Scholarly Communication

Today I’m speaking with Ramona Liberoff and Liz Fried, cofounders of the new publisher, Gist Books. Gist allows readers to pick the topics they want, creating a unique and up-to-date collection of topics in a personalized volume. Gist is positioning itself to change the nature of books, offering a wikipedia like experience in physical form. Learn more at Gist's website. Caleb Zakarin is the CEO and Publisher of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In this third, and final, panel, Robert Boynton moderates a conversation which asks, “Can podcasts save the university?” In it, Joy Connolly, Barry Lam, and Dr. Aurora Hutchinson discuss what role podcasts might play in the university’s system of hiring, promotion and tenure. Robert S. Boynton is the director of the Literary Reportage program, and associate director of NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He is author of The Invitation Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea’ s Abduction Project, and The New New Journalism. Joy Connolly is president of the American Council of Learned Societies and a scholar of ancient Roman political thought and literature. At ACLS, she has led initiatives such as Doctoral Futures to broaden the scope and reach of humanistic inquiry. She is the author of The State of Speech and The Life of Roman Republicanism, and is completing a new book called All the World’ s Pasts. Professor Barry Lam earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton, taught at Vassar, and recently moved to UC Riverside. He is the host and executive producer of Hi-Phi Nation, a story-driven podcast about philosophy, at Slate magazine. He is also an Associate Director of the Marc Sanders Foundation, which promotes excellence in philosophy and public philosophy. Dr Lauren Arora Hutchinson, previously a BBC journalist, is an award-winning audio storyteller, an academic, and the inaugural director of the Dracopoulos-Bloomberg iDeas Lab, a studio and incubator for world class stories at the intersection of science, ethics, medicine and public health, at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. Lauren’s immersive audio work has premiered at IDFA and the Venice Film Festival. She has a PhD in History of Science with a focus on Oral History, and was a Wellcome Trust Imperial Media Fellow. She is the host of the signal award winning podcast playing god? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In this second panel of the day, Ellen Horne moderates a conversation with Chenjerai Kumanyika, Barry Lam, and Julia Barton, three veterans who have made a specialty of working on creative, idea-informed series. Professor Ellen Horne directs the Podcasting and Audio Reportage concentration at NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She was the executive producer and editor of Admissible: Shreds of Evidence, and was host, reporter, and producer for Luminary’s Lies We Tell. Horne was the executive producer of WNYC’s Radiolab, where she won George Foster Peabody Awards, Third Coast Awards, and the Kavli Science Journalism Award. Her new documentary, Age of Audio, tells the story of the podcast from birth to boom to today. NYU Professor Chenjerai Kumanyika specializes in using narrative non-fiction audio journalism to critique the ideology of American historical myths about issues such as race, the Civil War, and policing. His podcast Empire City was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best podcasts of 2024. He was the co-creator, co-executive producer and co-host of Uncivil, a podcast on the Civil War, and he is the collaborator for Scene on Radio’s Season 2 “Seeing White,” and Season 4 on the history of American democracy. Professor Barry Lam earned a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton, taught at Vassar, and recently moved to UC Riverside. He is the host and executive producer of Hi-Phi Nation, a story-driven podcast about philosophy, at Slate magazine. He is also an Associate Director of the Marc Sanders Foundation, which promotes excellence in philosophy and public philosophy. Julia Barton is an award-winning podcast, audiobook, and radio editor. She was the executive editor of Pushkin Industries, where she helped develop Revisionist History and Against the Rules. She’s the editor of Malcolm Gladwell’s audiobook The Bomber Mafia, Michael Specter’s Fauci, and Michael Lewis’s unabridged Liar’s Poker and companion podcast. Her 2019 series, Spacebridge, was called “dazzling” by The New Yorker. She is the author of the audio history newsletter, Continuous Wave. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a special edition of the New York Institute for the Humanities’ Vault podcast. On October 10, 2025, NYU’s Journalism Institute hosted a day-long conference titled Podcast Intellectuals: Producing Original Scholarship with Audio. Over the course of three panels, scholars, podcasters, and journalists discuss how academics might employ the techniques of narrative audio as part of their research. In the first panel, podcaster Benjamen Walker discusses his work with NYU media studies professor Mara Mills as they produce Tuning Time, a podcast about the politics of time stretching technology. Professor Mills is an interdisciplinary scholar in the fields of disability studies, Science and Technology Studies, and sound studies. She teaches in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication and is Director of the NYU Center for Disability Studies. Her work on “disability and media” spans disability arts and technoscience, with a focus on the history, politics, and cultures of electronics