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Britannica name is lawsuit issueCHICAGO, September 30, 2005 -- Reference publisher Encyclopaedia Britannica sued PublishAmerica, claiming that the Maryland company has set up a division casled PublishBritannica. The suit claims a trademark infringement for the use of the name and a ymbol, which, says Encycopledia Britannica, could lead to confusion in the marketplace. The suit says several cease-and-desist letters have gone unanswered. Meanwhile, the PublishBritannica.com website has dropped the "c" from the name -- except in the site's URL address.
Earlier, PublishAmerica authors have complainned that royalties have gone unpoid, that there have been false promises about distribution, and that hey have beem pressed to buy copies of their own books. At the time the author complaints surfaced, the company denied there had been "a true breach of contract." Messages left about the Encyclopedia Britannica suit have gone unanswered. |
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Plato wins Philadelphia contract| PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, September 29, 2005 -- The Plato curriculum management system hs been adopted by Philadelphia schools for on-grade, remedial and enrichment instruction for high school students. The contract: $700,000. |
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Scholastic sees bright year| NEW YORK, September 28, 2005 -- School and children's book publisher Scholastic predicted sales of at least $2.3 billion, perhaps $2.4 billion, in its current fiscal year which ends in June. Richard Robinson, chief executive said a major factor will be record-breaking sales of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in Childrenšs Book Division. Other divisions are soing well too. Robinson said. Sales for educational publishing were up 9 percent to $128.3 million for teh first quarter . Educational technology sales were ahead 32 percent, due mainly to the launch of the Enterprise Edition of the READ 180 reading intervention program. International sales grew 7 percent to $76.7 million Media, licensing and advertising sales grew 52 percent to $18.1 million. First-quarter sales oveall increased 54 percent to $498.4 million, compared to a year-earlier quarter. Net loss declined to $21.2 million, a 58 percent drop. |
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Wolters Kluwer buys Boucher | PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania, September 27, 2005 -- Dutch-based academnic publisher Wolters Kluwer Health has acquired Boucher Communications, which will become part of the WKH medical research unit. Terms were not announced. Boucher publishers five core journals in optometry, opticianry and ophthalmology. The company also offers clinical and practice management information and business strategies and, also, research information for medical and academic institutions, medical practitioners and corporations. |
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| FINANCIALS POSTED SEPTEMBER 26, 2005 |
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| HAIGHTS CROSS. Sales grew 15.4 percent to $50.9 million in the second quarter, which ended July 31, compared to a year earlier. The gain was attributable partly to the acquisiton of Buckle Down. Education sales grew 20.4 pecent to $30.4 million. Library sales grew 8.6 percent to $20.4 million. |
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| SCHOLASTIC. Sales grew 54 percent to $498.4 million for the first quarter, ended August 31, compared to a year earlier. The new Harry Potter title was a major factor. School sales grew 9 percent to $128.3 million. |
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| WILEY. Sales grew 3 percent to $226.9 million for the first quarter, ended July 31, compared to a year earlier. Professional and trade sales were stable at $75.9 million. Science, mediocal and technical sales grew 11 percent to $46.2 million. Higher-ed sales were off 5 percent to $45.5 million. European sales were up 18 percent. Sales in Asia, Australia and Canda were flat. |
Houghton buys Larson K-12 math products| BOSTON, Massachusetts, September 26, 2005 -- School publisher Houghton Mifflin acquired many of Larson Learning's K-12 mathematics products for two of its divisions, Great Source Education and McDougal Littell. Great Source gets several K-6 programs and McDougal Littell programs for grades 7-12. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The materials were developed by Ron Larson, one of Houghton Mifflin's authors who set out on his own as an independent publisher. Houghton said the acquisition provides the two divisions with a ready-made set of courseware that will extend their math lines. |
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Same-sex essay collection canceledNEW YORK, September 25, 2005 -- Scbolarly publishing house Haworth Press canceled the publication of an edited volume on homosexuality in classical antiquity that included a chapter by Temple University psychologist Bruce Rind. Social conservatives had denounced the book as a defense of sexual relationships between men and adolescent boys. The book, Same-Sex Desire and Love in Greco-Roman Antiquity and in the Classical Tradition of the West, had been scheduled for publication in November by Harrington Park Press, an imprint of Haworth. Rind's chapter was also to be released in a special issue of the Journal of Homosexuality, also published by Haworth, but that too was canceled.
