Collecting News Style Guides; need Visual Style Guides

I'm building a collection of stylebooks for newspaper and other news outlets. The collection primarily includes titles from various newspapers in the United States, such as the the "AJC (Atlanta Journal & Constitution) Style : Style and Reference Guide Covering News, Sports, Business and Features Issues"(1998);  "The Kansas City Star Stylebook" (1987); "The Los Angeles Times Stylebook" (1979 & 1995) … and so many more. Browse the titles in our collection.

We have local stylebooks: The News & Observer, 2001-2005; the Daily Tar Heel (1932 and 2001); plus the "Stylebook of the School of Journalism and Mass Communication" (1983-present), and which is now online only (pdf).

We have books for usage when covering different groups, such as the "CNS (Catholic News Service) Stylebook on Religion;" the "GLAAD Media Reference Guide;" and the "Manual de Estilo" from the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

We have stylebook from various wire services — of course we have the Associated Press stylebook for many years (our first edition is from 1953), as well as "A handbook of Reuters Journalism : A Guide To Standards, Style, Operations" (2008); various editions of "The Bloomberg Way : A Guide for Reporters and Editors;" and the "United Press Radio News Style Book" (1943).

There are some for non-journalism entities, such as the "Style book and editorial manual" from the American Medical Association (c1965)

Most of our stylebooks are from the United States, but we have one from Canada ("The Gazette Style" c1995) and two from the UK ("Stylebook of the Manchester Guardian Style," 1928 and "BBC News Style Guide," c2014).

HOWEVER, we don't have any guides to the use of graphics, fonts, or illustrations in a newspaper, magazine, or website. Our books focus almost exclusively on the use of text, grammar, and punctuation. Earlier this semester, the design & graphic editors at the Daily Tar Heel asked for some graphic style guides, thus illuminating a glaring hole in our collection.

At my colleague Andy Bechtel's request, I solicited the assistance of visual journalist and social media savant Charles Apple, who blogged my request for visual style guides: The University of North Carolina seeks your style guides.

Happily, I received one from Stacie Greene Hidek, the Online Editor at the (Wilmington) StarNews. We're sending it to the bindery so that it will withstand use by patrons for many years to come.

Neuroscience in PloS

Have you seen PloS? The Public Library of Science "is a nonprofit organization of scientists and physicians committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource.." I've referred to two of their articles and I was intrigued by Bora's recent post at A Blog Around the Clock about PloS One and its efforts to publish in all areas of science, including various aspects of cognitive science.

Here is a recent interesting articles in PloS One:

• Are Animals Autistic Savants from PloS Biology, where Giorgio Vallortigara and colleagues critique Temple Grandin's question "Do animals have privileged access to lower level sensory information before it is packaged into concepts?" and Grandin responds. And here's a blog post, Do Animals Think Like Autistic Savants in which the article is summarized in, um, plain(er) English for us non-scholars.

And check out the articles @ PloS One in these categories -- all free for the world to read!

• Computational Biology
• Computer Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• Neuroscience

(Academic) Librarians, make sure you're making these journals available to your patrons. PloS is indexed in PubMed It's not indexed in Biosis, PsycINFO, Scopus or Web of Science, and sadly, Ulrich's doesn't indicate that it is indexed in PubMed. Indexers ... consider adding PLoS!

For More Information

• About Open Access, from the Public Library of Science.
• Vallortigara, Georgio and colleagues. (2008) Are Animals Autistic Savants PLoS Biology 6(2): e42. Grandin responds.
• Zivkovic, Bora. "PLoS, it rhymes with floss: Interview with Liz Allen." A Blog Around the Clock February 19, 2008.

How to be a Referee

no ... not a football referee, but a referee for peer-reviewed journals, and in this case, journals in the field of library & information science.

My e-buddy Phil Edwards has written a nice piece in the November 2007 issue of College & Research Libraries News offering tips on how to be a good reviewer. In Developing as a writer: Refereeing manuscripts for peer-reviewed LIS journals, Phil suggests ways to become a referee, and includes his two handy criteria for accepting requests to be a peer-reviewer:

• I already know something about the topic of the article or the method of investigation.
• I read the journal regularly and have a feel for what a typical article looks like in that publication.

And while the title implies that reviewing is good for writers, I think that Phil's suggestions are handy for those of us who are grading as well. For instance, one of his ideas is to be specific in your comments, and he offers a good example:

"...[A] comment such as 'The introduction is unclear' might be less helpful for authorial revisions than a comment like 'In the introduction, the author mentions the relationship between issues X and Y. Throughout the article, X appears often, while Y does not appear until the conclusion. The author should either consider reinforcing this proposed relationship throughout the narrative or focus the discussion on issue X exclusively.' "

His other suggestions are useful as well, and he lists some handy resources for further consultation on the topic.

For More Information

• Edwards, Phillip M. Developing as a writer: Refereeing manuscripts for peer-reviewed LIS journals. College & Research Libraries News, November 2007. p. 630-631.

Blog- or Print Publishing?

Which is better in library-land (or scientific-land), blogging or print publishing?

I seem to remember that Jim Rettig, vice-president/president-elect of ALA, wondered in a campaign statement if librarians were blogging or writing in the print library literature? [note to self: the fact that YOU can't find this statement by Rettig should serve to keep you humble when you try to help patrons who don't remember where / when they read something. but we digress]

Stephen Abram said, when I slobbered over how much I love his Stephen's Lighthouse blog at ALA, (and I paraphrase): "It doesn't matter where you write, just get your ideas out there."

In an interview with Ken Auletta at the The New Yorker Conference The Web: 2012 in May, the Huffington Post's Arianna Huffington said that in the future, there would be blogs like the Huffington Post and New Yorker style writing and not much in between. That is, short bits of (accurate) information online and longer, more analytical, background-y pieces in print.

All of which I agree with -- even tho' some bits contradict other bits.

What I wonder is ... does it matter that librarians are writing more on blogs than in print? That by the time our ideas are in print, they are almost old news? Who is the audience for print library literature, anyway? Is it those of us in the biblioblogosphere? Is it those of us who want more detail than our old eyes can read online? Is it those of us who don't read library blogs but need (arguably) to keep up with what the young'uns (and I mean young-at-heart, creative, if you will, rather than age-young) are thinking and doing?

Why would I write something thoughtful on my blog rather than try to get an essay published? Hmmm. First of all ... timing. I can write here and 30-40 people a day will hit my blog -- a mix of librarians & non-librarians. Quickly. Immediately.

Another reason: I control the writing. Good & bad -- I've had some good editors who have helped me shape my writing and make it substantially better. I've also seen published articles in that could have used a good deal more editorial intervention.

Which reminds me of what Chris Anderson said in an IT Conversation with Moira Gunn: in between writing his Wired article on the Long Tail and his book of the same name, he blogged. Wrote up his ideas, got feedback from readers, revised his thinking and writing, got more ideas from readers, retweaked his own writing, and ... his book was better for it. According to him, anyway.

Of course, if you're going up for any kind of peer-review promotion, you need to publish in peer-reviewed journals. At least, that's the old way.

What's the new way? I don't know... only that I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I'd like to hear from you on this, either on the blog or by email. Even better if we can get a conversation going on the topic from librarians, future librarians, and other kinds of folks, academics, interested parties, etc.

Blog on!