Very, very thoughtful feedback. I can absolutely see, in retrospect, that your points are almost universally on point.

As I mentioned, the publicity generated re: “Perils” had caught me not a little by surprise. Here at UNC, we complete a Master’s Paper (not technically a thesis). The requirements are very different, largely because the program requires a comprehensive exam as well as a rigorous schedule. To view my paper as a thesis is a little misleading, although that in no way exacerbates any errors on my part. Rest assured that I meant in no way to impune the origins or motives of the JMLA…I’m _very_ pleased to find out that you are available via PubMed central. I can only say that I am not sure how I missed that fact.

I will be certain to make the appropriate changes during any revision of the paper. I do hope to work this into a journal publication, but lately my interest has been drawn into thoughts about whether or not the paper “counts” as published. Certainly I do not believe that any tenure committee would accept posting on my blog as “publication” and most of my recent writing has been in this realm. I’m beginning to view the paper on the blog as a “call for comments” or something of that nature. I do believe that the central thesis of the paper (that the ALA is saying one thing, and doing another) is solid, and if I have weakened my argument by including the JMLA (which it now appears to me that I have) then it is to my detriment. I will rectify that in further versions. I do not have a good answer as to how myself, and the myriad of other readers (including the nearly hundred email replies I’ve recieved through my blog) missed some of these points. Currently I can only guess that it was in the haste of the completion of the degree. I certainly did not intend to misrepresent the JMLA.

1) The footnote refers back to the sentence that reads “There are seven journals that are connected in some manner to ALA…” In that context, the footnote can only be interpreted to mean that while JMLA is not a product of one of the divisions or sections, it is still a product of ALA. I repeat, the JMLA is not now nor has it ever been in any way connected to ALA.

2) In the paragraph that follows the list of journals you will be analyzing, you say that you “took these as a representative sample of scholarly ALA publications.” How is the reader to deduce from this that JMLA is not an ALA publication?

3) The intro paragraph to your chart states, “it seems enlightening to compare and contrast the various copyright licenses of the ALA journals in question…” Again, this clearly implies that JMLA is an ALA journal.

4) Appendix 1 is titled: ALA Copyright policies. The JMLA copyright license agreement is included with nothing to differentiate it from the others.

5) Your introductory paragraph to Chapter Five says that you will turn your “eye towards the ALA itself, and examine a list of its more popular serial publications” and you end that paragraph by saying that you will now “turn to an examination of the scholarly journals of the ALA.” There is nothing here to indicate that you are looking at non-ALA journals.

6) Nowhere do you mention the existence of the Medical Library Association. In your email you say you included JMLA because you wanted to show the differences in copyright statements in academic library journals — but the entire thrust and focus of your argument is about the ALA, and nowhere in the paper do you suggest that you included the JMLA as an example of an academic library journal published by a different entity.

Page 32, footnote #1…introduction of journal choices:

“[1] They are either publications of divisions or sections of the ALA. The sole exception of this, to the best of my knowledge, is the Journal of the Medical Library Association. ”

I was aware of the distinction you made, and was very careful to point out that the JMLA is not a publication of the ALA. It was largely included in order to have further examples of copyright statements to draw from in order to show the differences in copyright statements in academic library journals. I will attempt to be more clear in the revision of my paper for publication as to the state of the JMLA as a seperate entity (I assume that the above statement was either missed in your reading, or you did not believe that it was clear enough. In either case, I should be more clear).