Forthcoming books

Library Juice Press has a number of book projects in the works. Four of them are far-enough along that I feel I can announce them at this point:

• Questioning Library Neutrality: Essays from Progressive Librarian, edited by Alison Lewis
• Information and Liberation: Writings on the Politics of Information and Librarianship, by Shiraz Durrani
• Information for Social Change: Writings from a Radical Library Collective, edited by Shiraz Durrani
• Eugène Morel: Pioneer of Public Libraries in France, by Gaëtan Benoît

There are a number of other projects that are less well-defined and more in their beginning stages.

I will offer some reflections on the publishing business in the age of the micro-press and print-on-demand down the road a spell. As a teaser, you can expect me to say that I think publishing companies are still needed, for a couple of reasons: first, because someone needs to sort the wheat from the chaff (really, most self-published works are crap); and second, and more interesting I think, is that an often overlooked role of the publisher is to work in collaboration with authors and potential authors to generate ideas for book projects and to help see those projects through to their fruition. I started reading about that aspect of publishing when I was first doing my research before starting Library Juice Press, and I’m finding it to be the most rewarding thing about the business. Two of the four books listed above were initiated by me (though the writing was already done). Another half-dozen books that are in their beginning stages are books that I either discovered unpublished or am hoping to work with authors to bring into existence.

Books presently in print include:

• Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library: How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education, and the Public Good, by Ed D’Angelo
• Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, 6th Edition, compiled by Byron Anderson under the auspices of the Alternatives in Publication Task Force, ALA/SRRT
• Library Daylight: Tracings of Modern Librarianship, 1874-1922, edited by Rory Litwin
• Library Juice Concentrate, edited by Rory Litwin