Where to begin. If you don't know and want help, you are reading the right column. At the OBS & TS SIS Research Roundtable in July 2001 at the AALL annual meeting in Minneapolis I handed out a "publication kit." Not scholarly. Nothing fancy. It contained photocopies of some of the best TSLL Research and Publications columns from the past several years. This is now available to you! Free of charge, with the postage and handling waived and costs borne by the University of Nebraska College of Law Schmid Law Library. Let me know by phone or e-mail and I will personally ship you out your copy. When you receive it you won't take time to read it closely because you're very busy. But it's the perfect start to your new "publications" folder. This folder will not be placed in with the rest of your folders in the vertical file cabinet in your office, but instead will be with the rest of the important desk file folders on—your—desk. It stays there a faithful stalwart waiting for the late afternoon when you decide you want to begin researching what it is you're going to research and publish.

Some Publication Opportunities

Need money for your project? Have you heard about ALA's $25,000 research grant? The American Library Association (ALA) is seeking proposals for the second year for the $25,000 ALA Research Grant to support problem-based research for the profession. The Research Grant is a response to recommendations made by the Congress on Professional Education (COPE) in April 1999. Research proposals should address one of the following questions recommended by the ALA Committee on Research and Statistics (CORS). In what ways do the services of libraries have a positive impact on the lives of users? What is/should be the role of librarians in adding value to electronic information? Proposals focusing on a specific type of library or a specific type of library service are encouraged, as long as they relate to one of these broad questions. Proposals are due by December 15, 2001, and results will be announced by February 1, 2002. Proposals will be judged by a jury composed of the current chair of CORS, the immediate past chair of CORS and the director of the ALA Office for Research and Statistics (ORS). For more information contact Mary Jo Lynch, Director, ALA Office for Research and Statistics at 800-545-2433, ext. 4273, or e-mail mlynch@ala.org. Proposals should be organized according to a list of criteria found at http://www.ala.org/alaorg/ors/orsawar.html. Also located on the Web page is a payment and reporting schedule and outlines for required reports. Applications must be sent through the mail. Applications received via fax or e-mail will not be accepted. Applicants should send three paper copies of the application to: American Library Association, Office for Research and Statistics, 50 East Huron Street, Chicago, IL 60611. An acknowledgment of receipt will be sent within two business days.

Larry Bodine is looking for law firm librarians who would like to write articles about current issues in the library profession. The articles don't have to be that long — 1,000 words max — and I can get them published on one of the busiest legal web sites on the Internet (no, not the LawMarketing Portal or LLRX, something even bigger.) Please e-mail him directly: Larry Bodine, Law Marketing Portal Operator (Chicago) lbodine@LFMI.com

LIBRES, an electronic, peer-reviewed, inter-national scholarly journal devoted to Library and Information Science Research, is pleased to announce a call for papers for its next and forthcoming issues. LIBRES is a peer-reviewed electronic journal with an editorial board of library and information science scholars. LIBRES communicates scholarly thought in library and information science. Its publication language is English. It is published in March and September. Since 1990, LIBRES has also published non refereed articles, reports, as well as news and discussion of library and information science research, applications, and events. It commenced its peer-reviewed section in 1993. When warranted by the volume and flow of scholarship, special and/or supplementary issues on emergent themes will be distributed. LIBRES has three components: 1) Research and applications (refereed): peer-reviewed scholarly articles from multiple sub-disciplines of library and information science on such topics as analysis, evaluation, applications (reports of progress ) in libraries, plus other information science research; acting editor, Wendall Sullivan, email: wps@uic.edu. 2) News, meetings, essays and opinions (non-refereed); editor, Kerry Smith, email: kerry@biblio.curtin.edu.au. 3) Reviews of print and electronic resources and other discussions (non-refereed); editor, Suzanne Milton, email: smilton@ewu.edu. LIBRES is based on the principle of subscription to a list, the members of which, when informed of issue information, retrieve articles by email. An ftp archive is also maintained. News on upcoming international conferences is now entirely web-based due to the need to continually update the information. This information can be found at http://libres.curtin.edu.au/meetings.htm. You are invited to make a contribution to LIBRES. Please contact the Editor-in-Chief, Kerry Smith, email kerry@biblio.curtin.edu.au if you require further information.

Joel Fishman is interested in writing a bibliographical article on historical/biographical articles from Law Library Journal (vols. 1-95) for possible publication in LLJ or at least to place on the LH&RB (Legal History & Rare Books) web site. He has three other librarians lined up and is looking for one or two more to lighten the load of going through 15 to 20 volumes per person and compiling the bibliographical information with a short annotation on the article (possibly reprint the abstract, if there is one). At least one person cannot commit until after September and his timetable is probably by December to have each person's work done and then compiling it all together. If you are interested please send him an email. If there is a lot of response he will have to figure out how to do this, or he may ask if you will be willing to work on another project that he has in mind. Contact: Joel Fishman, Ph.D., Asst. Director for Lawyer Services, Duquesne University Center for Legal Information/Allegheny County Law Library, Pittsburgh, PA, 412.350.5727; email: fishman@duq.edu.

Donna Tuke Heroy (dheroy@compuserve.com) is looking for reviewers for many various publications. Contact one of her colleagues, Pat Blakemore, Review Coordinator at info@alertpub.com. Guidelines are available at their website . Many of the publications are legal books.

