Recent news postings in Library Journal and the Chronicle of
Higher Education tell a somewhat confusing story about
Gutenberg-e, the online series publishing worthy books by
younger
historians. Begun under the leadership of Robert Darnton
when he
was President of the American Historical Association, it was
grant-funded and published by Columbia University Press. As
near
as one can tell, the sequence of events is something as
follows:
1. Nearing completion of its funded run of publications,
frustrated that the series was getting few subscription
customers
and little recognition for scholarly content, Columbia Press
negotiated to have the series become part of the Humanities
E-Books project led by ACLS. The Humanities E-Book site
lists
twenty titles in the series and at present offers access to
6 of
them. This is a subscription series, typically paid for by
institutional (library) subscriptions. All the articles and
releases cited below seem to agree that the fundamental
business
model of the series was not working.
2. On 1 November 2007, volumes in the series were also made
available for open access through the project's own site,
www.gutenberg-e.org. Twenty-three titles are available
there,
with "Open Access Terms and Conditions" rather
heavier on
restrictions on use (e.g., one printed copy only per user,
no
multiple copies) than one associates with OA projects. The
page
bears a Columbia University Press copyright
3. On February 12, 2008, the American Historical
Association
issued a press release entitled "Gutenberg-e Books Now
Available
Open Access and through ACLS Humanities E-Book". Deep
in the
press release, Robert Townsend of AHA expressed concern that
the
series had not been financially successful.
4. At the end of February, both LJ and CHE published
articles
emphasizing the new open access, but containing some
indication
of the financial challenges the series had faced. In
response,
the director of Columbia University Press, Jim Jordan, wrote
a
cryptic blog entry http://www.cupblog.org/?
p=99 in which he
sought to clarify some facts of the case, somewhat
distancing
himself from the open access version of the project, which
he
reports as hosted by the Columbia libraries.
5. The Columbia University Libraries website does not make
it
easy to find the Gutenberg-e titles. The one time I
succeeded in
finding a page (yesterday: going back to write this note I
was
unable to locate it), the page was clearly marked as a
subscription-only series accessible on the site only to
Columbia
users. However, a Google search does find a free site.
I'd welcome any clarification and corrections of this
outline of
the facts I've been able to uncover. Will all the titles of
Gutenberg-e be included in the Humanities E-Book series?
Will
the open access version continue indefinitely? Are the two
versions identical? How should we best represent these
titles in
our online catalogues?
Ann Okerson
Yale Library
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