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09.01.2016 | SSP News & Releases

Webinar Preview: Content versus Container: How Online Delivery is changing the Process of Acquiring and Managing Content

The Society for Scholarly Publishing (SSP) will present its first webinar of the fall, Content versus Container: How Online Delivery is changing the Process of Acquiring and Managing Content, on Tuesday, September 13, 2016 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Registration for the event remains open, with a discount available to SSP members.

The webinar will take a fresh look how packaging and use-trends affect the ways in which publishers and librarians acquire as well as manage knowledge. There are numerous online platforms to share scholarly content, and end users have more options than ever for searching for and receiving information. Instead of accessing a whole journal or a book, readers can choose to access only a chapter, an article, a section, or even a page.  An expert team of panelists will discuss how this piecemeal approach impacts scholarly publishing.

Tom Beyer, Director of Platform Services at PubFactory Platform, and Elizabeth Demers, Senior Acquisitions Editor for History and American Studies, Johns Hopkins University Press, will be moderating the session.  Joining them on the panel will be:

  • Wendy Queen, Director, Project MUSE, Johns Hopkins University Press
  • Vivian Berghahn, Managing Director and Journal Editorial Director, Berghahn Books
  • Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Research Data Management, Johns Hopkins University

We asked Demers to elaborate a little bit more about the session.

What can attendees expect from this seminar?
Attendees can expect lively presentations and discussion by three experts—a book publisher/marketer, a digital publisher, and a librarian—on the relationship between what we publish, and how we make that information available. Expect the experts to unpack the notion of container and talk about how to shape these to deliver scholarly material to an avid marketplace.

Tell us a little about this group of panelists.
Wendy Queen is the head of Project MUSE at Johns Hopkins University Press, where she oversees digital publication and delivery of journal content and book content, as well as the new MUSE Open funded by Mellon. 

Sayeed Choudhury, the Associate Dean for Research Data Management and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University will discuss broader trends with containers. There is now sufficient technology to build containers that include content and software. That is, we are building containers that allow users to not only access content, but also run associated software as well. While this is most directly relevant for data, he believes it will become important for all forms of content.

Vivian Berghahn is the Managing Director and Editorial Director at Berghahn Books. Her managerial responsibilities include advancing the company’s online initiatives and the strategic development of its overall publishing program.

Are there any topics in particular you hope the panelists will address during the seminar?
Born Digital projects, for one, but also how containers change our perspectives in how we acquire content.

What would you like attendees to take away from this seminar?
Energy and inspiration to think about digital/print publishing in new ways—I hope the webinar inspires creativity in rethinking not only how we publish and to whom, but also what.

Don’t wait, sign up for the webinar today and do not miss this opportunity.

By Kuntan Dhanoya, Communications Committee

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