Partnerships and collaborations between university presses and university libraries can garner a variety of opinions and perspectives. The Scholarly Kitchen brought this interesting information to our attention in their article, “Revisiting Two Perspectives on Library-based University Presses.”
In 2013 the author shared and compared two different points of view on partnerships and collaborations between university presses and university libraries. The first, by Joe Esposito, was titled: “Having Relations with the Library: A Guide for University Presses”. The second, written in response, is from Rick Anderson, titled: “Another Perspective on Library-Press ‘Partnerships'”.
The two different perspectives shared some common views and also held their own unique takes on a complicated system. For instance, it is assumed that presses collaborate with libraries because libraries have expertise in hosting web services. But are they the best services for the best price? Is “partnership” a term being thrown around when it is really a vendor-customer relationship?
On that same point, the other author questions whether the relationship – partnership or otherwise – makes sense. Is it structured in a way that is truly mutually beneficial?
The article is worth a reread and asks as many questions as it answers.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
