Apologies, I have again forgotten that these jiscmail lists have been set up with replying to the whole list as the default. If you reply to my earlier email, please remember to delete the name of the list and just reply to me.

 

Thanks, Alison

 

 

Thanks first to the people going to the Grange over Sands Normal Labour and Birth conference who emailed me to say they would like copies of ‘Where to be born?’ and would contribute to the cost of couriering them there. If anyone else is still interested in this, please reply by 5pm on Friday.

 

I have also heard from people who will not be at the conference expressing interest in individual copies or larger numbers of copies for students and I have been looking at the logistics for getting them to you. It looks like any organisation which might have helped in the past has been gobbled up by Amazon, so I am looking at other ways. To plan this, it would be useful to have an idea of the demand, so can you please reply if you are interested in either multiple copies for students, with an idea of the number, or in smaller numbers of individual copies.

 

Best wishes, Alison

 

 

Twenty five years ago, the National Perinatal Epidemiology Unit published the second edition of Rona Campbell and my book ‘Where to be born? The debate and the evidence’. As a result of Birthplace and other similar research done since 1994, we now have much more robust and detailed evidence and it is reassuring to know that our earlier tentative conclusions have not been contradicted. Despite being 25 years old, Where to be born? is still cited widely as, to my knowledge, no one else has described the historical background and I am often asked by midwives and others how they can get at hold of a copy.

 

Although the book sold well when it first came out, there was no professional publisher involved. The distribution methods we used worked well in the 1980s and early 1990s but have long been superseded. As a result, a considerable number of unsold copies have been languishing in a storage facility. Unsurprisingly, the current Director of NPEU has decided to get rid of them and has asked for them to be pulped.

 

Rather than doing this, I am looking at ways of distributing them to people who might want a copy for themselves or a number of copies for distribution to students. Anyone who is within easy reach of Oxford can just contact Thomas Roberts at NPEU, to whom this is copied, and arranged to collect copies free of charge. I am also looking at ways of getting them to people who are further away.

 

In the first instance, for people are going to the International Normal Birth Conference at Grange over Sands from June 17-19, I can arrange for copies to be couriered there. So if you are going and would like one or more copies, please email me by Monday June 10 with your name and the number of copies. I will be there and can hand the copies over in return for a donation towards the cost of the courier.

 

Hoping to hear from some of you

 

Alison Macfarlane
School of Health Sciences
City, University of London

1, Myddelton Street

London EC1R 1UW

Phone (0) (44) 207 040 5832

Email [log in to unmask]
http://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/alison-macfarlane

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