Reorganization aligns University Press with Libraries

A recent reorganization will change Nancy L. Eaton's title of dean of University Libraries to dean of Libraries and Scholarly Communications at Penn State. In December 2005, Provost Rodney Erickson announced that the Penn State University Press would report to Eaton. The new organizational home was based on recommendations of Eva Pell, vice president for Research and dean of The Graduate School (to whom the Press reported); Eaton, dean of University Libraries; and Sanford Thatcher, director of the Penn State University Press. Erickson stated that it will create a stronger collaboration that will serve the faculty and the University well into the future.

Historically, the University Libraries have been represented on the editorial board for the Penn State University Press. Activities of the last several years forged even stronger relationships between the two units, including joint establishment of the Office of Digital Scholarly Publishing; a jointly published reprint series; collaborative digitization projects; and development with Cornell University Libraries of electronic journal publishing software (DPubS).

"This collaboration will put both units in a position to partner with faculty in the utilization of emerging information technologies to provide new alternatives for the dissemination of research and scholarship," Eaton said.

Already under way are projects including the Penn State Romance Studies at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/digital/romancestudies online, involving the Press; the Libraries; the Department of French and Francophone Studies; and the Department of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. It converts the Press' long-running monograph series to an electronic format with print on demand, which had been canceled earlier due to the increasing production costs.