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In a move that is sure to rock the world of reference, Encyclopaedia Britannica has just announced that it will no longer publish a print edition. Read more about it at http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/13/after-244-years-encyclopaedia-britannica-stops-the-presses/

The Dictionary of American Regional English, aka DARE, is now complete.  Volume V, covering Sl-Z, has just been published by Harvard University Press.  This monumental reference work "documents words, phrases, and pronunciations that vary from one place to another across the United States."  Its entries "include regional pronunciations, variant forms, some etymologies, and regional and [...]

The following is a summary of the presentation from Paul Kobasa of World Book Inc. Paul represents the perspective of the traditional encyclopedia publisher/editor.                                                      World Book in a Wikipedia World Paul A. Kobasa Vice President, Editorial Editor in Chief World Book, Inc. Conventional Criteria to Evaluate a Reference Source. Which Still Apply Today? [...]

Reference publishing has seen a tremendous amount of consolidation over the past few years and here's another one. H.W. Wilson, one of the venerable old timers, is merging with EBSCO. FAQ available here, and a press release is here.

Bowker has released its annual book production report. This is from the press release: Bowker, the global leader in bibliographic information, released its annual report on U.S. print book publishing, compiled from its Books In Print database. Based on preliminary figures from U.S. publishers, Bowker is projecting that despite the popularity of e-books, traditional U.S. [...]

This just in from SAGE: SAGE recently published its first articles in SAGE Open, the only broad-based open access journal featuring content from the social and behavioral sciences and the humanities. SAGE Open supports the growing number of authors who require their articles to be freely available on publication, either because of personal preference or because [...]

Earlier today I was discussing reference publishing trends with a colleague. We noted that, as far as e-reference goes, there seems to be at least as much emphasis these days on new methods of delivery as on new databases. For example, World Book has just introduced World Book Mobile, "a mobile-friendly version of its comprehensive reference database, which includes tens [...]

Here's a press release I received about some new developments at Alexander Street Press. (I wonder if they've ever had the same conversations about the word "Press" in their name as I've had about the word "Books" in Reference Books Bulletin.) Electronic publisher Alexander Street Press today announced plans to launch an integrated online repository of [...]

Infobase's acquisition of Films Media Group in 2007 enabled it to add videos to its online products, such as the Facts On File collection of history databases. Below is a a press release I just received about a recent development, a new service called Access Video on Demand, intended for public libraries. Infobase also offers Classroom Video on Demand for [...]

News from ProQuest: ProQuest is unlocking the primary source material it acquired with University Publications of America (UPA) through a new digital archive called ProQuest History Vault. Its first three modules are being released this year and will provide researchers with a unique, unfiltered view into the Black Freedom Struggle and U.S. foreign policy during the [...]

Last week, the Annual Conference of the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers featured an Oxford-style debate under the rubric "Digital or Die: Defending Our Future."  The proposition: "The Journal and the Contributing Reference Book are no longer valuable as the Unit of professional content distribution, and will die." There were four [...]

Here's another post for Black History Month. It was a dream of W. E. B. Du Bois  to produce an African encyclopedia, and he conceived of an "Encyclopedia of the Negro" as early as 1909. His plan was for a five-voume work that would be published between 1909 and 1913, but he was unable to [...]

All are invited to attend this discussion forum sponsored by RUSA's Reference Publishing Advisory Committee at the ALA MidWinter Conference in San Diego, January 9th.  Hope to see you there! Discovery and Access of electronic reference works--discussion forum RUSA's Reference Publishing Advisory Committee will be hosting a discussion forum on e-reference discovery. Open to all [...]

Figment.com was developed by Dana Goodyear, a staff writer at the New Yorker and Jacob Lewis, a former managing editor of the magazine.  Its purpose is to provide a forum for young writers to have others read and comment on their writings.  The young authors may also comment on what others have written.  The sign-up is [...]

Springer is launching a new product line SpringerBriefs. Featuring cutting-edge research and practical applications in compact volumes of between 50 and 125 pages, SpringerBriefs will be available as eBooks and in print. SpringerBriefs will cover a wide range of content from professional to academic across a variety of subject areas including business and economics, computer [...]

There's still time to register for the Booklist Webinar, "Encyclopedia Evolution," which will take place on Tuesday, November 16, at 1PM CST.  Encyclopedia publishers have gone through enormous changes over the past 15 years or so, and representatives from the three that are still standing--Michael Levy (Encyclopedia Britannica), Evan St. Lifer (Scholastic, home of Grolier) and Sarah Bright (World [...]

Over the past few months I've been writing about what Reference Books Bulletin's annual Encyclopedia Update tells us about some of the changes in encyclopedia publishing. Previous posts are here, here, and here. As they entered the twenty-first century, encyclopedia publishers offered a dizzying array of formats--print, disc-based (both CD and DVD), and Internet-based.  For several years, CD-ROM [...]

ebrary® announced that it has collaborated with librarians and publishers to develop a new patron driven acquisition (PDA) model.  With ebrary’s implementation of PDA, libraries may create collections of titles of their choice, provide full access to end-users, and have titles automatically added to their permanent collection in real-time based on usage. Key features and [...]

Gale released a college version of the Access My Library iPhone app.  Using a college email address, students can gain access to Gale resources using their mobile device.  The public library version, which was released a while back, offers apple and android apps, the school library and college versions are for apple products only right [...]

Last week, having finished working on the 2010 Encyclopedia Update, I decided to take a look back at previous updates, and I wrote here about the very first two updates we did, back in the mid-1980s. For several years after we started our annual updates, there were few changes either in encyclopedia publishing or in our [...]