University Presses in Tough Times
Minnesota Archive Editions Brings the Past Back Into Print
The Carol Franz Memorial Fund
Rotunda Showcases History By Looking to the Future
Task Force on Committees Survey
In Remembrance of L.E. “Les” Phillabaum
AAUP Presses at MLA 2008
Miscellany:
Update: Children’s Book Publishing and the CPSIA
2009 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show Judging
Two New Mellon Grants Awarded to University Press Groups
Obama on Presidential Records and FOIA
Calendar: See the Events Calendar at www.aaupnet.org
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Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic & Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP
In these economically troubled times, people are hungry for information and knowledge. The news media is essential for the first of those—details on the latest wrangling over the U.S. economic stimulus plan, the latest employment numbers, and a global view of the world-wide effects of the economic crisis. University presses, however, are key to the second: knowledge. For economists’ comprehensive understanding of the roots of the crisis, for historical analysis of how New Deal policies worked to end the Great Depression, and for detailed study of the effects of infrastructure projects on recovery and development, the public can turn to books published by members of the AAUP.
Despite this value of university press output to communities both local and global, we are no more protected from the economic downturn than other sectors of the U.S. economy and culture. The pain has been widely shared. A new survey from AAUP indicates that sales, in both units and dollars, are down 10% across the association.
The survey compared the figures for the six-month period of July to December 2008 to those of the same period in 2007 from sixty-two participating presses. Designed to quickly solicit a general picture of the business climate, the data is a useful tool as individual presses face difficult budget decisions. The association is now looking at rolling together the particular data collected here with the quarterly sales and returns survey that has been conducted since 2003.
That difficult budgetary times are ahead, and in many cases already with us, is unquestionable. Widespread reports of slashed travel budgets forced the cancellation of the 2009 financial managers and production managers meetings. Staff lay-offs at SUNY Press and the U.S. offices of Oxford University Press were an even more sobering sign of the strain felt by university presses from market realities and looming state budget cuts. These last affect not only the presses at public universities, but also the state-affiliated college and research libraries that remain key purchasers of scholarly material.
Perhaps the most shocking news has been the possibility that drastic cuts to the higher education budget of Utah might lead to the shuttering of the press at Utah State University. While a small press on an industry-wide scale, with 5 employees and an output of approximately 20 books a year, within its fields of publication Utah State University Press is an institution of central importance. Numerous award-winning books in rhetoric and composition, folklore, Mormon studies, and Utah history have garnered lasting national and international respect for both the press and Utah State. Despite this reputation, the press has been warned that if the worst case scenario of a 19% cut in state funds comes to pass, the press is on a list of non-essential units that may be eliminated.
The press director, Michael Spooner, has told the Chronicle of Higher Education that he understands the financial pressures that the administration is facing, but that the press is “operationally sound, financially stable, and over-achieving its given mission.” As was pointed out by Peter Givler, executive director of AAUP, while the move may save the university 3.5 salaries in the short run, in the long term they may never be able to afford to rebuild a press of such value or buy back the prestige that will be lost. University presses are not alone in being targeted as non-essential despite serving a core scholarly function. Recent news of the proposed closure of the Brandeis University Rose Art Museum (and sale of its esteemed collection of contemporary art) and the University of Pennsylvania’s move to shut down the research arm of their Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology are equally disturbing signs of the devaluation of a university’s work outside of teaching departments.
Despite these warning signs of potential university press casualties during the coming economic distress, the important work of AAUP members goes on. There are even things to celebrate: Mrs. Ramsay’s Knee, a work of poetry by Iris Anderson published by the Utah State University Press caught the national attention on Garrison Keillor’s “Writer’s Almanac” on January 10; SUNY Press announced the publication of Go, Tell Michelle: African American Women Write to the New First Lady in time for the inauguration of Barack Obama. Looking to history provides some promise as well. After all, as the late L.E. Phillabaum and Sheldon Meyer wrote in “What is a University Press?,” the Great Depression saw one of the greatest booms in university publishing.
