BPG Publications Committee Winter Meeting Report – January 5-6, 2001
Walter Henry and Kate Maynor (Co-Chairs)
The Publications Committee held its mid-year meeting on January 5 and 6, 2001, in Washington, DC. Attending were Walter Henry and Kate Maynor (co-chairs), Jane Klinger, Olivia Primanis, Alan Puglia, Nancy Purinton, Dianne van der Reyden, Shannon Zachary and Glen Ruzicka (BPG Chair.) A number of topics were discussed, highlights of which are as follows:
The committee identified the need for documentation of Publications Committee procedures and policies and is drafting text to be posted on the BPG website and in the AIC Newsletter. Areas to be covered include the committee's purpose, duties and composition; policies relating to BPG publications; committee meeting reports; and permission forms and distribution policies for publications.
Shannon will reorganize the format of the BPG Annual in order to clarify whether an article follows a presentation at the most recent AIC annual meeting (a postprint) or whether it is an independent submission, a paper from a previous AIC meeting or information presented in a poster session. The committee discussed ways to expedite the process of securing permissions to publish submissions, including abstracts. Contacting authors has proven to be very time-consuming. The committee is considering policy that would mandate the inclusion of an abstract for any paper accepted for presentation at the BPG session. The committee discussed review procedures for the Annual, noting the fine line between selection according to defined criteria on the one hand and peer review or jurying on the other. The committee is not prepared to undertake the latter level of review both as a matter of policy (the established nature of the Annual) and because of limited time available for such an effort. Another recommendation from the committee was to ask the BPG Executive Council to request that the chairs of the Library Collections Conservation Discussion Group and the Archives Discussion Group submit to the Annual a summary of their presentations and discussions. It was observed that important and useful topics are discussed in those groups' sessions with no mechanism to record that material for members not in attendance. This would make the Annual a more complete record of the BPG's contributions to the annual AIC meetings. Finally, Shannon and Walter will review and update the guidelines for authors in order to make them more consistent with those for JAIC.
Walter reported on the AIC Publications Committee meeting and the plans to prepare a cumulative author/title index for all specialty group publications. Walter noted that special issues of the JAIC are strongly encouraged. The AIC Publications Committee is planning to rewrite the guidelines for peer review.
In response to the committee's previously noted concern over decreased BPG submissions to the JAIC, we reviewed articles resulting from presentations given at the last two AIC meetings. Many articles were identified as appropriate for the JAIC and authors will be contacted by mail with encouragement to submit for publication. In addition, the committee discussed several possible awards to further encourage submissions to JAIC. These ideas will be developed further and presented to the membership at the upcoming Dallas meeting.
Olivia reported that volunteers are currently working on the sewing section of the Book Conservation Catalog. This section is being developed as an online document that will be accessible to the membership through the BPG website. Regarding the Paper Conservation Catalog, all chapters have been scanned, thanks to Walter, and await proofreading, to be coordinated by Kate.
Nancy reported on her efforts to dispose of the excess inventory of Annual back issues in a useful manner. She proposed the following which met with committee approval: after exploring various options, we propose to send 100 sets of the annual to APOYO members in Central and South America, to be selected by Amparo de Torres of the Library of Congress. An organization that funds conservation in Latin American countries will be approached about sharing the mailing costs which are projected to be $30–$35 per set.