The last publishing opportunity, at least for this column, is a reminder that if you want to be added to Ellen McGrath's "publishing opportunities" e-mail announcements, contact her at emcgrath@acsu.buffalo.edu. She simply forwards e-mails to you from a one-way distribution list that she maintains. The e-mails are a variety of publishing opportunities and announcements that she finds, and usually subscribers to her list get about 3-5 e-mails per month, sometimes fewer, it just depends what she finds. One of the valuable things about this service (THANK YOU ELLEN!) is that you get her e-mails and they act as reminders to you that opportunities keep coming and can prompt you to getting started.

Recently Published

Congratulations to our colleagues below who made contributions to the literature. If you have, or you know a technical services colleague who has published, e-mail to me about it. I'll include it in this section.

• Joyce A. McCray Pearson and Barbara Ginzburg "Bringing Up New Information Technology Systems the Old Fashioned Way" published in the peer-reviewed journal Trends in Law Library Management and Technology (vol. 12, no. 1 May 2001).
• Maria Okonska "Labor Law and Industrial Relations in Central and Eastern Europe, 1989-1999: A Select Annotated Bibliography" published in Brooklyn Journal of International Law (vol. 26, no. 3 2001).
• Pamela Bluh "Perception versus Reality: Electronic Data Interchange in the Law Library Environment" published in Law Library Journal (vol. 93, no. 2 Spring 2001)
• Joni L. Cassidy ""alt.lawlibrarian": New Career Paths for Law Librarians (vignette titled: No Limits When You're the Boss) published in Law Library Journal (vol. 93, no. 3 Summer 2001).
• Diana C. Jaque "Legal Reference Books Review" compiler with Lee Neugebauer published in Law Library Journal (vol. 93, no. 3 Summer 2001).

Notes from a SEAALL/SWALL Program

The notes I took below were from a program I attended called "Getting Published" on April 20, 2001. The program was in conversational format and the speakers discussed the publication process from the perspectives of author, editor and publisher. On the program were Stephen Jordan (Program Coordinator), Kent Olson, Janet Sinder, Dick Spanelli. In order to be concise for this column I will write the various speaker comments as interspersed "tips" and will not attribute specific tips to the various speakers.

• Research and/or write on something which you are interested in, excited about: you don't want to get trapped into writing something that is perhaps "forced" onto you by someone else, so you need to have up your sleeve some ideas that you're enthused about.
• Look at the AALL Research Agenda in the AALL website—you will find topics there that need authors for research and writing.
• Always be looking for possible "spin-off" articles that you find in non-law libraries publications.
• When you get an idea/s bounce your idea to an editor for some journal or other source. Editors want to hear your ideas and they can route you to a more appropriate source if they can't handle your idea.
• See if there is a need to publish a topic in your field of interest.
• AALL's Professional Development Committee has desktop publishing and every issue of AALL's SPECTRUM is a great place to start with publishing something.
• Consider broadening your horizons as to where to publish, such as on the Internet, or AALL chapter newsletters.
• If you are thinking of publishing a book, you want to ask yourself how deep you want your involvement to be: a book takes a long time and many many hours to make it happen.
• Do you want remuneration for your work? If you do, don't figure to quit your day job, as most royalties are not going to buy you that new Harley-Davidson motorcycle you've been wanting.
• Think about who your audience will be and judge that against the scope of the publication or publisher.
• Look at the publisher, their commitment and ability to meet deadlines and what their expectations are concerning the number of copies to be produced.
• Think of the timeliness of your topic. If it's historical, then time is not of the essence, but if the content is time-sensitive, then you need a speedy vehicle to get your work published.
• When will you have time to research—make plans ahead of time that make time to do what needs to be accomplished.
• Get use to re-writing multiple drafts: it won't be done until the print is dry.
• Meeting deadlines is very important. Look at 78 LLJ 197 for a great article on publishing. Understand the editors' deadlines and be sure to meet them.
• Editors want to make your product look good and want to ensure that the content of your work is understandable for others and that it conveys what you want it to.
• Another good article is found in 84 LLJ 617.
• Before you submit your first draft to an editor, have several colleagues look at it first, and it's a good idea to have a non-librarian read it.
• Take the time to have proper citations in the proper format.
• Editors are desperate for great content! They love a well-constructed article that grabs reader's attention and that is a useful addition to the literature.
• Don't feel that your article or idea has to result in a long or scholarly publication.
• Do you work better co-authoring or going solo? Be sure your co-author has similar work habits and that just ONE of you is the lead person who deals with the editor or publisher.

That's all I had for notes. Oh, there were no handouts.

Remaining Residue

So here's a distillation of my fading thoughts until the next column. I know most all of you haven't slept well since our last issue, wondering how my non-survey went in the previous TSLL. Well, it went. Like a small skiff out in the Pacific Ocean floating motionless in the dark, unending, thick fog-bound doldrums, the responses to the survey just sat there... [cough] But, I did receive two responses. That was encouraging a little, and so, stumbling forward in the cold dank on what was the deck, I was able to grope my way to the helm and once again stand tall in faith and shaking off the wetness on my faded yellow hood, I shook my fist in the fog and I proclaimed, in loud voice, "WE SHALL PUBLISH!!"