Transcript The Gutenberg-e Project Opportunities and Challenges in Publishing Born-Digital Monographs Kate Wittenberg History of Gutenberg-e • Launched in 1999 with support from the Andrew W.

The Gutenberg-e Project
Opportunities and Challenges in
Publishing Born-Digital
Monographs
Kate Wittenberg
History of Gutenberg-e
• Launched in 1999 with support from the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• American Historical Association selected six
dissertations each year and awarded prizes
• E-Publishing staff at Columbia worked with
authors to create the digital monographs
Initial Goals
• Enable enhanced forms of historical
scholarship and writing
• Influence a change in attitudes toward
digital publishing in the academy
• Contain costs of publishing scholarly
books
Project Findings
• Authors and publishing staff
collaborated in creating new models of
scholarship and writing
• Over the course of the project, attitudes
toward digital publications evolved
• Time and costs involved in creating
these models exceeded expectations
New Publishing Model
• Authors are active collaborators rather
than “lone toilers”in creating their work
• Editors and web developers are
researchers creating new models rather
than staff reacting to completed work
• Both learn to think more creatively
about the presentation and use of
scholarship
Questions Raised for both
Author and Publisher
• Must a scholarly narrative be presented in
linear form?
• How does one present an “authorial voice” in
an interactive publication?
• Are images and archives supplementary or
the organizing structure in an e-book?
• Can new “textbooks” be created by
integrating e-books and digital teaching
tools?
Views of Digital Scholarship in
the Academy
• Early on, some authors had trouble
convincing department chairs of the
quality of electronic book content
• As project evolved, authors began
receiving tenure based on evaluation of
the digital book publications
• Attitudes changed as the project
developed
Sustainability Issues
• Tremendous potential of digital
scholarship can create high costs
• Need to agree on what authors can
expect in designing their digital work
• Enhanced collaboration involves
increases in cost and time
• Dual business models: open access
and subscription
Future of E-Books and
Scholarly Publishing
• Authors are pushing e-books forward-publishers and universities must follow
• Next generation will assume their scholarship
will be published in digital form
• New technologies and e-book publishing
protocols will allow costs to be contained
• Need for continuing innovation
Gutenberg-e
www.gutenberg-e.org
http://www.humanitiesebook.org/
Kate Wittenberg
[email protected]