SCOOP: Catching Up with Atla Open Press

Last month we recommended dedicating some of your summer vacation reading time to catching up on the SCOOP. As the summer winds down, it’s a great time to catch up with Atla Open Press.

Books@Atla Open Press

Books@Atla Open Press publishes books in three areas: Scholarly Editions, Association Editions, and Reprints.

The editorial board that oversees Scholarly Editions has been actively working with volume editors and authors to publish wonderful content the past year. Here is what you might have missed:

• Qualitative Research: A Field Manual for Ministry Students – an open textbook and manual written by Tim Lincoln of Austin Presbyterian Seminary which provides techniques, examples, and exercises to help students conduct their research and studies leading up to their final projects in Doctor of Ministry Programs.
• Preserving the Past & Engaging the Future: Theology & Religion in American Special Collections – edited by M. Patrick Graham, this collection of chapters explores the history of four library collections, how special collections are used in teaching and outreach, and opportunities and challenges for building special collections in the future.
• Claiming Notability for Women Activists in Religion – the first volume in a new series on Women in Religion explores the lives and works of women activists. The second volume in this series will be published in October 2021.

The editorial board welcomes proposals from prospective authors and volume editors on new works that fall at the intersection of librarianship and teaching in religion and theology. You can contact the board with your ideas or submit a proposal on the website.

Under Association Editions you’ll find works that are developed at the initiation of and consultation with Atla. Most notably here is The Theological Librarian’s Handbook series, which just published the second volume in the series on Administration in Theological Libraries. The third volume in that series on collection development will be published in 2022. Association Editions is also where readers will find OERs created through the Atla OER Grant Program. This summer one of the first funded projects of that program on Theological Questions was published by the Press.

Atla Open Press also hosts many open access reprints. These reprints are not only original publications of Atla but also publications from other partners. Recently, we partnered with Abilene Christian University to host over twenty-five digital reprints from ACU Press as part of a Mellon Grant they received.

Theological Librarianship

Theological Librarianship (TL) continues to publish peer-reviewed articles, essays, and reviews on a bi-annual basis. Last fall, TL presented an informative forum on distance education with contributions on serving distance students and maintaining an online collection. The editors are planning another special forum in the fall of 2022 on multimodal scholarship. This forum will be guest-edited by Dr. Elkie Burnside of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. A call for papers will be issued soon but come learn more about multimodal scholarship with Dr. Burnside at her webinar on September 21.

The editorial board accepts submissions on a rolling basis and invites all librarians who work in theological libraries, who are religious studies subject specialists, or who have interesting or compelling research to share with our community of library professionals to consider submitting to TL. Please also check out the list of books for which we are currently seeking reviewers.

Theology Cataloging Bulletin

Theology Cataloging Bulletin (TCB) has many exciting changes coming in 2022. We encourage everyone to read the August issue when it is published later this month to learn more about the opportunities to write for TCB. Recently, the former Testimony column was renamed Perspectives & Practices. The editors continue to seek contributions to this feature of TCB. If you have a first-person narrative of something learned from an experience, process, or project related to technical services, please consider submitting your brief narrative for publication.

The SCOOP, Scholarly COmmunication and Open Publishing, is a monthly column published to inform Atla members of recent developments, new resources, or interesting stories from the realm of scholarly communication and open access publishing.