The Joy of Books

My favourite thing of today - definite bibliotherapy, after a long day at the office!

OUP: new horizons | The Bookseller

OUP: new horizons The Bookseller

During a day spent researching academic publishing, I came across this article from last year about OUP's vision for the future. Nigel Portwood (a Cambridge University graduate, and the first non-Oxford graduate to head up the company in its 425 year history!) has a strong background of heading up and driving forwards big trade publishers in digital sales strategies in a global context. One of his key achievements at OUP has been to create the Global Academic Business, which combines many elements of the company. Portwood says:

“In some ways that change was evolutionary because we had been working towards closer links across those academic divisions. Yet nobody had taken the leap to say this is a global market, this is a market where formats no longer matter. The idea of books versus journals versus reference materials . . . that’s all gone now. I suppose that’s the biggest change that we made: acknowledging that the publishing has to be format independent, that we have to invest more in online and we have to think about moving resources across the business.”

He is optimistic about digital readers, and points to the rapid changes in the journals market to show why he holds these views:

“Users can now access more content more easily, for a lower price per article than they ever had before. They have the added functionality of cross-referencing and searchability that was never available. The industry has invested to enable this to happen; and the industry has grown as a result.”

The piece ends with Portwood's belief that now is the time for ambitious creative manoeuvring:

"Yet our industry has changed so much in the past five years—if you are not thinking ambitiously now, you’ll have a problem in a few years’ time.”

Looking at what announcements have already been made in the last few months, with both OUP and CUP announcing major digital publishing platforms with partnerships with other academic presses, Portwood's words are already looking prophetic.

Bibliographical Bibliotherapy!

I've just been looking at what is new in terms of books about books and publishing - and there is treasure in abundance!  Putting together an order for the university library, I wonder how much of a fight there is going to be for some of these titles?! 

This Is Not The End of The Book, by Umberto Eco, has got to worth reading.  And Books, A Living History, by Martyn Lyons, is also intriguing. 

Then, what about The Lost Art of Reading, by David L Ulin?  In this book, Ulin asks why literature is so important.  And what it offers, especially now. 









More to follow, with some reviews, but for now, must get back to reading the work of John Thompson, in his impressively well-researched Merchants of Culture, which is a must-read for anyone wanting to understand publishing today.  It also has a fabulous image on the cover of a Babel-tower of books!

January Blues

I don't like January.  The antipation and colour and joy of Christmas is gone, and the New Year is always cold, dark, and brown and grey.  January is a month for reflection, and far from being a time for new starts (living and breathing within the education system means September will always hold that spot) it fills me with a kind of dread.  The best month, then, for a spot of bibliotherapy.  Sartre said, "To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June", so am going to test that theory.  A poem to raise spirits and energy levels, to infuse some positivity into 2012.  Choosing something to post was a challenge, but in the end, I have simply indulged myself, and picked a favourite.  You may like it - or you may not.  But for me, it will always work as an instant pick-me-up, more potent than red wine or dark chocolate....

 

I taste a liquor never brewed,
From tankards scooped in pearl;
Not all the vats upon the Rhine
Yield such an alcohol!

Inebriate of air am I,
And debauchee of dew,
Reeling, through endless summer days,
From inns of molten blue.

When landlords turn the drunken bee
Out of the foxglove’s door,
When butterflies renounce their drams,
I shall but drink the more!

Till seraphs swing their snowy hats,
And saints to windows run,
To see the little tippler
Leaning against the sun!                                   Emily Dickinson

Enter, the Blogging Apprentice!

For many months I have been urging my students on the Publishing course to create and maintain an online presence, and the results have been inspiring and impressive. Yet, despite several false starts, and plenty of ideas, the art of blogging has somehow proved to be personally challenging! Until now. My research interests are coming together under the pursuit of a better understanding of the various ways ‘bibliotherapy’ has been and could be used. As a medievalist, I have long been aware of the conviction of medieval writers that texts had the power to heal and to improve all sorts of situations: as a reader and lover of books, I know that this enjoyment is based on that capacity to get lost in new imaginative or descriptive spaces. So, how can I find out more? The flotsam of thoughts to explore include, at this point, looking at the Poems on the Underground initiative, reading up about the scientific uses of bibliotherapy, and looking particularly at how poetry has been used to help soldiers (the First World War has left a remarkable body of evidence to show anthologies of verse were among the most treasured possessions a soldier at the Front had).
This blog will hopefully enable me to share findings (and more flotsam and jetsom!) and to receive feedback, brickbats and all, as I proceed!