Sunday, March 29, 2009

Progress of the Cookbook

We are about halfway through laying out the recipes. We decided to send each author in the first four sections of the book their recipes in draft form. I just got feedback from them this week. Now I need to make corrections and get them to ACRL. Hopefully when ACRL sees the first half of the book they will have some advice for us.

Since we have had to layout each recipe ourselves, this process has taken much longer than we thought. After we clean up Sections 1-4, I will lay out sections 5-7 and go through the vetting cycle again.

Ryan just crafted the book Preface, etc. So things are going well (but slowly).
Cheers
Doug [and Ryan]

Wednesday, January 7, 2009


Gentle Readers
We have all our recipes and are editing them for grammar and style. We had e-mail conversation yesterday with the publishers regarding formatting. So we are still on schedule.

Just edited a great recipe from Robin Bergart, Academic Liaison Librarian, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, tentatively called "Undergraduate English Potpourri: Peer Teaching of Periodical Indexes."

Here are two great excerpts: (Aren't Librarians Great!)

Excerpt 1: "The notion of a controlled vocabulary can be very titillating."

Excerpt 2: "Try if you can to fit the candy with your particular class theme, e.g. for a class on British Literature use English toffee or Quality Street chocolate; for a class on science fiction use rocket candy. While some may see this as bribery, providing sugar to students sits on firm pedagogical footing. It awakens the taste buds and olfactory channels (two sadly under-utilized senses in most library instruction classes). It induces a mental state of curiosity and wonder (what is this piece of candy doing on my computer!?). And if done right, it creates a rich environment whereby the candy in question contributes to and amplifies the theme of the particular English Literature class."

Bon Appetit!
Chef Doug