with a favorite book being The Wind in the Willows.  Nowadays, being retired, I have rekindled my love of reading for pleasure.  I have reread many of the classics from literature and have returned to my old love of reading philosophy, including the works of Martin Butler, Spinoza, Sartre, and Camus.

PET PEEVES:  People who make commitments and do not follow through with them.

PHILOSOPHY:  The author Henry David Thoreau once said, “You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.  Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land.  There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”  In addition, the Chinese sage Lao Tse said, “He who knows he has enough is rich.”

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT:  My books, chapters, articles, and presentations at professional meetings.  I am also honored to have spent over 20 years as a part of the conference team for the Charleston Conference.  The Charleston Conference did more for my professional life than any other professional association, professional position, or event.

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW:  Continue to do the things I am doing now!

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS:  Regardless of all the developments, technical and otherwise including AI, if librarians keep the ideal of competent and courteous service to their patrons foremost in their professional focus, the profession will evolve and yet still remain a viable part of our society.

Lesley Rice Montgomery, MLIS

Librarian II and Catalog Librarian
Tulane University Libraries, Cataloging and Metadata
Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, 7001 Freret St.
New Orleans, LA  70118
library.tulane.edu

BORN AND LIVED:  Dayton, Ohio (Father was earning advanced nuclear engineering degree while a lieutenant at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.)

EARLY LIFE:  Moved to Rockville, Maryland at age four.  Moved to Hampstead, London, England for three years while father worked as a Scientific attaché at the American Embassy, Grosvenor Square.  High school at Overseas School of London, completed at Herndon High after moving to Reston, Virginia.  Attended University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, graduating with double majors in French & general linguistics and religious studies.

GRADUATE SCHOOL:  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Graduate School, Master of Library & Information Science – MLIS, Information Organization Concentration;  Academic Libraries Specialization – September 2018-May 2022 with a cumulative GPA in the A range (96-100%).

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES:  See LinkedIn site for latest career activities.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesley-montgomery-71626b87/

FAMILY:  Husband:  Jack G. Montgomery, MLS, Librarian and Professor Emeritus, Western Kentucky University (retired); celebrated our 44th wedding anniversary in August 2026.

IN MY SPARE TIME:  In my spare time, I enjoy fiber arts (knitting, crochet, sewing), landscape watercolor painting, and hunting in quaint antique shops for treasures to use in mixed media art pieces. 

FAVORITE BOOKS:  J. D. Salinger’s books Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Catcher in the Rye;  Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird;  Hans Holzer’s books including Ghosts: True Encounters with the World Beyond;  favorite children’s book is Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth; for art books, my favorite is the 1986 first edition Watercolor Handbook: Learning from the Masters by Ettore Maiotti, the renowned Italian painter, author and art educator.

PET PEEVES:  People who are self-absorbed and non-empathetic.

PHILOSOPHY:  I try to treat everyone with dignity and respect, no matter their socioeconomic status, age, race, ethnicity, gender identification, political beliefs, or religion.  This has always included my interactions in the workplace, such as when I was working at a Special Collections reference desk at Western Kentucky University for several years.

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT:  Earning my MLIS while working a full-time library job from a Research 1 university — the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee — in May 2022… and with no student debt upon graduation!

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW:  Continue to work at my current dream job!

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS:  Despite ongoing dire predictions — partially based on the AI infatuation — that there will not be a need for catalog librarians in the future, I contend that the industry will indeed continue to need and employ professionals who are experts in information organization, descriptive cataloging, and classification of resources, whether print or digital.

Corey Seeman

Director, Kresge Library Services
Stephen M. Ross School of Business, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor)
700 East University Avenue; Kresge Hall,
4th Floor East, Suite K4511;
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1234
Phone:  (734) 764-9969
Fax:  Seriously?

Work Website:  https://rossweb.bus.umich.edu/kresge-library/
For the rest of my life:  https://www.squirreldude.com/

BORN AND LIVED:  Yes, I’ve done both.

EARLY LIFE:  I am a product of the Garden State (New Jersey) and lived there through high school.  After freshman year at Syracuse University, I transferred to the University of Chicago (where I graduated with a history degree in 1986).

PROFESSIONAL CAREER AND ACTIVITIES:  I stumbled into library work after graduating from Chicago with my first job at the Chicago Historical Society.  My first real job (benefits and the like) was at the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania in Pittsburgh.  I moved from there to two years at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.  Family reasons made us move to Michigan (where my wife is from).  I worked for Innovative Interfaces, Inc. as a training consultant for two+ years.  I left that job for the Assistant Dean at the University of Toledo.  Five years later, I took the associate director job at the Kresge Business Administration Library at Michigan.  Three months after I started, my boss quit (I believe those two actions were independent).  In October 2006, I became the permanent director at Kresge and have been there ever-since! 

FAMILY:  I am married to Pam Seeman (Holland) and we have two adult sons, Jeremy and Chris.  Jeremy has a PhD from Penn State (statistics) and is married to Michael Jarvis and lives in Michigan.  Chris has an BA (statistics) from Michigan and lives in Boston.  Two kids with statistics degree … what are the odds.  Pam and I have our beloved pets Runyon (a seven year old catahola mix dog) and his cat siblings Fred and Ginger (who are around three).  I also spend a lot of money on seeds, peanuts, and corn for the birds, squirrels, and other wildlife who live near my house.  

IN MY SPARE TIME:  It is likely that when I retire from the University of Michigan, there might be mention of 20+ years as a director.  But the notice will quickly pivot to what I am best known for.  I am an avid photographer of a wide variety of subjects that are all made available via flickr and my personal website.  I have been participating in Project365 (where you take a photo every day) since 2008.  Among the diverse subjects I love to photography, you might find pictures of lighthouses, cruise travel, transportation, artistic performance, dance, birds, wildlife, cats, and dogs.  In particular, I am best known as the most prominent photographer of the campus squirrels at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  During the past five years, I have been also spending a fair amount of time building up a series of talks on photography topics that I have given virtually and in-person at libraries across Michigan.  For more information, please visit https://www.squirreldude.com/photography-programs.  Lastly, I am trying to learn German.  I have been stupidly devoted to Duolingo and am finding it to be fun.  Not sure how much I have learned, but it keeps me from doom-scrolling.  AND WHEN I AM NOT DOING THESE THINGS, I am likely working on the Reader’s Roundup column of Against the Grain that I have edited since 2018 because Regina Gong (now at the University of San Diego) did not give me a choice!

FAVORITE BOOKS:  I am not as great a reader as I should be … but here are some fairly recent favorites.  I loved Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931-1950 by Jeffrey Meikle (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2016) — which was instrumental in my understanding of the history of postcards and the wonderful Curt Teich company.  A few years ago, I read Susan Sontag’s outstanding book of essays called On Photography (1977).  Every photographer should have a copy to shove in their camera bag.  And one other book I loved is open access (thanks University of Michigan Press).  Shipping Out: Race, Performance, and Labor at Sea by Anita Gonzalez (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2025) is fantastic.  As a person who loves cruise ship travel, this book is exceptional as it moves around the different people who travel and work on these ships.  The book is available as an Open Access title (https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12123587). 

PET PEEVES:  I could do without the phrase “You can’t make this up.”  I have many things that fit — that is all that comes to mind.

PHILOSOPHY:  I aspire to be a good person.  This is true at work, at home, and with the animals that I see as I am out and about.  

MOST MEMORABLE CAREER ACHIEVEMENT:  Had to be leading the transformation our our library from a traditional one to a virtual one back in 2014.  I presented this at Charleston in 2014 as we were partially through it (see https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/charleston/2014/Users/9/). 

GOAL I HOPE TO ACHIEVE FIVE YEARS FROM NOW:  Plan to transition into my retirement job — cruise ship enrichment speaker on the history and process of photography!  If I have to be on terra firma, I will be presenting at your local library.

HOW/WHERE DO I SEE THE INDUSTRY IN FIVE YEARS:  I honestly am not sure where we will be in five years.  I anticipate pretty dramatic distruption in higher ed in the States will continue for years.  One of the trends that I feel we are due for is a significant number of closures and mergers among higher ed instituitions.  How that will impact our landscape will be the work of others.  

