BOOK REVIEW / CRITIQUE DE LIVRE

Ivins, T. & Pemberton A. **How to write and get published: a practical guide for librarians.** London, UK: Rowman & Littlefield; 2019. Softcover: 147 p. ISBN: 978-1-5381-1685-2 Price: $65 CDN. Available from:
https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538116852/How-to-Write-and-Get-Published-A-Practical-Guide-for-Librarians

Librarians are an integral part of the academic publishing world and are often the bridge between publishers and consumers. Through our patrons, we can be, and have been, involved in different parts of publishing. This can be in a supportive capacity (providing access via subscriptions or databases), in a partnership capacity (co-authorship on systematic reviews), in a teaching capacity (information literacy and academic writing), or in an academic capacity (authoring papers for the library and information sciences (LIS) field). Publishing and scholarly communication is on the radar of all librarians.

Due to the diverse landscape of public, academic, and special librarians, not everyone's work or job description includes scholarly writing or publishing. Yet, the diversity in our work is what strengthens our profession. A Practical Guide for Librarians is a series of sixty-four titles on a potpourri of different library topics. This title, *How to Write and Get Published*, is number 60. This book aims to encourage and persuade the reader that their voice is important and that other librarians would benefit from their contribution. It is written for librarians in any stage of their career.

Tammy Ivins is an online and distance education librarian at the University of North Carolina Wilmington with an impressive publication history. Having completed her LIS degree in 2011, she proudly wears the title of early-career librarian. Anne Pemberton is the associate director of research and instructional services and library assessment at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She has been working as a librarian since 2000. Combined, the authors have written dozens of publications, including book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles.

In this book, the authors combine their publishing experiences and offer practical and accessible techniques to prepare and encourage librarians to publish successfully. Their view is that publishing keeps you engaged and updated in the profession and enhances professional success in a way that reading articles alone does not. It is broken down into 3 parts and 11 chapters. The 3 parts are titled “Should I really do this?” “Okay, I’m ready to try writing,” and “Oh my gosh, I’ve really written something!” The writing style is conversational and casual, making it an easy and accessible read.

Each chapter begins with a short bulleted list (often in question format) of what the reader should expect from the content and ends with a paragraph that summarizes key points, small activities, notes that highlight resources mentioned, and references. Larger activities are at the end of the book in an appendix and referenced in the text when recommended.

This book is not about research methodology or academic writing. It is about the process of writing, which includes deciding to write, maintaining motivation to write, and having candid conversations with your co-authors. The content is interspersed with all-around good advice, such as taking minutes during meetings with co-authors to facilitate proper communication and work distribution, overcoming writer's block by “eating that frog,” and what editors look for when reviewing manuscripts.

Ivins and Pemberton have done a great job of dispersing good advice throughout the entire text, which has made it difficult to select the best chapters. The chapters with the most practical advice are Chapter 4: Getting Started through Conferences, where they explain how to find conferences, what the different types of conferences are, writing conference proposals, creating presentations and how to budget for a conference; and Chapter 5: Getting Organized, which includes tips on organizing a project as well as self-organization. In addition, Chapter 7: Writing It includes several common grammar traps in the English language and an overview of writing-adjacent activities, such as citation management and crafting expert tables.
How to build professional relationships that could lead to co-authorship is one part in the writing process that Ivins and Pemberton do not address. I imagine making these types of relationships might be easier in an environment where librarians work together. What about the solo librarian or the geographically distant one? I would have liked to see practical advice and examples of that happening, along with the inspiration and guidance other chapters provided.

This title can be read cover-to-cover, as I did. However, it would likely be best experienced alongside an actual project. Each chapter concludes with resources and appendices designed to help the reader through a particular dilemma in the writing process. One strange idiosyncrasy in the book is that the appendices are referred to inconsistently. In-text references are done using numbers, while each appendix is assigned a letter in the back of the book. This is a simple issue to resolve, as the numbers correlate directly to the alphabet, with 1 referring to appendix A, 2 to appendix B, and so on.

This is not a textbook. It is a tool for helping the reader complete their work. This book contains information that would otherwise be considered unwritten rules. Much of its contents are embedded knowledge regarding scholarly activity and publishing which are not explicitly taught in the classroom. As a new librarian with an interest in scholarly publishing, I found that this book covered topics that I was forced to learn independently, as well as topics I have yet to come into contact with. It provides advice in a way that encourages the reader to write, despite thoughts or doubts that tell us otherwise.

Overall, this book delivers a succinct overview of practical writing and publishing information with plenty of “awesome verbiage,” as the authors call it. For the librarian well versed in publishing, this information will seem like common sense. For the librarian needing baseline knowledge, this book will cover several topics in the writing process in a judgment-free way.

## Statement of Competing Interests

No competing interests declared.

### Amanda Caputo

Health Informationist, Sault Area Hospital, Sault Ste. Marie, ON. Email: caputoa@sah.on.ca