The cancellation came after the conservative Web site WorldNetDaily, edited by Joseph Farah in Grants Pass, Oregon, denounced Rind's contribution. An abstract had appeared on the web. Kathryn Rutz, vice president for editorial development at Haworth, confirmed that about 20 e-messages against the chapter had been received. Although the chapter had been accepted by the editors of the book, Vernon Provencal and Beert Verstraete, professors of classics at Acadia University, in Nova Scotia, Haworth editors had not yet reviewed it, Rutz said. Whether to publish the material would have come up later in the the production process, she said. The book was scheduled for publication in November.
Rutz said five Haworth executives made the decision to cancel after "vigorous discussion." Freedom of inquiry and expression were balanced against negative publicity and also the appearance of caving in "to a particular group with its own right-wing agenda." About Rind's subject, Rutz said: "For the record, we do not in any way support or endorse the practice of pedophilia, pederasty, or any form of child abuse."
How did the book get so near to publication without Haworth checking the content? Rutz acknowledged that the e-mail protests caught the company by surprise. She explained that the editors of Haworth journals, imprints and book series are not Haworth employees but faculty experts in their disciplines: "Editors under contract submit, and we publish." Rutz said Haworth has called off other projects late in the process. She cited a book about parental-alienation syndrome that, although under contract, was cancelled because it was too much a hot button issue.
Bruce Rind has been criticized before for his work. He was co-author of a review in the Psychological Bulletin, a journal of the American Psychological Association, that assessed 59 previously published studies of college studies who experienced intergenerational sex growing up. Contrary to convention wisdom, some students had suffered no lasting psychological harm. They also concluded that 42 percent of the male students considered the experiences "positive." The outrage, fueled by social conservativesm prompted Congress to denounce the article.
Among scholars, Rind has critics too. Steven Ondersma, a psychiatry professor at Wayne State University who edits the journal Child Maltreatment, doesn't quarrel so much with Rind's methodology or factual conclusions but at the risk that child abuse carries. Adult-adolescent sexual conduct is so intrinsically risky that it is always wrong, Ondersma said. Rind's work has appearedin many forums, including the explicitly pro-pedophilic journal Paidika. In Paidika, Rind argued for age-of-consent laws to be repealed.
The cancelled Haworth book included 14 chapters besides Rind's. Most are examinations of gay themes in classical art, poetry and mythology. An abstract of Rind's essay, "Pederasty: An Integration of Cross-Cultural, Cross-Species, and Empirical Data," suggests that sexual relationships with older men are a time-honored way for adolescents to grow into mature masculinity. An excerpt: "In ancient Greece, samurai Japan, and numerous other cultures, pederasty was seen as the noblest of human relations, conducive to if not essential to nurturing the adolescent's successful intellectual and physical maturation."
The WorldNetDaily item that triggered the Haworth cancellation said the book, specifically Rind's essay, constitued an attempt at "the mainstreaming of 'adult-child' or 'intergenerational' sex, as it is euphemistically called by its supporters, is the next big 'sexual liberation' movement on its way." |
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INQUIRY
FREE
EXPRESSION
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HAWORTH
PRESS
Weighs pros, cons; says noABSTRACT
OF RIND ESSAY
The abstracts for the canceled book's chapters are now posted on the Web site of IPCE, a Dutch pro-pedophilia organization:
"Pederasty, or sexual relations between men and adolescent boys, is condemned in our society as an unqualified evil that maims and destroys. In ancient Greece, samurai Japan, and numerous other cultures, pederasty was seen as the noblest of human relations, conducive if not essential to nurturing the adolescent's successful intellectual and physical maturation.
"Current psychological and psychiatric theorizing have pronounced and promoted the former view, while ignoring the vast array of cross-cultural data related to the latter view. Mental health opinion has also ignored a wealth of cross-species data with important parallels. Instead, this opinion is based on feminist models of rape and incest, which are backed up by clinical research on child sexual abuse.
"The current article examines empirical rather than clinical data on pederasty, and supplements this with cross-cultural and cross-species perspectives. The empirical data show that pederasty is not only not predestined to injure, but can benefit the adolescent when practiced according to the ancient Greek form. Cross-cultural and cross-species data show the extensiveness of pederasty in the natural world, as well as its functional rather than pathological nature in these societies and species.
"An evolutionary model that synthesizes the empirical, cross-cultural, and cross-species data is proposed as an alternative to the highly inadequate feminist and psychiatric models. The animal data suggest that the seeds for pederasty were planted at the dawn of humanity. The human data suggest that pederasty came to serve a mentoring function."