As the members of AAUP face the fear of a second such depression, the association and its community of colleagues will work together to manage continued technological and economic change creatively and successfully. In addition to the data provided by such efforts as the six-month sales survey, the AAUP Board recently requested the revision and distribution of “Tips for Hard Times” originally put together in 2001. AAUP will continue to develop collaborative services for members, and act as an advocate for members’ work to the wider world. And when the AAUP Annual Meeting gathers in Salt Lake City in June 2010, we very much hope to be returning to a two-press state.
Password information for members-only links.
Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
The Minnesota Archive Editions program will bring back into print virtually every book published in the University of Minnesota Press’s history. This ambitious project had a three-fold source of inspiration, says press director Doug Armato. The first was a notification from Google about the high number of searches they were identifying for out-of-print books linked to the press. “This wasn’t a question we were asking,” said Armato, but the tip-off from Google got the wheels turning in the heads of Minnesota staff members.
Minnesota’s internal digital assets team “had on our minds that there was more to the backlist than you would have figured.” During BookExpo America 2007, a representative from BookSurge approached the press to talk about the company’s work with Amazon, and about their interests in putting out-of-print university press books back online. This idea was intriguing to the press, as staff had been thinking about whether digitization and access to older titles should be entirely the province of libraries and programs like Google Book Search, or whether it was the press’s responsibility to get involved as well.
The third piece of the puzzle was the massive new database that Minnesota had recently created, for which they had begun extensive research on their backlist and the documentation of what rights they currently had. With demonstrated proof of interest in their out-of-print titles, an offer from commercial partners to help put them back into print, and a database of their own which would facilitate doing so, everything came together. And thus was born Minnesota Archive Editions.
The rights database had originally been researched and maintained by regular press staff, but with the official arrival of the Minnesota Archive Editions, the increased demands of research necessitated additional assistance. The press found a student who Armato praised as “perfectly suited to this kind of project,” and whom the press was able to keep on staff after his graduation.
As Minnesota was examining their out-of-print books from the past decade, they realized that with today’s market and technologies, many of the titles probably would not have been put out-of-print. It became evident that creating any sort of definitive criteria for what titles should or should not go out of print was extremely difficult with so many shifting factors involved. The Archive Editions program eliminated the need for this sort of dividing line, as it gave the press the opportunity to put back into print virtually every book it had published since its inception in 1925.
While many presses today may have some sort of print-on-demand capabilities or arrangements, Armato believes it is the “universality” of the Archive Editions program that sets it apart from more traditional POD. Generally speaking, print -on-demand programs “are only forward looking” and in Armato’s mind, create what he views as an “artificial boundary,” in that these programs are usually options for books currently being published and those that will be published in the future.
Minnesota’s relationships with its commercial partners in this venture – Google, Amazon/BookSurge, and BookMobile – are what Armato called “true partnerships.” Amazon/BookSurge covered the capital costs associated with the digitization of the books, which will be recouped as books are sold. The books have been digitized in a print-ready PDF format. As these titles were out-of-print, and Minnesota had opted-out of Google’s library scanning initiative, they had not been previously digitized by Google. Minnesota is now submitting the PDFs provided by Amazon for inclusion in Google Book Search, where “buy” links will be included to the press’s website and Amazon. The titles available through the Archive Editions initiative are produced in limited quantities according to customer demand and can be ordered through Amazon and through the Chicago Distribution Center, which will forward orders to BookMobile for printing and fulfillment. Armato added, “Eventually, we’d like to move those books to e-book distributors as well, but that will take an extra conversion (to “Universal PDF”).”
While there have been occasional copyright issues concerning images in the Archive Editions, Armato explained that for the most part, the fact that the press hasn’t “changed the medium…in reality these are still books,” has eliminated many of the image copyright issues that arise “when you start to create truly digital projects.”
Explaining the appeal of the program, Armato expressed his feeling that “for the most part at this point, people still want to read physical books…this really covers all the bases…people can discover the titles online and still get a physical book.” Facilitating this online discovery, books in the program will be full-text searchable through both Amazon’s Search Inside the Book program and Google’s Book Search. He emphasized that the idea behind the program was something the press had been thinking about for a long time as part of its stated mission “to disseminate through book publication work of exceptional scholarly quality and originality.”
