April 10, 2008
Is E-Publishing at Columbia U. on the Ropes?
Rumors are swirling in the university publishing world that Columbia University is eliminating its electronic publishing division. The rumors follow a recent shift in focus of Columbia’s high-profile digital scholarship project, Gutenberg-e.
James G. Neal, vice president for information services, who is also university librarian, declined to comment on the matter. But Kate Wittenberg, who has been heavily involved with electronic publishing at the university, will be leaving the university on June 30. She told The Chronicle that Mr. Neal informed her that Columbia’s libraries will no longer be involved in electronic publishing.—Andrea L. Foster
Posted on Thursday April 10, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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I hear the Columbia Libraries have this new center for digital research that is doing a ton of really cutting edge projects for online scholarship. Given how blogs and commenting and post-publication review are taking off in the scientific community, I think that’s really where the “wave” of the future is going. I look forward to what they’ll do for us in the humanities!
— Jane Samuels, PhD Apr 10, 09:25 PM #
Individual universities “doing” epublishing is like individual universities doing, huummmmmm,
personal computing? I seem to remember ghosts—project Athena?
There are solid reasons for universities to withdraw from what Silicon Valleys do twenty times as fast and 10 million times as well.
— Richard Tabor Greene Apr 11, 07:51 AM #
But the individual universities are the only ones with ownership of the libraries that hold the historical documents.
What point having access to an elibrary limited to very recent materials?
— NYMOM Apr 11, 09:10 AM #
It’s o.k. outsourcing these projects to Silicon Valley as long as they are assured of being free in access terms and opensource in technological terms. Another way is higher-level collaboration between LOC and HEIs.
— Dave Postles Apr 11, 10:00 AM #
Why should Sillicon Valley types do a project like this for free? It’s only universities or public libraries that have an interest in providing this sort of material online for free.
Outsourcing will ultimately mean charging for access to the information. Just like cable tv does now versus what tv used to do, just a few channels but all for free after you paid for your tv equipment. That was the only cost involved.
Look at what we have for tv now and you can see the future of access to any historical materials universities have in their possession. It will be ‘pay per view’ for research materials.
— NYMOM Apr 11, 12:51 PM #
What’s the difference between “ “huge” “ and “huge” – ?
— bta Apr 11, 01:23 PM #
Columbia was ahead of the curve on many of its projects, and I’m sorry to see one of the most important R&D units in the library-press space shut down. These kinds of digital publishing experiments are important, and EPIC was generous in providing information about its successes and failures to other libraries and presses. This is not only a loss for Columbia but for the university press and library community more broadly.
— Laura Cerruti Apr 11, 02:12 PM #