More than a quarter of all U.S. students in grades K-12 are Latinx. Examining what Latinx texts are included in classroom literature anthologies is essential to ensuring cultural representativeness of the increasing Latinx student population, especially in states such as Texas and California, whose Hispanic student population is more than 40…

Research libraries have long invested in approval plan services, which offer an economical way to acquire scholarly and scientific publications. Traditional approval plans have evolved and now enable libraries to expand their e-book offerings to better serve researchers. Publishers offer a myriad of e-book purchasing options. These range from…

In our reflective essay from our multiple perspectives as journal editors, peer reviewers, and published authors, we present ideas about editorial support, democracy, and innovation in the publishing process. As four tenured professors who work in universities in the states of Illinois, Virginia, Texas, and Kentucky, we are a community of editors…

During the first-ever Digital Learning Day, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Commission chief Julius Genachowski unveiled an ambitious plan earlier this year to get schools to switch from print to digital textbooks by 2017. Dubbed the Digital Textbook Playbook, it's a recommendation for how schools could transform…

This article presents an interview with Joel McIntosh, the publisher at Prufrock Press, whose publications reach more than 50,000 individuals and libraries. McIntosh started Prufrock in 1988 with a vision of making a powerful difference in the lives of gifted and talented children by striving to provide quality materials and cutting-edge research…

As the Texas board of education prepares to adopt controversial new standards for social studies in May, many observers and news outlets have emphasized that the action may have ripple effects that reach classrooms far beyond the Lone Star State. Yet the extent of Texas' reach is a matter of debate, and recent legislation opens up new sources of…

Educational reforms and standards have been a topic of public debate for decades, with the latest go-round being the State Common Core Curriculum Standards. But time and again those reforms have failed, and each set of standards, no matter how new and different, has had little impact on improving student achievement. Why? The textbooks. Textbooks…

Ironically, adults control most of the world of children's literature: adults write the books; adults choose which books to publish; adults review the books, adults bestow the awards on books and adults purchase the books for bookstores, libraries, and their children. In this paradigm of adult control, children's opinions are often overlooked. The…

When Anita Givens, who serves the Texas Education Agency (TEA) as the senior director for instructional materials and educational technology, first began teaching elementary school students to use computers back in the mid-1980s, there were few digital learning materials available and little demand for electronic textbooks. In fact, parents and…

"Research Library Issues" ("RLI") is a bimonthly report from ARL (Association of Research Libraries), CNI (Coalition of Networked Information), and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition). This issue includes the following articles: (1) ARL Encourages Members to Refrain from Signing Nondisclosure or…

Textbooks are often a core element of curricula and delivery of classroom instruction and have long been a source of controversy. The textbook adoption process has become less about content and more about political/cultural pressure. Special-interest groups from the right and left exert enormous influence on textbook content through bias and…

Neal Frey reads textbooks for a living, a job he finds singularly fulfilling. For more than two decades, he had labored on behalf of Educational Research Analysts, a conservative Christian textbook-reviewing organization in Longview, Texas, founded by the famously outspoken husband-and-wife team of Mel Gabler and Norma Gabler. Since the early…

A new generation of history textbooks, produced since the 1994 release of controversial national history standards, is now being reviewed by key states. These textbooks appear at a time when educational publishing is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few huge media corporations. Discusses the business of educational publishing, which is…

This book provides information on over 590 Texas markets for writers. The book lists book publishers; magazines, journals, and newspapers which accept freelance articles; writers' groups and publishers' organizations; screenwriting/playwriting markets accepting scripts; daily, weekly, and minority newspapers which accept op-eds, book reviews, and…

The powerful influence the state of Texas exerts in textbook adoptions throughout the country is analyzed. In revising a text or writing a new book, it is easier for publishers to omit issues that may be controversial than lose out on an adoption and big money. (RM)