Only two months after its official launch in late November 2008, the press has already seen quantifiable gains from the program. While Armato noted that the press is still watching to see how the program fares in the long run, they are extremely pleased with the early results. Beyond the scholarly advantage of continuing access to these titles, the press has seen steady monthly revenue from the program, and it is now their most profitable channel of digital distribution. Further proving that formerly out-of-print books may generate significant interest, Armato indicated that the press was beginning to get course adoptions for some previously out-of-print books.
With the success of this program, and the relatively small financial cost to the press, Armato predicted that similar programs will soon be instituted at other university presses. He cited the recent announcement of the University of North Carolina Press’s Enduring Editions Program as an example of a similar venture. With the current state of the economy forcing university presses to take a hard look at their budgets, this sort of program may offer an attractive option for presses looking to increase the availability of their backlist, while reaping a profit through a minimal initial investment.
Jack G. Goellner
Director Emeritus, The Johns Hopkins University Press
Undoubtedly not many of the people working today in the university press community knew and can remember Carol Franz. Probably few even recognize her name. Yet for two decades Carol was the beating heart of the AAUP’s Central Office. She helped plan and made arrangements for the AAUP’s annual meetings, committee meetings, and special conferences. Her acquaintance among university press staffs was wide and deep, and her dedication to scholarly publishing was legendary among the presses.
But that was quite awhile back. From the late 1950s until she retired in 1979, Carol served as Assistant Director of the AAUP, providing continuity in the association as executive directors came and departed. She was revered as a mentor, especially by newcomers just starting their careers in the university press world. Carol died at the age of 94 in August 2008.
Now a small group of “old hands” who remember Carol with gratitude and affection have undertaken to establish a memorial fund to honor her. The sole purpose of this fund will be to provide newcomers to university press staffs with financial help that enables them to attend annual meetings of the AAUP. Her abiding concern for young people led Carol to recognize how they benefited from participating in the national get-togethers, building acquaintances, and learning the craft from those who had mastered it.
The Carol Franz Memorial Fund will make grants of up to $1,500 to successful applicants who have worked on university press staffs for less than three years. Such grants are intended to cover travel expenses and registration fees for AAUP annual meetings. The availability of this funding will be announced by the Central Office. The selection of grantees will be made by a subcommittee of AAUP’s Board of Directors.
Those of us who knew Carol well remember her as a small woman, seemingly fragile but in fact energetic–and sometimes delightfully wacky. At one annual meeting, the newly elected president was preceded up the aisle to his inaugural address by a parade of kazoo players that Carol had mustered. On another occasion, she hosted a meeting of the AAUP’s Education and Training Committee to celebrate its origination of the Exchange. This meeting was at the New York Advertising Club–on “Guest Speaker Day,” as it turned out–and the speaker’s earnest presentation of a client’s newly coined advertising slogan (“It takes a licking and keeps on ticking,”) aroused so much merriment at the AAUP table that those seated at it were about to be thrown out. Later the committee chair commented, “With Carol at committee meetings we have a lot of fun, but we get a lot done.”
During World War II Carol was assigned to an ambulance unit of the American Red Cross and a field hospital. She was sent to France during the Battle of the Bulge to work with POWs. I was reminded of this during a Southern Presses meeting in New Orleans. Walking along Bourbon Street one evening she and I suddenly found ourselves in a violent rumble that filled the street from curb to curb. Fists, clubs, chains, studded belts, and finally a knife thrust into a belly all drew blood. I feared for the sweet little lady with me and tried to shepherd her out of the violence. She didn’t want to leave the scene. “Some of those boys are going to get badly hurt,” she said, “and they’re going to need help.” There spoke the Red Cross ambulance worker.
Carol wrote poetry and was an accomplished violinist, playing with several chamber groups. She was born and bred in Brooklyn, educated at Barnard and NYU–and longed to live in Maine. She did that, too, when she retired, first in Damariscotta, later in Portland; and then, in flagging health, she finally moved to Connecticut, where she lived with her sisters. Although Carol had transplanted herself to New England, she never left her Brooklyn accent behind. She wouldn’t have been Carol without it.
