University Press Forum 2009

This year's Choice university press forum marks the five-year anniversary of this feature, which gives directors and editors of university presses the opportunity to speak out about matters that interest or concern them. We offer no guidelines to those who contribute to the forum, because we want to hear about what is in actual fact on their minds. And, apart from this modest introduction, we make no effort to coalesce their thoughts into a tidy whole. University presses come in all shapes and sizes, and so too their concerns, interests, and goals.

This said, every year we are modestly surprised (to horn in on a strand in one of the contributions below) all over again to realize that university presses—their sizes, geographical locations, and ages notwithstanding—remain very much the same: all are committed to transmitting the scholarly word, almost all are at least dabbling in digital publishing (and many are fully immersed), and they are struggling with the economics of their enterprises.

Of course matters economic have been very much at the forefront of university presses' concerns for several decades; one might even say they are pretty much experts on operating on (without?) a shoestring. So perhaps the dark and stormy economic night in which the United States—and world—finds itself in 2009 is not as scary to university presses as it is to the rest of us. Indeed, perhaps university presses could view these 'troubling times' as an opportunity, as one of the forum contributors does.

This year's forum comprises contributions from two old-timers and two youngsters. Yale University Press and University of Chicago Press have both been around for more than a century; Trinity University Press was founded only seven years ago, and Rice University Press was reborn after a ten-year hiatus. Each stands as an important contributor to the university press enterprise; each brings to the table its particular strengths—be it leadership in the long haul or the temerity to jump in despite the many obstacles university presses—of all sizes—face.