The Ant, the University Press, and the Librarian
The A nt, the University Press, and the Librarian
Patrick H. Alexander 0 1
0 Th e Pennsylvania State University Press , USA
1 by Patrick H. Alexander , Director , The Pennsylvania State University Press , USA
Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation
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Article 9
Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg
The Ant, the University Press, and the Librarian.
Reflections on the Evolution of Scholarly Communication
Ttablished a press-library collaboration in
he Pennsylvania State University
es2005. In due course, under the auspices
of a newly created Office of Digital Scholarly
Publishing, it successfully launched an Open
Access monograph series, collaborated on
several library book-publishing projects, a journal
archive, a reprint series from the libraries’
special collections, and another monograph/
database project. I arrived in 2007, when
things were just beginning to take shape. We
were probably not unlike many press-library
relationships that were being formed, doing our
best to “make our way in the world today.” It
wasn’t perfect, but it was decidedly a step in
the right direction.
One aspect of the partnership became clear
early: Our respective, different cultures did
not always make communication or working
together intuitive or straightforward. In an
Against the Grain article that appeared in
an issue co-edited with my friend and former
colleague at the Pennsylvania State
University Libraries, now the executive director of
the HathiTrust, Michael Furlough,1 I wrote
about those different cultures. I reflected on a
university press’s “assets” in the press-library
relationship. I proposed that presses were
“assets,” and I discussed these, not in contrast
to the liabilities of a library or vice versa, but
in terms of how presses and libraries differ
culturally. I was spinning the differences
between presses and libraries using the language
of finance, but, in reality, I was obliquely
pointing out that businesswise we were from
two different planets, even if located on the
same campus.
Over time my take on the cultural
differences in the ATG article was reinforced, and I
pointed to those differences whenever I talked
about Penn State’s press-library relationship.
Three assets — more properly cultural
differences — continue to hold import for me, and I
suspect they could hold for other press-library
relationships. Understanding and managing
these cultural differences, as nearly as I can tell,
continues to play an ongoing and determinative
role in how presses and libraries will or will
not work together. With a little elaboration, I
review them below.
Although presses range widely in terms of
size, audience, and mission — University of
Chicago Press is not like the University of
Oklahoma Press, and University of Michigan
Press is not like Kent State University Press
— most generally face outward to scholarly
associations, researchers, and society writ
large, rather than inward toward their
campuses. Libraries, however, typically look inward,
locally, toward their faculty and students.
Understandably, that means libraries,
comparatively, have enviable influence and power
inside the university. They have solid networks
and access to campus resources. They have the
ear of the provost, may have contact with the
president, and have a deep institutional history.
Plus, people — donors — give libraries money.
In contrast presses construct networks with
societies, researchers, institutes, and authors,
often in subject areas only loosely connected
with the university. Consequently, presses
historically built few if any powerful allies
inside the university. Moreover, presses only
rarely receive significant capital support. Once
a press was moved under a library, for good or
for ill, it quickly learned what a difference a
library could make vis à vis recognition and
access on one’s own campus. For the first
time, a few presses found institutional support
and political cover in their relationship with
the library.
Presses operate on the basis of a
(theoretically) revenue-generating, cost-recovery
market model; libraries operate on a subsidized,
expenditure-based budget. As I have said
often, libraries are given a pot of money out
of which they must control their expenditures
and operate successfully. Presses, in contrast,
are given a largely empty pot (an average
allocation applied to operating expenses is
8%–13%2) and are told to fill it with money.
While neither is easy, those two approaches
to managing finances are wildly different.
Understanding existentially the difference
between the two approaches is nearly impossible
for either side and is the source for ongoing
misunderstanding.
A third difference is linked both to the
inward/outward and to the difference in how
finances operate. On the one hand, libraries
Academic Publishing Is Not ...
from page 14
orders at library wholesalers. The concept of
plugging books into a traditional
profit-andloss (...truncated)