Carol told me several times in letters and during visits to her home in Portland that her years with the university presses were the best in her long life. “It was the people,” she
said. “I always loved the people. They were the best in the world.”
She would surely be delighted to be remembered in a way meant to help young men and women become university press people.
We hope that all who share fond memories of Carol and would like to
join in this memorial endeavor will contribute generously to the fund. Contributions
are tax-deductible: AAUP is a 501(c)(3) organization.
Checks should be made out to the AAUP, with “Carol Franz
Association of
Presses
71 West 23rd Street
Suite 901
New York
York
Attn:
Peter Givler, Executive Director
Organized by:
Jack Goellner, Nancy Essig, Joyce Kachergis, Janet Hose
Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
Thomas Jefferson designed the iconic Rotunda building as the academic center of his newly founded University of Virginia, “demonstrating [his] belief that a university should have as its focus a collection of academic achievements1.” Appropriately, the electronic imprint of the University of Virginia Press takes its name from the campus landmark and fills that same role for the university in today’s digital age. Rotunda has been a stable flagship in the ever-changing realm of electronic publishing since its inception in 2001.
The original grant proposal to the Mellon Foundation for the Electronic Imprint, conceived by Nancy Essig, the former director of the press, and John Unsworth, the founder of the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, called for publication of born-digital scholarship. Mark Saunders, Manager of the Electronic Imprint, explained that suitable born-digital projects were scarce at the time. In response, the press’s new director, Penny Kaiserlian, along with a team of senior managers, decided to add digital editions of existing print publications to the imprint’s list, focusing on the press’s strength in critical and documentary editions.
By the start of 2009, Rotunda had published six projects in the 19th-Century Literature and Culture collection and four in the American Founding Era collection, with three more in active development. Two of the 19th-century projects, comparative textual editions of Herman Melville’s Typee and Emily Dickinson’s Correspondences, were in fact born-digital, and benefited from Rotunda’s extensive experience and expanding capabilities. The imprint is also “exploring a new collection in architecture with our colleagues at the Society for Architectural Historians.”
Kaiserlian has described the American Founding Era project as Rotunda’s “most ambitious collection yet.2” This collection brings together documentary editions of the primary and secondary materials that constitute The Papers of George Washington, The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, and The Adams Papers, all in digital format. Forthcoming digital editions include The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution, The Papers of James Madison, and the Papers of Alexander Hamilton. Beyond this invaluable content, however, the project is notable for the broad scope of its collaborations with other university presses and historical societies and the extent of its interoperable capabilities.
Early on, the staff at the Imprint made a pivotal decision to develop a more costly platform based on emerging standards for XML rather than focus on PDF delivery as most publishers were doing. This has proved a major boon to Rotunda’s electronic publishing projects, as it has allowed maximum “functionality, flexibility, and scalability.” The staff took advantage of the “significant expertise in textual markup [that] already existed in various digital centers at the University of Virginia.” The staff felt that the nature of the content in the document editions necessitated “that we code at as deep a level as possible.” To achieve this end, the editorial and technical staff chose to go with the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) standard, which has been developed by an international collective. David Sewell, leader of Rotunda’s staff on XML coding, now sits on the TEI Board of Directors.
Collaboration is an integral aspect of the American Founding Era project. In November 2008, Rotunda announced the release of a newly consolidated Founding Era platform, which makes the various documentary editions fully interoperable. Such a project would have been impossible without the cooperation and collaboration of the various project editors and sponsoring institutions and presses, as the various collections of papers are housed and edited at a variety of institutions. The Rotunda staff was responsible for the platform and the XML coding behind it, and drew up standards for conversion of the print volumes in conjunction with the documentary editors. Saunders described the varieties of expertise provided by some of the other participants:
In the case of the Adams Papers, conversion of the print volumes was managed by the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The editors of the Washington Papers worked for many hours to disambiguate index entries to create a cumulative index for their 52-volume project, among other contributions of time and knowledge. The editors of the Jefferson Papers performed display proofreading on the converted files, and the staff of Princeton University Press contributed publishing expertise in rights, permissions, and marketing.