LIBRARY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Kresge Library Services (Univ. of Michigan)

700 East University Ave.
Kresge Hall 4;  East K4511
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
https://rossweb.bus.umich.edu/kresge-library/

BACKGROUND/HISTORY:  The Ross School of Business celebrated its centennial in 2024.  As we were exploring the history of the school, we learned that one of the first staff members of the school was a librarian.  The library operation (now known as Kresge Library Services) has been part of the Business School since the inception.  The library was part of the Business School building until 1984, when a new building opened.  Celebrating the lead gift from the Kresge Foundation (who also funded libraries at Oakland University, Wayne State University, and Notre Dame Law), our library was named the Kresge Business Administration Library.  If you are interested in the history of the library and the school, please visit https://kresgeguides.bus.umich.edu/rosshistory/rossdocs and you will find a 1953 guide for students on our library.

NUMBER OF STAFF AND RESPONSIBILITIES:  19 persons on the Kresge team, 10 librarians and 9 staff.

OVERALL LIBRARY BUDGET:  $3.5 million USD.

TYPES OF MATERIALS YOU BUY:  We are an e-only library, focusing on the business information resources and databases desired and needed by our faculty, students, and staff.  In addition, we purchase many resources collaboratively with the main University of Michigan Library.  We support the business needs of the entire campus, though our budget comes from the Ross School of Business.

WHAT TECHNOLOGIES DOES YOUR LIBRARY USE TO SERVE MOBILE USERS?  Our resources and pages will redraw to match mobile devices.  Some of our databases are simply not that useful on a small screen. 

DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE AN ILS OR ARE YOU PART OF A COLLABORATIVE ILS?  We no longer have our own ILS. 

DO YOU HAVE A DISCOVERY SYSTEM?  We use the University of Michigan Library Search to manage access to much of what we offer.  

DOES YOUR LIBRARY HAVE A COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT OR SIMILAR DEPARTMENT?  Collection development is done collaborately among the ten librarians.  The Library Director (Corey Seeman) handles the licensing and navigating it through Procurement.  The Library also manages the purchase from the Tozzi Trading Center and the School’s Research Computing group — formerly part of Ross IT.  One additional area we purchase for is the course material operation (think of Harvard Business School cases that are super popular in business education).  

IF SO, WHAT IS YOUR BUDGET AND WHAT TYPES OF MATERIALS ARE YOU PURCHASING?  PRINT OR ELECTRONIC OR BOTH?  The budget for Kresge Library databases is around $1.2 million dollars.  The budget for the data resources used by the trading center is additional  $200K.  The budget for Research Computing is shared between a number of entities and is an additional $400K.  99% of all purchases are electronic.  We rarely purchase print, and those materials are managed by the (main) University of Michigan Library.  The course material operation (all as cost recovery) is around $900K

WHAT PROPORTION OF YOUR MATERIALS ARE LEASED AND NOT OWNED?  More than I would like….well….almost all of it.  This is the bad deal of having a digital library.  Purchase, shmurchase.

WHAT DO YOU THINK YOUR LIBRARY WILL BE LIKE IN FIVE YEARS?  In five years, our library services unit could look like anything…well, except a traditional library.  Back in 2014, we flipped from a conventional library to an ethereal one — I changed the name to Kresge Library Services.  This was to let the community know that we have in fact changed a great deal.  Just as when we made that change over ten years ago, our primary job is to serve the needs of the Ross School of Business.  As they shift and pivot, so will the library.  Much of what our library looks like will depend on what the Ross School of Business looks like.  

