Rebecca Kennison
Director, Center for Digital Research and Scholarship
Columbia University
Columbia’s Center for Digital Research and Scholarship (CDRS) and Fordham University Press (FUP) have combined forces in a library-press partnership to create an online book authored by Columbia anthropology professor Neni Panourgiá entitled Dangerous Citizens: The Greek Left and the Terror of the State. The print version was published by FUP in August. A Web-based project, designed and hosted by CDRS, will launch in December.
This project employs technological innovation with the goal not to create a book online but an online book, a work that provides for ongoing engagement between author and reader/user. The library/press collaboration offers a useful model for how such partnerships can succeed through leveraging the expertise and creativity of two groups, both fully devoted to bringing the author’s scholarly vision to life, one as publisher and the other as an organization whose mission it is to serve the digital needs of the university faculty.
This presentation will outline the challenges, divisions of labor, and joint efforts that took full advantage of the combined strengths of the two teams and the ongoing communication necessary to make such a collaboration work smoothly. The presentation will feature a demonstration of the newly launched online book, and it will include discussion of the features to be rolled out in the coming months.