University Press Forum 2011: The End of the Tunnel?

For reasons that will become apparent as you dip into this University Press Forum, putting the project together this year has been particularly pleasant. That we at Choice, and you our readers, always enjoy this annual get-together goes without saying, but in the seven years I have been overseeing the forum, I have never encountered such cheerfulness.

The process for putting the forum together has remained the same over the years: Invite a handful of university press directors—ideally of presses far-flung and differing in size—to address 'any subject relevant to (his or her own) university's publishing program or to university-press publishing in general.' Although I warned the forum participants, as I do every year, that the resulting contributions may or may not deal 'with the same (or even related) subjects,' in fact this year all the contributions have a theme in common: optimism. This year's contributors offer up an interesting variety of metaphors and references—you will encounter here profitable bookworms, the prophetic Benjamin Franklin, a fire hose cum drinking fountain, sanguine turnips, and the quiet after a perfect storm—and I could have drawn a title from any of these. Not to be outdone, I chose an image of my own as title, one that references the hopefulness—albeit contained—of the pieces that follow.

I have arranged the forum contributions in alphabetical order by institution, save that of Georgetown University Press's Richard Brown, the current president of the American Association of University Presses (AAUP), who has the last word. His is the reference to the perfect storm, which he proposes has ended and given way to 'communities of practice'—a notion he looks at in conjunction with current and future university press practice.

And as if the forum weren't sufficiently cheering, the listing of significant university press titles that follows the forum serves as evidence for such optimism. To peruse this list of titles, all chosen by the eighty-six presses themselves to represent their proudest current offerings for undergraduates, is to see evidence—in black and white and electronic—of university presses' continued vitality.

So douse that candle and prepare to step out into the daylight of new possibilities.

Louisiana State University Press

For scholarly publishers, 2010 ended with a bang. People were talking about books everywhere, and Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and other such devices were the must-have gifts of the holiday season. Suddenly, it seems, everyone is focused on books, and books are fun again. (Okay, one book-pitching toddler made a viral splash, but I blame that on too many candy canes before breakfast.) This year, like other university press publishers, we at LSU Press will expand our commitment to make all our books available both in print and digitally. Given that one of the missions of a university press is to disseminate knowledge, it's exciting when one can be part of a new opportunity to expand the parameters of that mission.

As publishers, we continue to produce exceptional printed books, but we're focusing attention on digital editions as well. When we were all looking at the first e-readers back in the 1990s, few publishers considered how these new devices might actually spark more interest in reading and—amazingly—increase interest in the older publications on our backlists. But that has been the case. Books that were virtually forgotten are now virtually available, and it's very gratifying to see fine scholarship from decades ago find a new audience.

New initiatives and models for collaboration are springing up, and we look forward to working with other AAUP member presses as we band together to explore ways to bundle and deliver our content. These initiatives will be good for students, libraries, and publishers. In an unexpected way, it seems, e-books are reconnecting university presses and libraries through shared goals. We can use electronic editions to make our books more useful to readers, with extra features, enhanced functions, and better searchability. While some worry that all this digital activity might be leading to the demise of the printed...