BUSINESS MEETING NOTES:
June 2005
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Publishing
SIG
BUSINESS MEETING NOTES: June 2005 |
At the business meeting June 2 in San Antonio, the Publishing SIG held its second annual swap meet. This year, participants seemed to share more “disgraces” than “aces.” The moral of many of these stories appeared to be that, as editors, we can never be too careful.
1. Joyce Bower of West Virginia talked about their 4-H State Hall of Fame.
2. Gloria Holcombe of Kansas told about a photo that was “saved” by Photoshop.
3. Jamie Creamer of Alabama described a new quarterly from the College of Agriculture and Experiment Station, “Ag Illustrated,” which includes feature stories, department news, names in boldface, and lots of photos.
4. Donna Sheffield of Kansas spoke of challenges related to collaborating with a group of authors and of looking to improve the process.
5. Ann Shurgin of Texas expressed interest in writing impact statements to communicate Experiment Station information to legislators.
6. Chana Bird of Florida didn’t see one last proof for a publication entitled “100 Years of Plant Breeding” and--sure enough--there was a misspelled word in a prominent place.
7. Judy Rude of CSREES told of an electronic newsletter for administrators that had the month listed as “Mary” instead of “May.”
8. Nancy Zimmerli of Kansas shared a tale of woe: When the Kansas State Research and Extension Five-Year Plan was put into PDF format, the page numbers changed (so the pages listed in the table of contents were wrong)!
9. Debbie Montgomery of Mississippi shared her own tale of woe: A print-on-demand publication included the name of an Extension director who had been succeeded by three other directors. (“Check everything!” says Debbie.)
10. Barb Abbott of Iowa told of a new pricing sheet developed for publications in the publications distribution center; marketing adds on 10% to the cost of publications. Barb will share the Excel sheets with you. Contact her at babbott@iastate.edu.
11. Jim Coats of California said that he recently was involved in providing contractual publication production services. The publication was successfully completed, but he noted that time spent was actually three or four times what had been estimated.
12. Linda Gilmore of Kansas told of a publication identification number that was transposed on the back of a publication. Linda added that she now is saving “things to remember.”
13. Sue Keller of Alaska described editing a 900-page proceedings book every year for which the galleys are provided to the authors by PDF. She said that using a (Wacom) graphics tablet to flag notes to the author in the margin has proved to be very successful. (Donna Sheffield added that Acrobat allows you to print a PDF with comments.)
14. Helen White of Texas shared a recent “disgrace”--sending out the wrong URL for the registration for this conference!
15. Kyle McCaskill of Maine told of getting an e-commerce site up and live in April but lamented that she is spending all her time on this and not on publication editing activities. She also mentioned that they’ve had a problem tracking publications inventory.
16. Carol Ouverson of Iowa described the first issue of “The Iowa 4-H Volunteer,” a 17 x 11 piece that is folded and has inserts. The good news is that the printing company printed it for free. The bad news is that the printing was fraught with problems. Carol’s advice: “Check, check, and double check, and talk with the guy who runs the press.”
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