This many-layered collaboration resulted in a platform that allows users to navigate across editions in various ways. Saunders explained that the platform retains the ability for users to “see the documents as they are arranged in the print volumes” while enhancing the experience by also facilitating the ability of users to “search, navigate chronologically, and access the intellectual investment reflected in the indexes.”
The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, Rotunda’s first publication, is the only born-digital edition in the American Founding Era collection. Forthcoming volumes in the collection will be available in print first, to be followed in twelve to twenty-four months by inclusion in the digital edition. The Electronic Imprint’s institution of an XML workflow is enhancing the viability and ease of these dual editions. Commenting on the recent subventions awarded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC ), Saunders explained that while these were traditional publication subventions for the print volumes, the XML workflow allows forthcoming editions to “be published in print and digital formats using the same underlying edited files, so in effect the continuing investment of the NHPRC in these editions will now pay off in new ways.”
Rotunda’s Founding Era project has been cited by AAUP as an important example of publisher-added value in debates on various models of open access (see AAUP’s Letter of Support for the Fair Copyright in Research Works Act). Saunders said that Virginia has been closely following the debates over various forms of open access “for most of Rotunda’s existence.” In February 2008, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on an issue of open access directly impacting Rotunda and its publications: “The Founding Fathers’ Papers: Ensuring Public Access to our National Treasures.”
In April 2008, Allen Weinstein, then Archivist of the United States, released a report to Congress at the request of the Committees on Appropriations entitled “The Founders Online: Open Access to the Papers of America’s Founding Era.” Appropriately, Thomas Jefferson’s ink and pencil drawing of the South Elevation of the Rotunda is featured on the cover of the report. Weinstein details the ongoing efforts to produce documentary editions of these historical papers that have been in progress for years, or even decades, at various universities, university presses, and historical societies. He outlines two possible responses to the government’s call for online access to the papers: in the first, the government would scan the completed volumes as they become available, but “the volumes would not be electronically marked or indexed, making them difficult to search, and such an effort by a Federal agency would provide an inferior duplication of online publication efforts already taking place outside of Government.” The second option, recognizing the valuable work done by organizations currently involved in the process, Rotunda primary among them, suggests that the government provide support for these efforts including “engag[ing] a sole service provider to undertake transcription and document encoding for all Founding Fathers papers that have not yet been edited.” The staff at Rotunda has appreciated the report’s respect for the work of the project editors and the attention to finding an access model that is sustainable for the university press publishers of the print editions. They expect to resume these discussions with the arrival of a new Archivist and a new Congress.
University presses today are testing a variety of funding models as they attempt to find a balance between providing access to research and information and the necessity of covering operating costs. Saunders says of Rotunda’s business model, “Our interface has always promoted free discovery of our content, but our perpetual access business model has remained largely constant during the debates surrounding the Archivist’s report. At the document level, we remain a fee-based site.” This perpetual access model makes access to Rotunda’s publications available for varying fees, determined by a university’s Carnegie classification, with rates also available for other research institutions, high schools, and unaffiliated individuals. All users are able to browse the contents and conduct searches of the full text, although log-in is required to obtain access to the full contents.
Rotunda’s primary funding has until this point come from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the President’s Office of the University of Virginia, but Saunders explained that its ultimate mandate is to be self-sustaining. As described earlier, Rotunda’s projects are often indirectly supported by entities like the NHPRC, which has provided subventions for the documentary print editions. After the current grants expire, Rotunda’s sustaining revenue is expected to come from sale of its products and from grants for development of future individual projects. In an entrepreneurial move, Rotunda has also started Oculus, “which offers consulting services to other publishers and to digital projects that are in development,” also with the support of the Mellon Foundation.
Rotunda is well poised to continue in its role of presenting the academic achievements that are at the center of a university, both to the academic community, and with the American Founding Era project, to the nation at large.
1 “The Rotunda: History,” The University of Virginia, http://www.virginia.edu/uvatours/rotunda/rotundaHistory.html.
