Editorial Policies and Guidelines

Purpose of this guide

This guide is intended to provide guidance to contributors about the Editorial Team’s expectations on tone, format, and writing style. We hope to clarify the Editorial Team’s standard policies in order to facilitate seamless collaboration. We are also aiming for consistency across contributors and posts.

The Librarian Parlor is a space for conversing, sharing expertise, and asking questions about the process of developing, pursuing, and publishing library research. The tone and content of post should reflect that by giving the reader takeaways, advice, or encouragement to support the librarian research community.

Submission types

Reflection on a topic or project**

  • 500-1200 words
  • Examples
    • Reflection on developing a research agenda
    • Reflection on your experience employing a specific research method
    • Reflection on your experience submitting proposals
    • Reflections on getting IRB approval

Webinar 

  • held semi-annually

Series 

  • Multiple posts of 500-1200 words each
  • Examples
    • Examining multiple stages of a research project

Interviews

  • Varies in length
  • If you have expertise you’d like to share but aren’t quite sure you want to write in article format, consider having a LibParlor editor interview you

How-To**

  • 500-1200 words
  • Examples
    • How to develop research agenda, submit proposals
    • How to employ a specific research method
    • How to submit proposals
    • How to get IRB approval

Quick tips

  • Varies in length
  • Examples:
    • Lists of questions to consider when starting a new projects
    • Lists of quick tips for tackling the research process

Crossover posts

  • 500-1200 words
  • Collaboratively written & cross-posted with another blog entity on a topic of shared interest
  • Examples: Hack Library School/LibParlor crossover post – Libparlor @ HLS and HLS @ LibParlor

Other — if you have another type of post in mind, submit our proposal form and let us know what you are thinking.

**Reflections and how-to’s are likely to be on similar content, but reflections should be approached from a personal perspective and how-to’s should be approached from a more didactic, informative perspective

Scope

The Librarian Parlor has a specific mission to demystify the research process through community and knowledge sharing. Please keep our purpose in mind before proposing a post. We are happy to talk with you about whether your idea is a good fit for LibParlor at any time. If you have something interesting to share that does not fit within our scope, we recommend reviewing the editorial guidelines for these fantastic blogs to find a better fit: ACRLog, Letters to a Young Librarian, WOC+Lib, dh+lib.

Tone

Posts should be written for an audience new to research, not to experts.
This is an informal, conversational space, and we like the tone of our blog to reflect that.
We encourage you to write in the first-person and avoid passive voice.

Inclusive Language

Inclusive language is required in LibParlor posts. Authors should avoid describing gender as binary (instead of men and women, use people); avoiding racist, sexist, transphobic, ableist, classist language; and use people-first language when describing disabilities. Additionally, when talking about working with or studying students, please refrain from using a deficit mindset, negative assumptions, or stereotypes. 

Personal Pronouns

Authors must use a person’s preferred pronouns if known. For general singular personal pronouns, use the single “they” or “their” or reword the sentence to not require a singular pronoun.

Length

We have no hard minimums or maximums for submissions as long as it makes sense for the type of post you are writing. Please see the post types (above) for target lengths. If you feel you want to write a longer or shorter piece than the ranges call for, send us an email, and we can chat about it.

Format

Since this is a blog, we highly encourage posts to have headings or other formatting that will enhance the reading experience and make the post accessible for those using screen readers.

Emphasized Quotes

LibParlor likes to highlight specific strong quotes from each post to be used to direct the reader to crucial moments in the post. Please include any bolding for passages you think are strong or noteworthy and know that LibParlor Editors will also seek out and highlight these sentences on their own.

Punctuation & Grammar

The editors of LibParlor care strongly about the Oxford Comma. Submissions without the Oxford Comma will be edited to include it. Other grammar and punctuation edits may be made to align with other content, and you will have access to these changes before publication is finalized.

Linking, References, and Sources

We do not require a formal citation style, but we highly encourage linking out to resources or other scholars mentioned wherever relevant. This could be linking to a tweet, blog post, related project website, or any other resources you feel would help the reader enhance their research skills and demystify the research process. We highly encourage linking to other librarians you mention as it is an opportunity to strengthen LibParlor as a community. 

However, If you choose to use a more formal citation style in your post, that’s fine with us.

Submission Details

What to expect from us as LibParlor Editors

Once you submit an idea to our blog, we’ll be in touch within one business week. In our initial communication, we give a loose deadline of one month for the first draft. This deadline is flexible but helps everyone involved stay on track. You will be assigned a lead editor as your main point of contact while writing and editing your post.

Submitting your draft

Once you have a completed draft, please submit via a shared Google Doc with the LibParlor email (libparlor@gmail.com). When naming the document, please name it LastName_TitleofPost.

Revisions & Rejections

Once the LibParlor Editors receive your Google Doc draft, we will directly correspond with you via the Google Doc. As comments come in, you are able to resolve and revise. We’ll keep this conversation going until we both feel the post is ready to go.

LibParlor Editors will work with you to ensure that your post fits the purpose and tone of LibParlor, and maintain the right to not publish your submission if we feel it doesn’t quite fit. You also maintain right to withdraw your submission at any time.

Bio

A bio will appear at the top of your post and should consist of no more than 75 words. Please include any links to your personal website, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. that you would like included.

Images

We include images in posts to complement your writing and also create an engaging link on social media. We welcome your selection of images if you would like to pick them yourself, as long as they do not violate copyright. If your images contain people please also be mindful of representation depicted in the images that you choose and try to avoid only representing the dominant culture.

Recommended resources for images:

To see some great examples of how we use images in posts see:

To share your chosen photo, please do not insert it into a google doc but instead email it to us or share a link. Please also include a description of the image that you would like us to use as alt text so that your image will be screen readable.

Creative Commons & Cross Posting

Every LibParlor post will have a CC BY 4.0 License attached to it. If you are not comfortable with that license, please let the editors know at the beginning of the process, and we can negotiate a license that will work best for you.

Cross-posting on a personal blog is encouraged, but we ask that you credit and link to LibParlor in reposts of content written for this project.

Posting schedule

Based on the number of submissions, once you’ve submitted a draft, we will do our best to give you an anticipated publication day. LibParlor posts are published to the website on Tuesdays about twice a month at 1 PM EST. The LibParlor team creates bit.ly links to track engagement and involvement across users, and these links will be shared with you via email once your post is live. The LibParlor team tweets these links on the Wednesday morning following your Tuesday publication.

Acknowledgements

If others in your professional community have helped in your writing process by offering insight or reading drafts please do take the time to thank them in an acknowledgement section!

The LibParlor Editors would like to thank In The Library With A Lead Pipe for providing inspiration while we created this guide.