WHAT EXCITES OR FRIGHTENS YOU ABOUT THE NEXT FIVE YEARS?  Little excites me, but a great deal keeps me up at night. I believe that the next cycle will be very difficult in higher education.  Many schools will weather the storms, but many will not.  The confluence of an administration in DC that is openly hostile to higher education, fewer international students, and the dynamics of Artificial Intelligence are a combination that will be too much for many.  I was thinking of one of my favorite scenes from the brilliant 1942 film Casablanca.  Annina, the young newlywed who was looking for an exit visa for her and her husband to travel to the United States, comes to see Rick (Humphrey Bogart) in his establishment.  She pleads their case and hopes for some clarity and/or intervention. Rick excuses himself from their meeting and tells her “...everyone in Casablanca has a problem. Yours may work out.”  We are in the same predicament.  For libraries, there is no certainty, there is no clear path forward.  Just the notion that our problems are not unique and it may (or may not) be OK.  I think we should try 22 tonight.  (NOTE: If you have not seen Casablanca, do so tonight.  If you want a refresher to one of the greatest scenes ever filmed, visit this clip on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xD_bKVAZJBw)

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE YOU THINK OUR READERS SHOULD KNOW?  Be the reason why people want to work with the library.  If we do that, then our path forward is secure.  

COMPANY PROFILES ENCOURAGED

Lived Places Publishing

47 Echo Avenue #1845
Miller Place, NY 11764

Phone:  (201) 673-8784  •  https://livedplacespublishing.com/

OFFICERS:  David Parker, Publisher

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES:  Course readings on identity and place, delivered as print, eBook, and audiobook and available as a library collection.

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE:  Academic, Libraries, Faculty, Students.

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES:  5

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/PUBLISHING PROGRAM:  LPP was founded in July 2021 by David Parker and Chris McAuley.  Chris is a recent emeritus faculty of Black Studies from UC Santa Barbara.  David has a near-30-year career in publishing and library products, serving in roles at Pearson Education, Thomson Learning, Alexander Street, and ProQuest.

Chris and David founded LPP to deliver academically rigorous course readings that explore human lived experience through the lens of identity and place.  LPP is focused on library collection delivery in order to support broad access by faculty and students at affordable per book pricing.  The main library offering is Intersections: Identity and Place: https://livedplacespublishing.com/intersections/ which includes all of LPP’s titles.  LPP collections number more than 25 and address interdisciplinary subjects ranging from Black studies, queer and LGBT+ studies, forced migration studies, disability studies, aging studies, Latinx studies, education studies, decolonial studies to many more.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU THINK WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO OUR READERS?  LPP is proud to partner with University of Michigan Publishing Services to deliver our library collection on the Fulcrum platform.  5% of our sales are set aside to fund Open Access titles.  And we are honored to be the publishing services provider to Virginia Union University Press.

Offline Internet Consortium (OLI)

Website:  https://www.offlineinternet.org

Linkedin:  http://linkedin.com/company/offlineinternetconsortium

OFFICERS:  Ann Okerson, Director (aokerson@gmail.com)

KEY PRODUCTS AND SERVICES:  The Offline Internet Consortium (OLI) brings together and facilitates the work of over two dozen organizations from around the world who use technology to address gaps in access to the internet and internet-quality information.  Up to 50% of the world’s population does not enjoy reliable (or sometimes any) internet access.

CORE MARKETS/CLIENTELE:  Target populations include people who cannot afford broadband access, people who live in remote unserved or underserved locations, people who live in political environments that censor and restrict internet access, and people in post-conflict and disaster-recovery circumstances.  The partner organizations are mainly not-for-profit and/or NGO, often with direct bases in and connections with the world of libraries.  A lot of activity focuses on elementary and high school educational settings in emerging nations.

HISTORY AND BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF YOUR COMPANY/PUBLISHING PROGRAM:  Inspired by a librarian’s presentation at the 2017 World Library and Information Congress in Wrocław, the consortium’s members have held two face-to-face summit meetings but mainly work distributed in their areas of geographical focus.  The consortium per se works to support their communications and social media capacity as the partners remain focused on technology and content delivery.

IS THERE ANYTHING ELSE THAT YOU THINK WOULD BE OF INTEREST TO OUR READERS?  Connectivity and access to information cover a spectrum of capabilities, ranging from the most privileged to those who always or often or sometimes need the affordances of information delivered offline.  Just as clean water and reliable electricity are still not universal privileges, so we have to assume that information access will continue to need a full range of technical modalities.  Our white paper “The Power of Offline Internet: Beyond the Binary of Connectivity” connects those dots.