2Penny Kaiserlian, “University of Virginia Press,” in “University Presses 2008: Snapshots in Time,” compiled by Rebecca Ann Bartlett, Journal of Scholarly Publishing 40 (Oct. 2008): 26-28.
Brenna McLaughlin
Electronic & Strategic Initiatives Director, AAUP
At the direction of the AAUP Board and President, a Task Force on Committees was formed in June of 2008. Under the chairmanship of Richard Brown (Director, Georgetown University Press), the task force is charged with recommending improvements to the AAUP committee structure. As an essential step in developing these recommendations, the group has sought out the opinions of the membership—through interviews with current and past committee chairs and through a broader survey of the membership in October 2008.
The Survey invitation was announced in the October 2008 bulletin; distributed via our fifteen active email discussion lists; and a request was also made to press directors that the invitation be distributed to their entire staff. While we hope that these distribution channels reached a majority of AAUP member staff, we cannot be sure of the exact number of recipients. Three hundred and twenty three responses were collected from those invitations. Using the number of staff listed in the AAUP central office database as our best measuring stick, this represents approximately 7.5% of possible recipients.
The survey was not intended to provide statistically precise data, but rather to provide the task force with a broad picture of the membership’s view of AAUP committees and to solicit new ideas for committee goals and procedures. The survey results greatly illuminated the priorities of the AAUP membership. The task force would like to share some of what we learned from the survey and the directions in which it has guided our conversation.
One interesting, if at first glance disappointing, response, was that more than 90 survey takers answered only the first question: “Have you ever served on an AAUP committee or task force?” While some of these incomplete responses may have been false starts—when someone came back to complete the survey later, almost every one of the early exits answered “No.” These members may have felt they did not know enough about, or weren’t invested enough in, the work of the AAUP committees.
Of those respondents who completed the survey, 51% identified themselves as upper management, 60% of whom have served on AAUP committees. Middle management represented 43% of respondents, and only 30% had ever served on a committee—a seemingly low number. Six percent (or 13 respondents) identified as entry-level staff, and only one of these had ever served on a committee or task force. There are several plausible explanations for this, viz., the longer one works in the AAUP community, the more opportunity one has to serve, let alone the more value one may see in the association.
However, these two results, in tandem with the large number of “Don’t Know” responses about the current work and effectiveness of committees, led the task force to an important realization. How to inform and involve a greater number and diversity of member staff in the work of the association will be one of the goals of the task force recommendations. One of the survey comments stressed this as well: the need for “more active outreach to press staff” on AAUP programs and committee progress.
Several committees have been a particular focus of the task force, including the Scholarly Journals Committee and the Electronic Committee. The divide between book and journal publishing in AAUP—increasingly counterproductive in a digital publishing environment—was underlined by the fact that only 5 self-identified journals staff took the survey, and 82% of survey-takers answered “Don’t Know” to the statement: “The Scholarly Journals Committee adequately addresses the most significant issues in journals publishing.” On the issue of the electronic committee, the survey confirmed what we had heard from recent committee chairs: there is an essential role in AAUP’s future for a group with IT and e-publishing expertise, but it must be more clearly defined.
The survey finally sought to discover AAUP members’ top priorities, and the task force has taken note. The three most important issues—for all staff levels whether or not a respondent had served on an AAUP committee—are digital rights and digital delivery of content; press relations with governing institutions; and open access initiatives and new revenue models.
We thank all those who took the time to complete the AAUP Committee Survey, and look forward to presenting our recommendation to the Board in Spring 2009.
Task Force Members:
Richard Brown, Georgetown, Chair
Alan Harvey, Stanford
Alex Holzman, Temple
Kathleen Keane, Johns Hopkins
Brenna McLaughlin, AAUP
David Nicholls, MLA
Frank Smith, Cambridge
List of Survey Questions (PDF, members-only)
Password Information
Les Phillabaum, director emeritus of Louisiana State University Press, died on Wednesday, January 14, 2009. A legendary press director, champion of distinguished authors and poets, and former president of AAUP, he will be greatly missed by the university press community.
