Media pros and other allied professionals
Archivists and preservationists
Artists, animators, cartoonists, and illustrators
Designers and graphic artists
Editors, proofreaders, indexers, and other publishing professionals
Music composers, producers, and rights management centers
Photographs and photographers
Radio, film, TV, and media production
Translaters and interpreters
Web development and digital information
Related sites
Archivists and preservationists
• Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP)
• Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA) (individuals and organizations concerned with the acquisition, description, preservation, exhibition and use of moving image materials)
• Interference Archive (exploring the relationship between cultural production and social movements)
• The Moving Image Archive Program (New York University), a two-year course of study that trains future professionals to manage preservation-level collections of film, video, new media, and other types of digital works.
• The Personal Digital Archiving 2015 Conference (Library of Congress)
• Society of American Archivists (SAA). See So you want to be an archivist (SAA)
• Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), principal trade association for the software and digital content industry
• Wayback Machine (Internet Archive), a nonprofit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. See The Cobweb: Can the Internet be archived? (Jill Lepore, New Yorker, 1-26-15) "The Library of Congress has something like an opt-in policy; the Internet Archive has an opt-out policy. The Wayback Machine collects every Web page it can find, unless that page is blocked; blocking a Web crawler requires adding only a simple text file, “robots.txt,” to the root of a Web site. The Wayback Machine will honor that file and not crawl that site, and it will also, when it comes across a robots.txt, remove all past versions of that site. When the Conservative Party in Britain deleted ten years’ worth of speeches from its Web site, it also added a robots.txt, which meant that, the next time the Wayback Machine tried to crawl the site, all its captures of those speeches went away, too. (Some have since been restored.)"
• Image Permanence Institute (IPI), devoted to preservation research and the development of sustainable practices for the preservation of images and cultural property.
• Perma.cc Websites change. Perma Links don’t. Perma.cc helps scholars, journals, courts, and others create permanent records of the web sources they cite.
Artists, animators, cartoonists, and illustrators
• Animation Guild (Representing animation artists, writers and technicians
• Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI)
• The Cartoon Bank (part of the Conde Nast collection)
• Grand Comics Database
• Daily cartoon (The New Yorker)
• The Daily Cartoonist
• National Cartoonists Society (NCS)
• Children's illustrators
• The extraordinary world of Ex Libris art (sometimes the bookplate in front of a book is worth more than the book--Dark Roasted Blend)
• Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). See local and regional chapters, including a chapter for the British Isles.
• Society of Illustrators (SI)
Designers and graphic artists
• Graphic Artists Guild (GAG), serving graphic and interactive designers, illustrators, animators, web programmers and developers
• Graphics Atlas (Image Permanence Institute's new online resource brings sophisticated print identification and exploration tools to archivists, curators, historians, collectors, conservators, educators, and the general public). Learn about the distinguishing characteristics of various print processes.
• The Professional Association for Design (AIGA, formerly American Institute of Graphic Arts)
• Society for News Design (SND)
• Society of Publication Designers (SPD)
Editors, proofreaders, indexers, and other publishing professionals
• Major writers organizations
• Local and regional writers organizations
• Organizations for editors,
proofreaders, and indexers
• Organizations and gathering places for biographers, memoirists, personal historians, and other life story writers
• Organizations for corporate, government, and technical communicators
• Organizations for fiction writers and fans
• Organizatios for journalists
• Organizations for science and medical writers
• Organizations and resources for publishers and booksellers
• Organizations for screenwriters, playwrights, documentary filmmakers, and critics
• Organizations for writing niches
• Organizations of or for ghostwriters and collaborators
Music composers, producers, and rights management centers
• Spotify claims to have paid audiobook publishers ‘tens of millions’ in royalties (Ella Creamer, The Guardian, 2-1-24) The streaming company says its payout model is competitive, but the Society of Authors has raised doubts about whether authors ultimately benefit. Spotify claims to have paid audiobook publishers “tens of millions” since allowing users 15 hours of audiobook listening in its Premium subscription package last autumn. The SoA said that it urges “all authors to ask questions of their publishers” and that in particular, it would ask that Spotify revenues “be noted separately on royalty statements so that authors can weigh up the impact and ensure that these downloads are being correctly accounted as licences rather than sales”.
---Spotify’s new audiobook streaming could have ‘devastating effect’, says Society of Authors (Lucy Knight, The Guardian, 10-11-23) The industry body says the music giant’s move to make more than 150,000 titles available has not been discussed with authors and may compete with sales. The Society of Authors (SoA) has said it is “deeply concerned” about Spotify’s new audiobook provision. The industry body cited “the devastating effect that music streaming has had on artists’ incomes”, and expressed its fear that authors may suffer in a similar way.
“The streaming of audiobooks competes directly with sales and is even more damaging than music streaming because books are typically only read once, while music is often streamed many times,” a statement from the SoA read.
At the beginning of October, the Bookseller reported that “all of the major book publishers” had agreed limited streaming deals with Spotify. Since 4 October, Spotify Premium subscribers in the UK and Australia have been able to access to up to 15 hours of audiobook content per month, from a catalogue of more than 150,000 titles.
“As far as we are aware, no authors or agents have been approached for permission for such licences, and authors have not been consulted on licence or payment terms,” the SoA said. “Publishing contracts differ but in our view most licences given to publishers for licensing of audio do not include streaming. In fact, it is likely that streaming was not a use that had been invented when many such contracts were entered into.”
• ASCAP, BMI & SESAC: What’s The Difference? (Songtrust)
• What’s the difference between ASCAP, BMI, SESAC, and SoundExchange? (DIY Musician)
• American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
• American Society of Music Arrangers & Composers (ASMAC)
• Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI). collects license fees on behalf of its songwriters, composers and music publishers and distributes them as royalties to those members
• Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC), a performing rights organization, with headquarters in Nashville and offices in New York, Los Angeles
• Screen Composers Guild of Canada (SCGC)
• Society of Composers & Lyricists (SCL)
• Film Score Monthly (FSM)
• Performance royalties explained (DIY Musician)
• So you want to be a film composer (Lukas Kendall, Film Score)
• Soundtrack Collector database (by title). Also by composer.
• Finding background music for video biographies, podcasts, presentations, blogs, etc. (www.patmcnees.com)
• Finding vintage music from a particular year or place (Telling Your Story, www.patmcnees.com)
Photographs and photographers
• (APA) (formerly Advertising Photographers of America)
• American Photographic Artists (APA)
• American Society of Picture Professionals (ASPP)
• Canadian Association of Photographers & Illustrators in Communications (CAPIC)
• Editorial Photographers (APA/EP), a chapter of American Photographic Artists
• International League of Conservation Photographers (ILCP)
• National Press Photographers Association (NPPA), the voice of visual journalists
• Professional Photographers of America (PPA)
• Stock Artists Alliance (SAA), PhotoMetaData, serving stock photographers. SAA initiatives to promote metadata use and best practices by stock photographers and throughout the licensing industry began in 2006, and have significantly expanded with the Photo Metadata Project Partnership
• StockPhotoTalk (special interest blog)
• Wedding & Event Videographers Association International (WEVA)
• Finding photographs and other images (Telling Your Story, www.patmcnees.com)
• Scanning photos, documents, and other images (Telling Your Story, www.patmcnees.com)
Radio, film, TV, and media production
• The Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) providing support, training, and advocacy necessary for preparing thousands of audio creatives across the world with the skill and confidence to lead the way to engaging more listeners, and to carry their inspiration to both traditional and emerging outlets. AIR's extensive social and professional network of producers, stations, and networks is at the center of unprecedented technology-driven change, rich with opportunity to define the new frontiers of journalism, technology, and storytelling.
• CreativeCow.net (creative communities of the world, a peer-to-peer support group for media production specialists)
• Independent Filmmaker Project (IFP)
• International Documentary Association (IDA)
• Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
• San Francisco Film Society (SFFS). We fund films.
• Final Cut Pro (Larry Jordan's newsletter)
Translaters and interpreters
• American Literary Translators Association (ALTA)
American Translators Association (ATA)
• American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP). See ASMP's excellent links to resources for professional photographers
• Associations of translators and interpreters..
• Sites for and about translators and interpreters
Money and Translation (listen to PEN America panel) Is there anything we can do, as writers and translators, to break the causal chain of financial influence in the U.S. reception and publication of foreign literature?
Web development and digital information
• Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of digital information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity)
• Wise-Women (women who are or want to become Web designers, developers, and programmers)
• World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), main international standards organization for the World Wide Web
Related sites and organizations
•
• Adding images, sound, story, humor, animation
• Media Communications Association - International (MCA-I (professionals producing communications that deliver results for employers and clients)
• National Speakers Association (NSA)
• HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society), a nonprofit organization whose goal is to promote the best use of information technology and management systems in the health care industry-- to improve health care in quality, safety, cost-effectiveness, and access through the best use of information technology and management systems.
• How Much Should I Charge? (Writers and Editors, Pricing Strategies, How to Set Rates, and Other Basics for Creative Professionals)
Association of Independent Information Professionals (aiip, an industry association for owners of independent information businesses)
Books on Design
• Brady, Michael. Thinking Like a Designer: How to Save Money by Being a Smart Client
• Bringhurst, Robert. The Elements of Typographic Style
• Hendel, Richard. On Book Design
• Lee, Marshall. Bookmaking: Editing, Design, Production, 3d edition
• Lupton, Ellen, and Abbott Miller. Thinking with Type: A Primer for Designers: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students. See Ellen Lupton's website
• Tufte, Edward. Envisioning Information and The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. See Edward Tufte's website, including PowerPoint Does Rocket Science--and Better Techniques for Technical Reports.
Books on visual and multimedia storytelling:
• Making Comics: Storytelling Secrets of Comics, Manga and Graphic Novels by Scott McCloud, the author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
• Making Documentary Films and Reality Videos: A Practical Guide to Planning, Filming, and Editing Documentaries of Real Events by Barry Hampe
• Picture This: How Pictures Work by Molly Bang (a children's book illustrator explains how images help elicit emotion in story readers)
• Writing with Pictures: How to Write and Illustrate Children's Books by Uri Shulevitz (a masters class in illustrating books for kids).
• Book of Movie Photography by David Cheshire (a guide to telling stories through images)
Thanks to Upstart Crow for leading us to these titles!
Daniel Milnor on visual storytelling (and why he's gone back to black and white film)
• Best Fonts for Dyslexia and Why They Work (Jill Staake, We Are Teachers, 6-29-22). Best standard fonts (available on most computers) Arial, Courier, Helvetica, Verdana. Best fonts generally: OpenDyslexic, Calibri, Trebuchet, Open Sans, Comic Sans, Tahoma, Century Gothic. What's interesting about these articles are the explanations of why they are easier to read.
Usability: Typefaces for Dyslexia. Why certain fonts -- including Myriad Pro, Lexia Readable, Tiresias (especially good for visual impairment), Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Arial, and Geneva -- are easier for many to read. If you care about this audience, follow advice in the British Dyslexia Association's Friendly Style Guide
• Fonts for Dyslexia (Dyslexic.com, British) Descriptions of Read Regular, Lexie Regular, Tiresias, Century Gothic, Calibri, Sassoon, Myriad Pro--and why these are easier to read for many people. Another site, now disappeared, listed these: Myriad Pro, Lexia Readable, Tiresias (especially good for visual impairment), Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Arial, and Geneva.
• The Myths and Truths of Dyslexia in Different Writing Systems (International Dyslexia Association)
• Dyslexia friendly style guide