My stint on the JLA Editorial Board: A few clarifications

Seems like a few clarifications about the story of my short stint on the JLA Editorial Board are needed. In no particular order:

• I’m female. Some of the follow-on stories refer to me as “he”. I get it. It’s a gender-neutral name, and I guess if you googled me for a picture, that might not clear things up. But I am female. I figure if I write “Chris Bourg is female” here, future bloggers can google me and get it right next time.
• I do not speak for the former Editorial Board of the Journal of Library Administration. My post about my stint with JLA is my own story. I thought that was obvious in the original post, but apparently not.
• My crisis of conscience in the aftermath of the tragic death of Aaron Swartz was my own and not the board’s. I’m pretty sure I never even mentioned Aaron’s death or my feelings about it in any conversations ever with the Editor of JLA or any of my fellow board members.
• Even after my crisis of conscience, at the time, I decided to stay on the board, and to submit the article I promised. Judge me if you will. Later, when negotiations with T&F went nowhere, I resigned along with the rest of the board.
• Any connection between my crisis of conscience, Aaron’s tragic death, and the board’s resignation is tenuous and indirect at best. I suppose my hesitation to submit my article counted as one more piece of data adding up to the board’s conclusion that the restrictive and confusing licensing terms were making it difficult to attract quality content.
• It is my opinion, and was my hope, that the terms negotiated by the authors of the articles in the special issue on Digital Humanities in Libraries should have served as a model for a new standard author license for JLA. I think Micah Vandegrift and the rest of the authors in that issue deserve enormous credit and praise for both the quality of that issue (which was hugely influential in my decision to join the board), and for their persistence in negotiating an amended license, and for doing so publicly. I just didn’t, and still don’t, think every potential JLA author ought to have to go through the same lengthy negotiation process.
• As former Editor Damon Jaggars has stated: “Open Access writ large was not the fundamental issue in this disagreement.” I characterize it as about open(er) access and about author’s control of their own work.
• And just for good measure, I am female. Always have been, always will be.

3/29/13, 6:30pm: Edited to make timeline clear and to reiterate that we all remain resigned.