The Gutenberg-e Project Opportunities and Challenges in Publishing Born-Digital Monographs Kate Wittenberg

History of Gutenberg-e Launched in 1999 with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation American Historical Association selected six dissertations each year and awarded prizes E-Publishing staff at Columbia worked with authors to create the digital monographs

Initial Goals Enable enhanced forms of historical scholarship and writing Influence a change in attitudes toward digital publishing in the academy Contain costs of publishing scholarly books

Project Findings Authors and publishing staff collaborated in creating new models of scholarship and writing Over the course of the project, attitudes toward digital publications evolved Time and costs involved in creating these models exceeded expectations

New Publishing Model Authors are active collaborators rather than lone toilersin creating their work Editors and web developers are researchers creating new models rather than staff reacting to completed work Both learn to think more creatively about the presentation and use of scholarship

Questions Raised for both Author and Publisher Must a scholarly narrative be presented in linear form? How does one present an authorial voice in an interactive publication? Are images and archives supplementary or the organizing structure in an e-book? Can new textbooks be created by integrating e-books and digital teaching tools?

Views of Digital Scholarship in the Academy Early on, some authors had trouble convincing department chairs of the quality of electronic book content As project evolved, authors began receiving tenure based on evaluation of the digital book publications Attitudes changed as the project developed

Sustainability Issues Tremendous potential of digital scholarship can create high costs Need to agree on what authors can expect in designing their digital work Enhanced collaboration involves increases in cost and time Dual business models: open access and subscription

Future of E-Books and Scholarly Publishing Authors are pushing e-books forward-- publishers and universities must follow Next generation will assume their scholarship will be published in digital form New technologies and e-book publishing protocols will allow costs to be contained Need for continuing innovation

Gutenberg-e Kate Wittenberg