From: Nancy Bo Flood <wflood_at_hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:16:24 -0700

Roseanne, I enjoyed your examples of fact-checking which reflect this profession's pa ssion to be accurate. Also, how surprising it often is that what one thi nks "everyone must know...pick-up trucks have backseats," can be regional knowledge.

Regarding the reading of reviews, one comment, which is to keep in mind , who does this reviewer represent? For whom do they speak? A publicati on, an organization, or their own self? This point circles back to reg ionalism but also audience and community. One aspect of the power of revie ws posted on blogs, each person's voice becomes part of the public forum. Interesting how we have returned to the old practice in an electronic for mat of speaking on a soap box at the town square to whomever will listen.

Nancy Bo Flood

Navajo Year, Walk Through Many Seasons, Children's Choice, ALA Notable Social Science Book, Arizona Book of the Year

Sand to Stone, the Life Cycle of Sandstone Warriors in the Crossfire NEWYoung Adult novel set on the island of Saipan during WWII

Date: Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:33:52 -0800 From: rosanneparry_at_comcast.net Subject: Re:
 reviews and reviewing, anonymous and otherwise To: nsawicki_at_nyc.rr.com; ccbc-net@lists.wisc.edu

Chiming in on the topic of fact checking, my experience is somewhat limit ed as yet, but I think fact checking continues to be quite robust in many places.My experience at RH was amazing. My copy editor looked up 4 differe nt translations of St. Patrick's Prayer which I quoted in the novel. She lo oked up details of calving, travel time and distance on horseback, and the particulars of the Catholic Mass. She even looked up whether or not pic kups have a back seat. That last item made this Oregon girl laugh, but I am very grateful for her diligence. The problems flagged did not result fro m factual incorrectness, but did point up where a small adjustment to a s entence might make the information conveyed more clear to a non-rural reade r. I've done a few projects with educational publishers and small parenting ma gazines and found those editors very careful about fact checking as well. I t's possible that this is less fact checking than occurred in the past, b ut it's a far cry from no oversight.

Rosanne ParryHEART OF A SHEPHERD, Random Housewww.rosanneparry.comwww.cl assof2K9.com

On Nov 16, 2009, at 11:19 AM, Norma Jean Sawicki wrote: Nancy...Marc' s experience is close to mine and is best illustrated by a terrific story.. ..a writer was single minded about wanting a particular copyeditor to copye dit his work of historical fiction. When her work was done, he sang her p raises and said that among the queries she sent his way was one that pointe d out marguerites had not been invented, and suggested other cocktails/dr inks that would be accurate. She checked everything which was also true of the copyeditors with whom we worked. Norma Jean

On Nov 16, 2009, at 2:03 PM, nancy reynolds wrote:Marc, I think muc h of what you call fact checking here is not what I meant by the term. I’ ve worked extensively as both a proofreader and a copy editor. I wouldn’t count those jobs as fact checking, for several reasons. In my experience , publishers would be delighted if we took on the job of fact checking in addition to our other duties, but certainly would not build in extra tim e for it. And schedules are tight as it is. Few of us doing those jobs have expertise in the subject or as researchers required to be efficient fact c heckers. Most fact-checking copy editors and proofreaders do involves makin g the text internally consistent. Our task is to notice that on page 26 the writer says an event occurred in 1993 and on page 241 says the same event occurred in 1988. If the event were easily verified, we were likely to do so. One doesn’t want to hound the author with constant unnecessary queri es. However, unless the inconsistency is easily verified by the editor, someone who is not an expert in the field, what usually happens is that the author is queried and has the last word. I know as both author and edit or that many errors can be caught by simply checking for internal consisten cy. However, others can’t. And unless the factual accuracy of the text is reviewed by someone whose job description includes doing so, errors wi ll get through. I don’t buy the suggestion that these are exceptional onl y because we are all human and prone to occasional error. We are in no posi tion to know whether that statement is true, since we have no system of f act checking in books for general readers to which we can compare the statu s quo. In critiquing books that touch on subjects I have expertise in, I ’ve found errors that could only have been caught by someone with experti se in the field. Once such books are published, other writers draw on the m as secondary sources, and the problem is compounded. These errors often cluster around controversial events an d matter that may be viewed differen tly by different cultures and interest groups. (I don’t mean opinions, here, but facts—such as the fact that a particular person masquerading as an American Indian has been proven to be white, say.) Having said this , I don’t lay the blame on editors or anyone tasked with trying to coax a profit out of book publishing honorably. Fact checking is expensive and time consuming. I also believe it is more important to do it now than ever before. Nancy From: bookmarch_at_aol.com
 Sent: Monday, November 16, 2009 10:10 AM To: ntreynolds_at_comcast.net; ccbc-net@ccbc.education.wisc.edu Subject: Re:
 reviews and reviewing, anonymous and otherwise “I can assure you, Nancy, that fact checking in children's nonfiction is not a "thing of the past." We do not have the fact checking departments that, say, The New Yorker uses. But the books I know of are read by an editor, a copy editor and a proof reader, as well -- often -- by one o r more experts in the field. Some errors slip through all of those careful reads -- but not because we neglect our responsibility to look for them. Ma rc Aronson” ---
Received on Tue 17 Nov 2009 09:16:24 AM CST