Friedman Heads Up Oxford Press's Project TORCH

Publishing veteran tackles Mellon-funded online monographs distribution; librarians enlisted to assist

By Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 05/15/2004

Oxford University Press (OUP) has appointed Phil Friedman the executive director of Project TORCH (The Online Resource Center in the Humanities), which the publisher calls the "next phase in the investigation into the viability of an online distribution center for university press scholarly monographs." Friedman is an industry veteran, having held senior publishing positions at Scholastic Library Publishing, Grolier Educational, Macmillan Reference, and Webster's New World Dictionary . He also is a founder of Grolier Online.

Project TORCH will strive to establish an online collaboration among libraries, university presses, students, and scholars by making collections of backlist scholarly monographs in the humanities available in electronic format. OUP asserts that it is well positioned to coordinate the development of TORCH because a great deal of its content already is online. The publisher said that TORCH ultimately would be managed "at arms length" and be governed by a board of independent directors. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded the first phase of the project in 2003, which produced a feasibility study of the proposed online distribution center. Mellon also is supporting the current phase, which will define the technical, operational, and business models of the project. The amount provided by Mellon was undisclosed.

In investigating TORCH, OUP will work with advisory boards of university presses, librarians, and scholars to develop a service that will present monograph collections organized around academic subject areas. The project also focuses on digitizing older works and developing an online interface "that meets the needs of librarians and their patrons, both in the library and remotely," says OUP.

Friedman told LJ that the project was first discussed several years ago between OUP and Mellon, which agreed to fund the investigation into the viability of the project over a number of stages. The initial feasibility study findings were positive, which motivated Mellon to fund the second stage. "That's where I come in," Friedman said, "to lead those activities under this year's grant." In 12 months, the plans will be presented to Mellon, which will then decide whether to continue funding. Friedman stressed that "nothing yet is finalized, not the platform and how it will work, not the pricing of the collections, nothing is carved in stone."

Friedman asserts that TORCH is a response to the increasing interest in electronic distribution of information on the part of librarians, scholars, and students. Sales of scholarly print monographs, long the intellectual underpinning of university scholarship, have declined drastically in recent years, and OUP hopes that this project will reinvigorate this part of publishing. "We aim to serve university presses by giving them a revenue stream for their backlist titles, as well as making content available in electronic format to students and scholars through their libraries," said Friedman. The current strategy, based on feedback, is to build subject area collections that are cross-searchable, to be sold to libraries, colleges, and the research community.

Friedman says that librarians serving on advisory boards are "integral" to the project's development. "We want to work with librarians to get their input in building this platform. I believe strongly in that approach." LJ columnist Cheryl LaGuardia was among those who met with Friedman. She told LJ that she and her Harvard colleagues are "all for [TORCH], especially with OUP taking the lead and with [Friedman] in charge." LaGuardia will discuss the subject further in her revamped database column in LJ's June 1 issue. Librarians on the formal advisory board are Margaret Landesmann, University of Utah, and James Mouw, University of Chicago.

Although Mellon is the primary funder, the project is seeking multiple sources of support. If Mellon approves the plan, OUP would start building the platform and signing up content in spring 2005, with a possible launch in winter or spring 2006.