In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • University Press Forum 2014‘The Best We Can Find in Our Travels Is an Honest Friend’
  • Tom Radko (bio), Charles Watkinson, Director, Purdue University Press, and Head of Scholarly Publishing Services, Purdue University Libraries, Alison Mudditt, Director, Peter J. Potter, Editior in Chief and Co-acting Director, Lisa Bayer, Director, Alex Holzman, Director, and Kathryn Conrad, Director

This issue marks the tenth appearance of the University Press Forum. The Forum began as a completely unguided (by Choice) public discussion—in the voices of university press directors and editors—of university presses: the joys, the trials, the changes, the disappointments. This year we decided to steer the direction of the conversation to a topic of current interest to our readership: namely, the relationship between university presses and libraries.

Because the topic is of such keen importance to the scholarly publishing community, it was not difficult finding directors/editors of six university presses—The University of Arizona Press, the University of California Press, Cornell University Press, the University of Georgia Press, Purdue University Press, and Temple University Press—to address a series of questions: What is the nature of the relationship between your press and campus library? Is the relationship in need of repair these days? Is it a relationship you are seeking out? What is the common ground between presses and libraries? What are collaborations between the two supposed to accomplish? The essays crafted in response to these questions follow, and they vividly make clear the increasing importance of strong alliances in a scholarly communication environment likely to become only more challenging over time.

Linked to this forum is a listing of titles deemed by university presses to be particularly valuable to the audiences Choice has served for fifty years: librarians, faculty, students, scholars, and the public interested in academic materials. We would like to thank both our contributors for their time in crafting such thoughtful responses and the university presses that mined their rich title listings for the books most suitable for the audiences we serve—with a special eye on undergraduates. For [End Page 1] supplemental material, we direct you to the Press and Library Collaboration Survey released by the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) at a time that coincided with the preparation of this forum; that survey is available online at www.aaupnet.org. We hope you find much in this forum that stimulates your imagination, encourages dialogue with colleagues beyond your immediate circles, and acknowledges the rewards of forging alliances based on respect that support a rich and diverse publishing environment.

         Purdue University Press

Over a decade ago, an influential article by Michael A. Mabe and Mayur Amin, researchers then employed by Elsevier, examined the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde and author-reader asymmetries in scholarly publishing, memorably referencing the split personality plot of Robert Louis Stevenson’s best-selling novella. Among other things, the article showed how the same faculty members can think and behave in very different ways when they wear the hats of ‘author’ and ‘reader’ respectively. The truth of this observation is shown in many spheres of publishing. Think, for example, of the open access environment in which the same faculty members who are gung ho about having everything their colleagues publish openly accessible to them online can be very reticent about sharing their own work outside a closed circle—much to the irritation of those (including most press directors) who believe in maximizing access to information.

As a university press director integrated into an academic research library to an almost unique extent, I daily observe the same Jekyll and Hyde characteristics in my colleagues. The librarians who may be most supportive of the efforts of not-for-profit university presses to publish an abstruse but important monograph with their ‘scholarly communication’ hats on may find themselves unable to support the acquisition of an online collection of such monographs (digital rights management-free, reasonably priced, liberal in their license terms) when they are in ‘collection development’ mode. They need to continue to prioritize the acquisition of large packages of outrageously priced science/technical/medical (STM) content because the patrons who matter most are the scientists and engineers who bring...

pdf

Share