Feature Articles

An Interview with Andrew P Jackson
by Sarah Buck, Continuations Bibliographer

YBP has begun to supply Greenwood’s databases along with e-Reference works from other publishers. Academia spoke with Andrew P Jackson about his experience in forming the African American Experience Database from Greenwood. Andrew P. Jackson is director of the Langston Hughes Community Library in New York City, and former president of the ALA’s Black Caucus.

I was approached by Greenwood when I was president [of the ALA’s Black Caucus] to recommend a team of librarians, historians, and academics to provide assistance and advice to Greenwood on developing a database, and I also functioned as the lead spokesperson on the panel. I know a number of people – academics, professors, and librarians- who teach and lecture in Africana Studies and cultural diversity, an area in which I also specialize. These are the people that I recommended to Greenwood, and from the recommendations they pulled together a panel of 8 to 10 of us who were interested in working on the project. A lot of this project involved looking at the format, design, and material of what was included in the database, and providing advice on areas that needed to be strengthened. We reviewed the database as researchers and librarians to make recommendations on how to perfect the database and make it more usable.

We did. We made a lot of recommendations, and our voices were welcomed. To me that’s what is needed in more products like this - to get people working in our profession involved from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought when it’s already complete and there’s nothing you can do with it.

We were very pleased working with the technicians and the computer people and the staff of Greenwood publishing to create a great product that can be used by a broad range of people. It’s a good online research tool for anyone who uses it, be it middle schools, high schools, colleges, universities, people working on PhDs, theses, dissertations, or just people who like to study and go into databases, and just keep going deeper and deeper into a product. I think it’s very rewarding and provides the information that users are looking for, as well as the information I’m recommending to my students.

The main resources used for the database were those that had been previously published by Greenwood. We needed to be able to narrow these down into categories. When you’re doing research, you’re looking for particular subjects or specific topics, whether it’s Ancient African history or African-American history. We would make recommendations as if we were doing the research, going through the database to find information that we needed for a particular answer on a particular subject. The people who made these recommendations have that broad range of experience - they were academic librarians, public librarians, and professors. They all had an interest in African-American and Africana Studies, so together they had a broad range of experience in teaching and making these types of recommendations to us, too. That made it easy to look at it in a practical way; we asked ourselves, "How are we going to approach this as users?"

I think middle school students could use it, but it would be preferable for high school students, based on the level of material that’s in the database. I’m sure that students even in middle school have teachers who can guide them, because middle school students are very savvy in using computers. So the skills are already there. Whether they know the fine qualities of how to search, that’s another question. But I think the guidance of a teacher would enable them to use it.

If users out there are going to use this product for their own research and inquiry, and they find that there’s something missing, not covered thoroughly, or needs to be improved - or even if they come up with a new idea - they should let Greenwood know. One of the reasons I keep in contact with Greenwood is that whenever I use the database and I see something that I think would be a good idea, I call them and I recommend changes. If people using the product would like to make recommendations, my advice is to look at the table of contents to find the contact for Greenwood publications and make the recommendation for the next edition. I was at a Library conference this past January in Seattle and I was sitting down with another product, looking at what they were doing and I saw some things that I thought would be a great idea for Greenwood, and they’re already working on it. They like the idea that I continually come up with suggestions with which they can improve the product that’s already on the market, or improve the next edition. That makes a difference to me when you’re dealing with a publishing company, because to many publishing companies once it’s out, that’s it, it’s finished, the project is over, they don’t want to hear from you anymore. Greenwood is just the opposite; they’re always looking to improve their products and they welcome the ideas that come from the public on what can be used or included in the product. That’s a different relationship when you’re talking about being part of a team; the team is always working on it and I still feel like I’m part of that design team.

http://www.ybp.com/ereference/greenwood/index.htm