Fiscal year 2004 poses some major challenges for the Scholarly Publishing Office. As in previous years, the unit will continue to be short-staffed due to a combination of a system wide hold on open positions and staff leaves. At the same time, SPO will be assuming responsibility for a major new project, LLMC-Digital, and will be met with increasing challenges in supporting the ACLS History Ebook Project, as that project grows in its ambitions for electronic texts. In addition, it is imperative that the Office continue to grow in both the range of services it can provide its publishing partners and in the number and type of publications supported.

In an attempt to balance the unit’s current commitments, resources, and need to grow, SPO’s focus in 2004 will be on:

SPO has ongoing publishing commitments to six journals and has three more under discussion or development. In addition, it has regularly scheduled updates to annual conference proceedings and to the collaborative translation of Diderot’s Encyclopedie and ongoing commitments to a number of other, more erratically scheduled projects. In fy04, we will:

Maintain the publication schedules for the journals online, improve the publishing environment through better tools (see below), and implement the three journals now in development (Endangered Species Update; Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists; the Journal of the International Institute)

Complete and promote the Center for Japanese Studies online publication site and attempt to leverage it as a model with other International Institute publication groups.

Develop and launch LLMC-Digital and refine management methods for this large (an estimated 100 million pages), on-going (ten year) commitment.

Continue to support the ACLS History Ebook project. Develop better methods for tracking, prioritizing and scheduling development requests and explore the possibility of dedicating a programmer half-time to customization of the system and development of the frontlist titles. Improve efficiency and systematize methods for the backfile conversion by documenting workflow and assigning a project manager to the conversion.

Publish three existing original monographs and use their development as an opportunity to model a monographic publishing system.

Continue to develop SPO role as a Library publisher. Design routine methods for handling Special Collections exhibits. Explore the possibility of other types of Library publications.

Bring to fruition SPO reprint publishing service: determine a printer and work with that printer to offer affordable, high-quality reprints from the Library’s digitally reformatted public domain books.

SPO needs to continue to develop a suite of tools and services to serve its needs and those if of its publishing partners. By the end of fy04 SPO will:

Download and install the Open Journal System and be engaged in a beta test with at least one journal.

Download and install phbbb, a bulletin board software package and be engaged in a beta test with at least one journal (this is dependent on Core Services timeline for installing the server intended for this use).

Assessed PURL software to create persistent URLS and will be either testing PURLS of have a firm development schedule with DLPS for implementing PURLS more generally.

Completed development effort with the business school to create an e-commerce system; be using this in the reprint service and looking for opportunities to extend its use.

Seek out opportunities to use new DLXS capabilities, particularly Unicode support, enhanced level 2 support, and xslt support.

Explore short run and on-demand digital printing as an extension of electronic publishing. Prepare a brief report on findings.

SPO continues to struggle with using a panoply of methods for converting content from its source form to SPO-complaint sgml and in otherwise preparing material for publication. SPO will use fy04 as opportunity to streamline its conversion methods and put in place a fuller set of resources and will:

Focus on better work and data flow, including analysis of current situation and recommendations for improvement and for consolidating the current myriad of tracking and management systems in place. In tandem with this effort, make steps toward fuller documentation and toward development of a documentation system for full implementation in fy05.

Make better use of student and temporary labor for routine conversion tasks, freeing up permanent staff for higher-level planning and development. Define and routinize student tasks.

Develop graphic design capability both for marketing SPOublications and that can be made available to content providers who require a more highly designed environment than SPO can afford to supply as a default.

Continue to make bitonal scanning and PPP services available to clients through a combination of pass-throughs to DLPS, out-sourcing and in-house capability. This is an area that will need consistent attention and assessment as available resources shift and change.

Refine process for managing intellectual property agreements including author agreements and permissions to re-use existing material. This will include modeling a process and creating a tracking system. The permissions system will be tested against clearing rights on behalf of the Library for the distribution of digitally reformatted books.

Develop a modest in-house proof-reading service. Although SPO will continue to locate the majority of editorial work with its authors and editors, it will seek to have adequate proofing ability on staff (mostly through the use of graduate student assistants) to review publications before they go online and to offer fuller editorial work on a case by case basis.

Due to the unusual nature of SPO’s funding (a mix of collection and personnel funds, supplemented by revenue), it has been difficult to determine the status and location of SPO’s available budget. In order to better manage SPO’s finances, we will:

Work with F&F to determine salary savings from previous years and transfer savings to the SPO discretionary account; isolate the SPO program account for staff salaries; accrue all charges and deposit all non-grant revenues into the SPO discretionary account.

Develop a consolidated in-house budget that takes into account the SPO accounts as well as the money managed as “grant funding” (ACLS, LLMC) for fee-based services.

Develop a prospective budget for growth that takes into account both revenue expenditure and the need to maintain some funds for unanticipated future need.

SPO’s long-term short-staffing has caused the staff in place to develop a sort of jack-of-all trades character. This has had value in spreading around skill sets, but it is clear that better efficiency could be obtained with greater specialization (and this will also help staff to develop more specific areas of expertise). This year SPO will focus on rationalizing its staffing plan in general, and, in particular will:

Redefine its open position, and recruit, hire and train for this position.

Develop a better project management scheme for LLMC and the ongoing ACLS backlist conversion work and reassign staff or hire to meet management needs in this area.

Create revised position descriptions that better reflect current roles by the end of fy04.

Develop a growth plan that outlines new areas for hiring and explores funding sources for new staff.

Plan to accommodate growth by developing a plan for better use of office space.

SPO will not be aggressive in recruiting new content to turn around within the year, although it will continue to react to special opportunities. While SPO will focus in this year on honoring existing commitments and improving services, it recognizes the need for continuing to recruit new publications. SPO will pursue new publication opportunities and work with content providers to develop a publication schedule for fy05 when the unit should be fully staffed.

As part of its recruitment strategy, but also to promote existing publications and to raise the visibility of the concept of library-based scholarly publishing, SPO needs to develop a much more aggressive outreach and marketing plan. While it may not be feasible to implement this plan before the unit returns to full staffing, SPO will finalize a documented plan that includes a variety of methods (press releases, talks to faculty, distribution of marc records, list-serv announcements, etc) that will be taken into account in fy05 planning.