Phillabaum had a long history of involvement with AAUP, serving a term as AAUP President from 1984-1985, and co-authoring, with Sheldon Meyer, the pamphlet “What Is a University Press?” First published in 1980, the revised pamphlet from 1994 has been made available for viewing on AAUP’s website in PDF format.
Born in Cortland, NY, in 1936, he received his master’s degree in English from Penn State University. It was at Penn State’s press that he began his career in scholarly publishing as a manuscript editor, moving next to an appointment as editor-in-chief of the University of North Carolina Press in 1963. In 1970 he went to LSU Press as executive editor and associate director, and was named director of the press in 1975. He held the position of director until his retirement in February of 2003, and at which point he was named Director Emeritus.
During Phillabaum’s tenure at LSU Press, the press experienced tremendous growth: more than doubling its yearly title output and staff size, and publishing over 1,700 books. He helped publish numerous award-winning books, including A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. This legendary novel won the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the first time a university press publication had received that honor. Phillabaum also worked with Mobil to develop the Pegasus Prize for Literature, promoting translations of award-winning fiction from other countries. In 2003, he was made an honorary member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers for his “service to the cause of southern literature.”
Phillabaum was also known for his commitment to publishing poetry. Under his directorship two books won the Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry (Henry Taylor’s The Flying Change and Lisel Mueller’s Alive Together); and he is credited with helping to revive interest in the poet Robert Penn Warren. LSU Press established the L. E. Phillabaum Poetry Award in 2005 to honor this commitment and his venerable career.
Phillabaum is survived by his wife, Robbie; their daughter Diane and her husband; their son Scott and his wife; and two grandsons, Trey and Stephen.
Meredith Benjamin
Communications Coordinator, AAUP
The Modern Language Association’s 124th Annual Convention was held December 27-30 in San Francisco, CA. The Convention is billed as the largest gathering of teachers and scholars in the humanities and attracted 8,544 registrants this year.
The 2008 MLA Exhibit was held in the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton San Francisco, and included displays from approximately 100 publishers and other vendors exhibiting a wide variety of scholarly publications and tools.
The AAUP Cooperative Booth featured submissions from 17 member presses, with approximately 120 books on display. Traffic in the exhibit hall was bustling; despite the state of the economy, many visitors to the exhibit were carrying piles of books under their arms or in that conference staple, the logo-emblazoned tote bag.
Professors and scholars were eager to peruse the wide selection of scholarly books and journals on display, many describing the exhibit hall as a welcome break from the often-stressful conference sessions and job interviews that comprise the rest of the convention.
Many university press authors stopped by the booth to introduce themselves and check out their books in the display. One author even brought his family along for a photo opportunity. Seeing her dad’s book on the display rack, his young daughter remarked, “Dad, you’re famous!”
AAUP member presses had a strong presence at the exhibit, with 38 AAUP member presses exhibiting in their own booth spaces, in addition to those sharing the AAUP Cooperative Booth.
The 2009 MLA Convention is scheduled for December 27-30 in Philadelphia, PA. For more information on the convention, please visit MLA’s web site.
Children’s book publishers and their representatives have been urgently advocating for an exemption from the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA), the requirements of which were to go into effect February 10, 2009. On Friday January 30, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission voted unanimously to issue a one year stay of enforcement for certain testing and certification requirements which had been part of CPSIA.
CPSIA was enacted last August in response to reports of high lead content in imported toys manufactured in China. The law imposes stringent requirements for lead-content testing of toys and other children’s products. CPSIA had the potential to have serious, if unintended consequences for children’s book publishing.
The stay of enforcement provides relief from some of the requirements which were to be enforced beginning next week. The stay pushes the enforcement of these requirements back to February 10, 2010. At that point, the Commission will vote on whether or not to terminate the stay, after it has had more time to consider whether any products will be exempted from the act. According to the press release, the stay requires that, “Manufacturers and importers – large and small – of children’s products will not need to test or certify to these new requirements, but will need to meet the lead and phthalates limits, mandatory toy standards and other requirements.”
