University of Minnesota Press launches Minnesota Archive Editions; ProQuest, JISC Enter Deal
-- Library Journal, 11/20/2008 1:24:00 PM
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Anyone up for a good long tail story? This week the University of Minnesota Press (UMP) announced the launch of Minnesota Archive Editions, a program that will see the press return into print virtually every book published since its founding in 1925. The program is the result of a four-way partnership of the UM Press; Minneapolis-based BookMobile; Booksurge, an Amazon.com company; and Google Books.
“The seed of the idea,” said press director Douglas Armato, “came when we heard from Google that they were getting a high number of hits on our out-of-print books. Then, in discussions with Amazon and Booksurge, we found partners that saw the potential in returning a scholarly publisher’s full backlist to print and had the resources and infrastructure to help us make that happen. Finally, our relationship with BookMobile allows us to make the books readily available to all our customers, including libraries and bookstores.”
Under the program, works are published unaltered from the original UMP editions, produced in limited quantities according to customer demand and are available for order through Amazon.com and through the press’s distributor, the Chicago Distribution Center. In an added bonus, the books will be full-text searchable through both Amazon’s Search Inside the Book program and Google’s Google Book Search program.
Marketing Director Emily Hamilton said the press has already made more than 600 of out-of-print titles available again, and within the next six months will do the same for “every title back in print,” excepting titles for which the press doesn’t have full rights or which are not suitable for digital printing…
ProQuest has announced a new agreement with the UK’s JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) Collections to make British Periodicals collections I and II available to the UK academic and research community, beginning January 2009.
The British Periodicals collections trace the development and growth of the periodical press in Britain from its origins in the seventeenth century through to the Victorian “age of periodicals” and beyond. This encompasses almost 500 periodical runs published from the 1680s to the 1930s, comprising six million keyword-searchable pages and providing a rich record of more than two centuries of British history and culture. For more information, visit or the ProQuest parent company website…
OverDrive audiobook customers can now get their “Mac” on—the company this week announced it has released free software for Mac users that allows users to download some 5500 audiobooks in the MP3 format from an OverDrive partner library. OverDrive’s Media Console for Mac can transfer titles to Apple devices including iPod Classic, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, and iPhone.
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