A few years ago I began to ponder the condition and fate of the university press world. This culminated in an article I wrote for the Journal of Electronic Publishing called “The Wisdom of Oz: The Role of the University Press in Scholarly Communications.” After I wrote that essay, I began to look around for some means of improving the fortunes of the press world and hit on the idea of creating a comprehensive online catalog for all university press titles, a catalog that could serve as a marketing tool, e-commerce site, and source of bibliographical data for other projects whose aims were not so plainly economic.
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That study was submitted to MITE and Mellon several months ago. As it delved into the specific offerings of vendors and included some confidential information, it was not suitable for publication. Subsequently, I edited the document into a longish essay, which includes a summary of a survey of about 30 university presses. That abridged document is now available online at Scribd and at MITE’s own Web site .
The project is now moving forward. A prototype is being built (the URL will be published shortly), and several presses have already sent in data feeds for their titles. (Any not-for-profit academic publisher that wishes to participate in the project should contact me offline, and not just presses affiliated with universities. For-profit scholarly publishers may be invited to participate at a later time.)
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