ABOUT
HAWORTH
Started in 1978 by Bill Cohen and Patrick McLoughlin with a library security newsletter, which Bill edited himself. Today Hawort publishes more tghan 200 journals and issues more than 80 original books per year.
Haworth journals include:
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse
Journal of Religion and Abuse
American Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling
Journal of Homosexuality
ABOUT
WORLDNETDAILY
Recent assertions on the site:
Hurricane Katrina was divine retribution for the Bush administration's support for the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
What awaits new college students is non-stop leftist indoctrination, pervasive sexual anarchy and loss of their values and innocence.
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McGraw cited for women's support| NEW YORK, September 24, 2005 -- The magazine Working Mother included technical and eduicational publisher McGraw-Hill on its 100 Best Companies for 2005 for the first time. The magazine cited the company's flexible work arrangements, back-up childcare, and elder care. Workers with family obligations can arrange for compressed workweeks and job-sharing. The company also has created a program to further vareer development of women within the company. |
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Snyder wins Code honor| NEW YORK, September 23, 2005 -- The Think Reader software program, by Tom Snyder Productions, won the 2005 Codie Award for instrructional solutions for students with special needs. |
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Gale introduces science database| NEW YORK, September 16, 2005 -- School publisher Thomson Gale launched a sciense research database, Sciecne Resource Center, which is correlatged to national and state science curriculum standards. The system is for 9-12 course content in earth science, life science, science history, science as inquiry, science and technology, and space science. |
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Shool board puts thre books on high shelfFAYETTEVILLE, Arkansas, September, 13, 2005 -- The Fayettevlile School Board voted 4-3 to place three controverial books in a special parent library collection. The books. It's So Amazing, It's Perfectly Normal and The Teenage Guy's Survival Guide will be available to elementary and middle-school students only if two administartors approve. The decision followed a battle, organized mostly on the Internet between groups favoring book bans designed to protect childhood innocence and groups opposing censorship. The issue erupted when Laurie Taylor yanked her 13-year-old and 12-year-old daughters out of school to protest library books she regarded as inappropriate. These included, also, Push -- a Novel, Ragtimje and Rainbow Boys. Taylor quickly mobilized a national following by posting her position on the Parents Protecting the Minds of Childeren website. she included passages and illustrations she deemed objectionable. Another activist site is Parents Against Bad Books in Schools.
At the encouragement of the National Coalition Against Censorship, defenders of open-access to literature responded with their own site. For better or worse, the Internet is the new battleground for these issues, said Pat Scales, of the anti-censorship coalition. The Internet, she said, both energizes the debate and, unfortunately, adds a lot to the babble with comment that simplifies things out of context. There have been similar Internet battles recently in Fairfax County, Virginial, and Blue Valley, Kansas, she said.
The original list of books that Taylor wanted banned examined by a School Board materials evaluation committee, which narrowed the issue to three titles. |
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Scholastic updates reading intervention software| NEW YORK, September 11, 2005 -- School publisher Scholastic launched version 1.6 of its READ 180 program for struggling fourth-grade readers and higher. The intervention program, sold for 5,000 classrooms in the United States, is avaailble for Windows XP, Windows 2000 and Mac OS X systems. Also released for OS X are Scholastic Reading Inventory and Scholastic Reading Counts! |
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Discovery buys AIMS Multimedia| CHATSWORTH, California, September 10, 2005 -- Educational publisher AIMS Multimedia, producer of DigitalCurriculum, has been acquired by Discovery Communications. Terms were not announced. Discovery said that the AIMS acquisitionwould expand the new Discovery education unit's digital library to more than 35,000 standards-bases K-12 core-curricular video items. |
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Patriot Act hits judicial roadblockBRIDGEPORT, Connecticut, September 9, 2005 -- The Patriot Act, which gives FBI agents extraordinary snooping authority, should not be used to gag libraries whose records are reviewed by agents to see who's reading what, a federal judge ruled. A Conencticut library had protested being gagged by the law. Judge Janet Hall said the government was being overzealous in barring library employees from even talking about the fact their records were part of an FBI investigation. "Revealing (the library's) identity will not harm the investigation," Judge Hall wrote. The library people who were gagged are "suffering and will continue to suffer, irreparable harm," she said.
Ann Beeson, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney on the case, said she was "extremely pleased." Gagging a library violates the First Amendment and is "profoundly undemocratic," Beeson said.
