CBQ: A Bit of Background
What is now CBQ began four decades ago in November 1969, as a four-page mimeographed experiment called Broadcasting Bibliophile's Booknotes (BBB) when founding editor Chris Sterling (who clearly liked aliteration!) was a newly-minted Ph.D, teaching at the University of Utah. Already a book collector, he figured there might be other academic colleagues out there who shared his interest in new books, sources for older ones, and early reviews of new titles (as scholarly journals often took years to get reviews in print). BBB's first volume included seven issues before the editor departed for Temple University in Philadelphia.

Through the 1970s, the publication changed, eventually morphing from BBB to Mass Media Booknotes (MMB) to better reflect it's broader coverage. The tone got a bit more formal and standardized, others began to contribute reviews, and we experimented with different formats, through retaining the monthly publication schedule. For many years, the August issue was devoted to the past year's U.S. federal documents, while December focused on the growing flood of film books.

With the editor's shift to Washington DC in mid-1980, MMB took a brief five-month break in publication (the only time this has happened). It reappeared with January 1981's Communication Booknotes (CB), which title would remain for more than 15 years. In 1983, the publication won a "Broadcast Preceptor" award from San Francisco State University. Monthly publication (with the same special issues noted above) soon became bi-monthly---the same amount of content, but saving on the printing and mailing hassle. For several years in the early 1990s, Ohio State University's Center for the Advanced Study of Telecommunications (CAST) published CB in a quarterly booklet-style version, but the publication returned to the editor at George Washington University in 1996.

The agreement with Lawrence Erlbaum Associates to take over publication and handle subscriptions of what was now to be called CBQ, again in a quarterly format, became effective with Volume 29 in 1998. With LEA's sale to Routledge in 2006, Taylor & Francis became the publisher. CBQ was designed by Jen Sterling.