University Presses: Going Digital

University Presses are remarkable, in some way, for how utterly behind the times they are. This little item was brought to my attention regarding Ohio State University Press. The item concerns the decision to take selected backlist titles, digitize these, and put them on the Web for free. This seeming innovation, however, is hardly new at all and pales in comparison to the plunge National Academic Press took, when it decided to digitize and make available all of its titles. Of course, the digitization of university press publications, such as by Google, is a complicated issues because the knowledge base among university presses concerning their digitization options and requirements with respect to workflow, print-on-demand technology, long-term electronc preservation, and so many other issues is so limited.

And so, a discussion of those issues will become the substance the next series of posts that I make to this blog.