News

Newly Formed MPublishing Posts Statement of Purpose

Mission statement

To be the primary academic publishing unit of the University of Michigan, with responsibility for the creation and promotion of scholarly, educational, and regional materials in digital and print formats. MPublishing commits to using the best emerging digital technology to disseminate such information as freely and widely as possible while preserving the integrity of published scholarship.

Strategy

MPublishing is a newly formed publishing organization within the University of Michigan Library with the purpose of aligning existing and future publishing activities of the Library with the core strengths and informational needs of the University.

The focus of MPublishing will be the development of information communities for well-defined audiences. Key markets will include individual customers such as scholars, researchers, and students, as well as libraries and other institutions. Business models will be developed to best serve the needs of the specific target audiences and will include free access, paid access via online delivery and e-readers, site licenses, print, and other modes of distribution.

As a general principle, community development and content acquisition will be aligned with the academic strengths of the University. Core subjects at the University of Michigan Press include political science, new media/communications, classics, music, performance arts, English as a second language, and German studies. The Scholarly Publishing Office has focused particularly on the needs of humanities and social science publishing with special attention to open access and campus-based publishing. It is expected that MPublishing will extend the present focus of both units into other areas of University strength, including biomedical and medical disciplines.

MPublishing will also develop a suite of service options for University publishing activities. These will include specific product lines (e.g., conference proceedings, very specialized monographs) that reflect academic activities of faculty, including department-based journals, online reference resources, and online educational materials. Publisher consulting services will be available for University faculty, staff, and students.

Strategic organization

MPublishing will incorporate the publishing activities of UM Press, the Scholarly Publishing Office, Deep Blue, the Copyrights office, and other Library units as appropriate.

  • University of Michigan Press publishes scholarly, trade, and regional books in digital and print formats, as well as selected textbooks; the Press publishes approximately 130 new titles each year and has a backlist of 2,500 books undergoing digitization. The Press has an active editorial team as well as sales/marketing and production services.
  • Scholarly Publishing Office provides hosting services and management for 20 open access and subscription journals and a platform for online book delivery. In addition, SPO is involved in departmental publishing activities including database development and print production, and handles reprints of public domain materials via POD technologies, including the Espresso Book Machine, housed in the Library.
  • Deep Blue is the University of Michigan institutional repository, providing access and preservation for electronic versions of UM faculty produced content.
  • Copyright Office provides education and advice on copyright issues as well as national and campus leadership on matters of copyright policy.

    • Authors, readers, and customers of the Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office will benefit significantly from the much increased digital resources, the expansion of channels for digital dissemination, and the overall increase in scale resulting from this unique collaboration of associated University publishing units.

    Operational Organization

    The operational organization of MPublishing is under development with plans to realign resources within and among the current units as well as synergize shared services, to the extent that it is possible and practical, with the goal of creating greater efficiency and providing maximum value to the campus and the larger scholarly community.

    Agreement With Amazon Will Make U-M Digital Books Widely Available

    ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The University of Michigan will make thousands of books that are no longer in copyright -- including rare and one-of-a-kind titles -- available as reprints on demand under a new agreement with BookSurge, part of the Amazon.com group of companies.

    The agreement gives the public a unique opportunity to buy reprints of a wide range of titles in the U-M Library for as little as a few dollars. As individual copies are sold on Amazon.com, BookSurge will print and bind the books in soft-cover form.

    "This agreement means that titles that have been generally unavailable for a century or more will be able to go back into print, one copy at a time," said Paul N. Courant, U-M librarian and dean of libraries.

    "The agreement enables us to increase access to public domain books and other publications that have been digitized," Courant said. "We are very excited to be offering this service as a new way to increase access to the rich collections of the university library."

    Maria Bonn, director of the U-M Library's scholarly publishing office, said the reprint program includes both books digitized by the U-M and those digitized through the U-M's partnership with Google. The initial offering on Amazon will include more than 400,000 titles in more than 200 languages ranging from Acoli to Zulu.

    All of the books being offered on Amazon through BookSurge are titles that remain available in their original form at the U-M Library. The U-M has been offering a limited number of titles for reprint on demand with BookSurge and other distribution partners for the past five years. A reprint "best seller" might sell 100 copies, Bonn said.

    The U-M will set the list price of each book. The agreement calls for a sharing of revenue between BookSurge and the university.

    Sales of reprints often are tied to topical events, Bonn said. An election campaign might bring a surge of interest in older political texts.

    A reference to the Knights of the Golden Circle in the "National Treasures" movies prompted at least 35 people to purchase copies of the 1862 book, "K.G.C. An authentic exposition of the origin, objects and secret work of the organization known as Knights of the Golden Circle."

    Other books available for reprint, at prices ranging from $10 to about $45 depending on length, include these titles:

    "Notes on Nursing: What it is and what it is not," written in 1898 by Florence Nightingale.

    "The Art of Perfumery," published in 1857.

    "Trigonometry with the Theory and Use of Logarithms," written in 1914.

    About the Agreement: FAQs.