Several publishers had been contacted in early November by retailers, indicating that if presses did not certify their books as meeting the new CPSIA lead-content limitations, those books would be removed from the retailers’ inventory. It is uncertain as to how much relief this stay will provide to publishers, as Allan Adler explained in Publisher’s Weekly: “Whether or not this gives us more breathing room really depends on the reaction of the distribution chain to this stay.”
Read the press release from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission:
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09115.html
In Publisher’s Weekly:
http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6633893.html?nid=2286&source=link&rid=1160192508
The presentation made by the AAP group on behalf of publishers to the Commission on January 22 can be viewed here:
http://www.cpsc.gov/ABOUT/Cpsia/publishers.html
Judging for the 2009 AAUP Book, Jacket, & Journal Show took place on January 22-23 at the AAUP Central Office in New York. Throughout its history, the AAUP Book, Jacket, & Journal Show has honored the design and production teams who further a long tradition of excellence in book design, and—through the traveling exhibition and catalog—has visually taught the tenets of good design. Judges this year reviewed almost 600 entries in a range of categories At the conclusion of the judging, they selected 53 books, 1 journal, and 36 jackets/covers as the best examples of excellent design.
The 2009 Book, Jacket, and Journal Show will premiere at the AAUP Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, June 18-21, 2009. The complete schedule for the 2009 traveling exhibition will be released in late summer. Forms to request the show for exhibit at your campus or institution will be available this summer.
View the 2009 selected entries:
http://www.aaupnet.org/programs/marketing/designshow/winners2009.html
View photos of the judging here:
http://www.aaupnet.org/programs/marketing/designshow/2009photos/index.html
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has recently announced two new grants for university press collaborations in its series promoting monograph publication in underserved or emerging areas of the humanities.
A $1-million collaborative publishing grant was awarded to four university presses to support the publication of first books in the field of Indigenous Studies. The four presses participating are the University of Arizona Press, The University of North Carolina Press, The University of Minnesota Press, and Oregon State University Press.
Another grant from the Mellon Foundation has gone to three university presses for the establishment of a new book series entitled Folklore Studies in a Multicultural World. The presses collaborating for the Folklore Series include the University of Illinois Press, the University Press of Mississippi, and the University of Wisconsin Press, in conjunction with the American Folklore Society.
On his first full day in office, January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama restored the protections of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. Revoking George W. Bush’s Executive Order 13233, Obama’s new order also restores limits on who may claim executive privilege to block the release of executive office records to incumbent and living former presidents. EO 13233 had groundlessly expanded “executive privilege” to include Vice Presidents, and designated representatives of both living and deceased former presidents and vice presidents.
Bush’s order was signed on November 1, 2001, and was an early indicator of the stifling secrecy and over-reaching claims of executive power that would characterize the next seven years. Led by prominent historians, a broad coalition of scholars, journalists, publishers, librarians, and First Amendment interest groups fought the Bush order in the courts of law and public opinion. While the former battles were hampered by issues of standing (all lawsuits had to be predicated on specific records that were being held back under the provisions of the order), public opinion remained on the side of public access to the records of our executive civil servants. Obama’s early action on this matter is testament to its importance.
AAUP joined amici in supporting the lawsuits, and organized a brochure and book exhibit highlighting some of the American history impossible to write without guaranteed access to presidential records. The books included specialist studies of the policies of the Vietnam and Cold Wars, as well as popular biographies such as Robert Caro’s award-winning and still-incomplete The Years of Lyndon Johnson, a projected four-volume life of the 36th president.
January 21, 2009, was in many ways a red-letter day for freedom of information. In addition to the Executive Order on Presidential Records, Obama issued a memorandum to executive departments and agencies regarding the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The administration re-affirmed the democratic tenets of accountability and transparency, stating clearly: “In the face of doubt, openness prevails.”
Obama Executive Order on Presidential Records:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/ExecutiveOrderPresidentialRecords/
Bush Executive Order 13233:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2001/11/eo-pra.html
January 21, 2009 Memorandum on the Freedom of Information Act:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/foia/2009foia.mem.rel.pdf