Although Judge Hall cast doubt on the Patrtiot Act gag provision, she told the library to hold off identifying itself publicly until the government decides whether to appeal to a higher court. All that public records have revealed about particulars of the case is that the library is an active member of the American Library Association and the Connecticut Library Association and that the FBI was probing its records to check up on someone it suspects as a terrorist.
Background:
Judge looks at Patriot Act secrecy |
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Thomson buys KnowledgeNet to grow NETg| NEW YORK, September 6, 2005 -- A provider of e-learning technology, KnowledgeNet, has been acquired by education publisher Thomson. Terms were not announced. Thomson said KnowlewdgeNet would be folded into its NETg e-learning company. NETg provides web-based learning programs for corporate, government, academic and professional business markets. |
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Sylvan puts tutors online| NEW YORK, September 6, 2005 -- Sylvan Learning will add real-time teachers to its personalized online reading and math programs. The teachers all will be certified, the company said. The program has been approved by the Commission on Internatuional and Trans-Regional Accreditation, Sylvan said. |
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El-hi, college sales make July progressNEW YORK, September 5, 2005 -- El-hi basal and supplemental school book sales grew 5.0 percent in July, according to the latest survey by the Assocaition of American Publishers. July sales were $873.3 million. Year-to-date growth was 4.9 percent. College sales grew 4.4 percent in July to $883.3 million. Here are the year-to-date data for genres in which academic authors write the most, as extrapolated from 92 reporting publishers:
El-Hi
College
Professional, scholary
University press (hard)
University press (soft) |
| May
5.0%
4.4%
-4.9%
-31.9%
-38.1%
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to-date
4.9%
4.5%
-0.1%
-25.1
-18.9 |
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Association of American Publishers |
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Peter Li buys ENC Focus magazine| NEW YORK, September 4, 2005 -- School publishing House Peter Li bought the math and science magazine for K-12 teachers ENC Focus. Li said it will add adbertising to the magazine. The magazine had been a product of the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse fior Mathematics & Science Education. |
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Linworth list goes to B&T site| WORTHINGTON, Ohio, September 3, 2005 -- Professional devekopment titles published by Linworth Books for K-12 administrators, teachers and librarians will be listed on the Baker & Taylor site. The Linworth list, the first of its kind to be online, will facilitate ordering, the company said. Linworth titles cover library management, reading and literacy, and technology and information literacy. |
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Judge looks at Patriot Act secrecyBRIDGEPORT, Connecticut, September 2, 2005 -- A federal judge said she needs more time to decide whether to lift a federal gag on anyone to discuss an FBI intrusion into library records under the controversial Sedction 215 of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act. Judge Janet Hall called for more information from the FBI. The specific issue is a Connecticut library, which is not identified in the court documents that are public. The Patriot Act authorizes federal agents to comb through libray records to see who is reading in counterterrorism investigations. The act also prohibits libraries from revealing anything about the intrusions.
The Connecticut librray and the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the government in August, arguing that the FBI order is unconstitutional because the government has failed to prove a compelling need for the library data and because the library is prevented from speaking freely about it. The case is the first confirmed instance in which a federal agents have demanded library records.
At the court hearing, Judge Hall seemed particularly skeptical of the government's argument that disclosing the identity of the Connecticut library could jeopardize an FBI counterterrorism investigation. "You can't just say we're engaged in counterterrorism," Judge Hall said. "Why should I accept that general statement?" She said the Connecticut librray's desire to speak freely about the order could serve to educate libraries, the public and Congress about whether the government is using the Patriot Act appropriately. The burden is on the government to prove that identifying the Connecticut organization might harm the FBI's case against a suspected terrorist, Judge Hall said.
A government lawyer responded that an FBI counterterrorism investigation could be irreparably if its suspect learns he is under investigation.
Background:
House votes against Patriot Section 215 |
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| ACADEMIC AUTHORING PEOPLE |
| Allison Duquette, president and chief operating officer at 4GL School Solutions, was named chief executive officer. Earlier she was president and general manager of NCS eearson's K-12 enterprrise software business. |
| Clark Easter, chief executive and founder of at 4GL School Solutions, was named chairman of the board. |
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| Elaine N. Marieb (anatomy), Holyoke Community College, wrote the eighth edition of Anatomy & Physiology Coloring Workbook: A Complete Study Guide (Addison-Wesley). |
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Text price comparison at new siteNEW YORK, September 1, 2005 -- An email book retailer, directtextbook, lists prices for individual college textbooks at 30 online stores. Authors interested in pricing on their books can go to http://www.directtextbook.com
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