1.2 Participants  (Page 3/4)

In recent years, university press monograph publication rates in art history have not quite kept pace with thegrowth of the professional community of art historians (see Trends ). Several challenges to presses have made vigorous front lists of traditional, discipline-based monographs in art andarchitectural history less feasible now than they were a decade ago:

• Disciplinary diversification and the interdisciplinary turn in higher education have made cross-over books a commissioningpriority for editors;
• Steep declines in library sales, due mostly to increases in the costs of science journals, have made traditional print runs of1000 and higher unrealistic for most books; such print runs are nevertheless maintained because of economies of scale in theprinting process, and thus yield costly inventories;
• Growth in the publication of attractive, full-color, synthesizing art books has reduced the general readership that wasan additional source of sales in the past;
• Production costs have risen because of the increasingly onerous permissions regime and heightened production-valueexpectations on the part of authors and readers; and
• University administrations have begun to require that presses be more self-sufficient, and now frequently require revenues to beturned back in part to the parent institution.

Publishers and editors are well aware that current business models for art history publishing need to berevised, and they recognize new possibilities in born-digital publication and print-on-demand distribution. Nonetheless, many arealso skeptical about the viability of these new channels of art history publication in the short term.

As universities have begun to restructure their relationships to their presses, either by bringing them intothe university library structure or requiring them to operate on a semi-profitable business model, the role of university presses hasbecome less clear. Discussions with publishers and editors suggest that a concerted effort to clarify the functions and operatingmodels of university presses would be timely.

Libraries

Research libraries play an important role in the scholarly publishing environment in that they represent a significant portionof the market for scholarly monographs.

Although more and more publications are offered in digital form, libraries continue to acquire significantcollections in print. Nevertheless, library budgets are increasingly stretched because of the very high cost of scientificjournals and the concomitant need to cut back on other purchases—often print monographs. Libraries have to balance thecontinued acquisition of print materials with the need to acquire ever-growing numbers of electronic resources. Libraries are alsodevoting significant resources to preservation and long-term access of digital collections, and they are taking an increasingly activerole in the management of and advising on copyright and intellectual property issues. And finally, librarians havedeveloped extensive expertise in the areas of discovery and access to digital information resources, and are providing diversifiedservices to scholars and students in searching across multiple databases and publications. A number of publishers consult withlibrarians concerning the design and functionality of their digital resources so as to make sure that they conform to the ways in whichusers are accustomed to finding and accessing information.