and digital media. Benjamen Walker is a radio writer and producer. He is one of the co-founders of the podcast network Radiotopia from PRX, and for a decade hosted and produced his award winning program Benjamen Walker’s Theory of Everything. The first panel concluded with a presentation by NYU musicologist Fanny Gribenski in which she discusses her current project, The Elephant in the Piano: Music, Ecology, Empire. The book, and podcast, is an investigation of the 19th century piano through a material history of its primary components: ivory, wood, felt, and metal. Professor Gribenski is a historical musicologist who specializes in the history of musical and sonic practices. Her first book, L'Église comme lieu de concert. Pratiques musicales et usages de l'espace (Paris, 1830–1905) analyzes the role of music in the production of sacred spaces. Tuning the World: The Rise of 440 Hertz in Music, Science, and Politics, 1859-1955 (University of Chicago, 2023) traces the rocky path towards international pitch standardization. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Assessing Academic Library Collections for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Bloomsbury, 2025) provides a practical, step-by-step approach to designing and implementing evaluation projects targeting a variety of DEI goals in academic library collections. Offering both flexibility and detailed guidance, this book begins with a discussion of aspects of diversity that librarians could target in their assessment projects and notes project planning considerations such as defining a scope and timeline. It particularly notes how larger academic libraries can narrow the scope of a project to make it feasible. Subsequent chapters explain different methods for assessing a collection, with many examples throughout. Methods include: - List-checking involves comparing the collection to a list of recommended books. - Metadata searching produces a count of library holdings that contain certain subject headings or use specific call numbers. - Diversity coding allows staff to create their own categories and assign them to books in a sample. All three of these methods can be used to analyze the collection by subject matter. It is possible to use diversity coding to examine author identities as well, a sensitive endeavor for which this book provides both cautions and guidance. A fourth approach focuses on organizational efforts or inputs. This method involves tracking and reflecting on the library's progress towards goals the staff have set, which could involve a variety of collections-related activities, including staff development, changes to workflows, revising policies, or increasing outreach. The book describes advantages and limitations of the four methods, allowing librarians to make an informed choice of which to use. It also offers resources for implementing each of these strategies as well as guidance on creating one's own evaluation tools. Three chapters by guest authors provide examples of DEI assessment projects from academic libraries. A concluding chapter discusses sharing findings and suggests a range of changes libraries can make to their collecting practices. Guest: Karen Kohn is the Collections Analysis Librarian at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she serves on the DEI in Collections Committee and the Open Education Group. Host: Dr. Michael LaMagna is the Information Literacy Program & Library Services Coordinator and Professor of Library Services at Delaware County Community College. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A Light in the Tower argues that excellent education and radical support for mental health struggles can coexist, and provides detailed advice for how to do so. Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal debunks claims that supporting student mental health harms educational rigor (coining the term “rigor angst” to discuss the fear that rigor is declining). She outlines actionable steps professors and administrators can take, including abandoning ableist and exclusionary campus culture; replacing “bad-hard” work that creates unnecessary logistical difficulties for students in favor of “good-hard” work that challenges them intellectually; providing an easy path to disability accommodations; and teaching accessibly for neurodivergent students. Dr. Pryal examines the anxiety that plagues campuses as a result of exploited and overworked contingent faculty and students, the systemic and institutional burnout that affects higher education at every level, and the market-driven culture of toxic overwork. Addressing the stigma that haunts mental disability on campus, the ableism that hounds our teaching, and the cascade of mental health struggles that far too many faculty and students face, Dr. Pryal provides straightforward solutions to complex challenges. Our guest is: Dr. Katie Rose Guest Pryal, who is an author, neurodiversity expert, and adjunct professor of law at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of A Light in the Tower, and other works including the award-winning Even If You’re Broken: Bodies, Boundaries, and Mental Health. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is an academic writing coach and editor. She is the producer and creator of the Academic Life podcast. Playlist: Sitting Pretty Navigating the pandemic in college Designing & Facilitating Workshops With Intentionality A Pedagogy of Kindness How To Organize Inclusive Events and Conferences Contingent Faculty and the Remaking of Higher Education The Power of Play in Higher Education Disabled Ecologies Teaching While Nerdy Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! Please join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 300+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Exploring what academic podcasting is and what it could be, Ian Cook's Scholarly Podcasting (Routledge, 2023) is the first to consider the why, what, and how academics engage with this insurgent, curious craft. Featuring interviews with 101 podcasting academics, including scholars and teachers of podcasting, this book explores the motivations of scholarly podcasters, interrogates what podcasting does to academic knowledge, and leads potential podcasters through the creation process from beginning to end. With scholarship often trapped inside expensive journals, wrapped in opaque language, and laced with a standoffish tone, this book analyses the implications of moving towards a more open and accessible form. This book will also inform, inspire, and equip scholars of any discipline, rank, or affiliation who are considering making a podcast or who make podcasts with the background knowledge and technical and conceptual skills needed to produce high-quality podcasts through a reflexive critique of current practices. Ian M. Cook is Editor in Chief at Allegra Lab. Caleb Zakarin is the Assistant Editor of the New Books Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ownership of Knowledge: Beyond Intellectual Property (MIT Press, 2023) provides a framework for knowledge ownership that challenges the mechanisms of inequality in modern society. Scholars of science, technology, medicine, and law have all tended to emphasize knowledge as the sum of human understanding, and its ownership as possession by law. Breaking with traditional discourse on knowledge property as something that concerns mainly words and intellectual history, or science and law, Dagmar Schäfer, Annapurna Mamidipudi, and Marius Buning propose technology as a central heuristic for studying the many implications of knowledge ownership. Toward this end, they focus on the notions of knowledge and ownership in courtrooms, workshops, policy, and research practices, while also shedding light on scholarship itself as a powerful tool for making explicit the politics inherent in knowledge practices and social order. The book presents case studies showing how diverse knowledge economies are created and how inequalities arise from them. Unlike scholars who have fragmented this discourse across the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and history, the editors highlight recent developments in the emerging field of the global history of knowledge—as science, as economy, and as culture. The case studies reveal how notions of knowing and owning emerge because they reciprocally produce and determine each other's limits and possibilities; that is, how we know inevitably affects how we can own what we know; and how we own always impacts how and what we are able to know. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Editor Abigail Bainbridge and contributing author Sonja Schwoll join this discussion of Conservation of Books (Routledge 2023), the highly anticipated reference work on global book structures and their conservation. Offering the first modern, comprehensive overview on this subject, this volume takes an international approach. Written by over 70 specialists in conservation and conservation science based in 19 countries, its 26 chapters cover traditional book structures from around the world, the materials from which they are made and how they degrade, and how to preserve and conserve them. It also examines the theoretical underpinnings of conservation: what and how to treat, and the ethical, cultural, and economic implications of treatment. Technical drawings and photographs illustrate the structures and treatments examined throughout the book. Ultimately, readers gain an in-depth understanding of the materiality of books in numerous global contexts and reflect on the practical considerations involved in their analysis and treatment. Our conversations in this episode discuss how this book is a key reference text for the field, how it fuels important conversations about decision-making and ethics, and what approaches it encourages to learning the practicalities of book conservation. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. Jen edits for Partnership Journal and organizes with the TPS Collective. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom and The Social Movement Archive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In High School Students Unite! Teen Activism, Education Reform, and FBI Surveillance in Postwar America (UNC Press, 2025), Aaron G. Fountain Jr. highlights the crucial impact of high school activists in the 1960s and 1970s. Mid-twentieth-century student activism is a pivotal chapter in American history. While college activism has been well documented, the equally vital contributions of high school students have often been overlooked. Only recently have scholars begun to recognize the transformative role teenagers played in reshaping American education. Inspired by civil rights and antiwar movements, students across the nation demanded a voice in their education by organizing sit-ins, walkouts, and strikes. From cities such as San Francisco and Chicago to smaller towns such as Jonesboro, Georgia, these young leaders fought for curricula that reflected their evolving worldviews. Drawing on archival research and interviews, Aaron G. Fountain Jr. reveals how teenagers became powerful agents of change, advocating for constitutional rights and influencing school reform. Ironically, the modernization of school security, including police presence, was partly a response to these student-led movements. Through oral histories and FBI records, this fascinating history offers a fresh perspective on high school activism and its lasting impact on American education. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I talked to Dr. Samuel Moore about his recent book, Publishing Beyond the Market: Open Access, Care, and the Commons, (U Michigan Press, 2025) Samuel Moore is the Scholarly Communication Specialist at Cambridge University Libraries, Associate Lecturer at Cambridge Digital Humanities, and College Research Associate at King's College, Cambridge. In his book, Sam argues that the move to open access should focus less on the free accessibility of research outputs and more on who controls the publications and infrastructures for scholarly communication. By deploying theoretical literature on science and technology studies, care ethics, and the commons, the book critically interrogates open access and reimagines a more ethical future for researcher-led publishing. A case study of Plan S – the multi-funder European policy for open access publishing – explores its tendency to rehearse all the failures of commercialisation. Through critical engagement with the open access landscape, the book reveals the shortcomings of market-centric and policy-based approaches to open access book and journal publishing, particularly their tendency to reinforce conservatism, commercialism, and private control of publishing. Going forward, the book explores the importance of collectivity and democratic governance within the transition to open access publishing. It suggests that developing a commons-based, scholar-led publishing landscape through a series of presses that are each managed by working academics could offer a productive counterpoint to marketised systems of open access and subscription publishing. In weaving themselves together in order to "scale small" these publishing initiatives would act as a counter-hegemonic project based on mutual reliance and care. By illustrating how these projects build toward a commons-based publishing future, and how they may complement other approaches to publishing within university presses and libraries, the book culminates in an argument for the infrastructures, policies, and forms of governance needed to nurture such a collective vision. Sam’s book, which I am glad to say is available as an open-access ebook alongside the paperback, is the subject of our conversation. Stephen Pinfield is Professor of Information Services Management at the University of Sheffield, UK, and Senior Research Fellow at the Research on Research Institute (RoRI). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Object-Based Learning: Exploring Museums and Collections in Education (UCL Press, 2025), Thomas Kador provides a concise overview of some of the most important approaches to material culture and object analysis in plain and easily understandable language that is equally accessible to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as lecturers. Click here for an open access version of this book. This book is organised in a clear and easy-to-follow way, each chapter is filled with practical case studies, exercises and several diagrams to illustrate important arguments and approaches. The succinct and practically focused discussion of the main issues relating to exhibiting objects and curatorial practice, brings together diverse but complementary topics such as the history of collecting, understanding audiences, accessibility, digital media, technologies and ethics. Each chapter includes learning objectives, questions and exercise boxes, case studies and further readings and resources. This conversation references Bridget Whearty's New Books Network interview about Digital Codicology; click here to listen. Thomas Kador also mentions the website Closer to Van Eyck, available here. Thomas Kador is Associate Professor in Creative Health at UCL Arts & Sciences, where he leads the Masters (MASc) in Creative Health programme. Prior to this, he was Teaching Fellow in Public and Cultural Engagement with UCL's Museums and Collections, with a particular focus on Object-based Learning (OBL), working across the UCL collections. With a background spanning chemical engineering and cultural heritage (archaeology and museums), Thomas is particularly interested in the relationship between culture, nature and health. He has published widely on object-based learning, student wellbeing and experiential learning spaces, has been instrumental in delivering UCL's Object-based Learning Laboratory and in developing the world's first MASc in Creative Health postgraduate taught programme. Jen Hoyer is Technical Services and Electronic Resources Librarian at CUNY New York City College of Technology. She is co-author of What Primary Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Classroom (2022) and The Social Movement Archive (2021), and co-editor of Armed By Design: Posters and Publications of Cuba’s Organization of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia, and Latin America (2025). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Every year, NBN speaks with the president of AUPresses in anticipation of University Press Week. This year, press week will take place from November 10 through the 14th, with the theme: #TeamUP. To celebrate, I’m thrilled to have Dennis Lloyd, director of the University of Wisconsin Press, and president of the Association of University Presses, on the podcast. Learn more about UP Week here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices