Walking into Northwestern University Press is almost like walking into a far corner of the campus library. The muffled tapping of fingers on a keyboard and the abrasive creaking of the front door break the silence. A simple table of books stands in for a front desk, and cubicle walls hide employees from sight.
Located in a red brick house at 629 Noyes St., Northwestern University Press is largely unknown to NU students, although Director Donna Shear said she works to improve the Press’ visibility on campus.
“Being a major research university, Northwestern has a university press,” Shear said. “It’s considered part of the mission of a large research university.”
The Press acquires, edits and markets about 60 books each year with its 16-person staff, in addition to work study students and interns.
Not all authors are NU professors, although the press focuses its publishing within a few key disciplines that relate to university faculty areas of expertise, which includes continental philosophy, Slavic studies, literary criticism, fiction and poetry, and performance studies and theater, Shear said.
The Press’ editorial board reviews submitted books and makes the decision to publish based on the text’s scholarship and fit into its areas of focus. Many university presses do not align their publications closely with their university’s areas of specialty, but NU’s press tries to publish in close keeping with the university’s academic strengths, Shear said.
Once presses develop expertise in a particular subject, they “tend to continue to (publish) in that discipline even if it’s not the focus of the university,” she said.
“One of the reasons why we publish a lot in Slavic studies is because we have one of the best departments in the country,” said Prof. Peter Hayes, press board chairman for the editorial board. “We would like to make sure that we showcase the special strengths of the university, and that can mean that we are as much of a publishing presence in areas as we are a scholarly authority.”
Though the majority of the books the Press publishes are not submitted by NU professors, Hayes has had two of his books about the Holocaust published.
“I’ve always found the Press very quick, very responsive,” he said. “The quality of books turned out by the university is very high.”
The Press employs work-study students in various aspects of publication and offers competitive internships, Shear said.
Weinberg senior Lucy Hill, a production intern, hopes to pursue academic publishing after graduation. Working for a university press has enabled her to see more of the publishing process and will help her ease into the publishing business, she said.
“(The Press) is really small, so it’s like you’re working for a small business,” she said. “But if you work for Random House, you’re one of a thousand.”
The administration considered closing the Press in 2002 after it reported $877,000 in losses. Instead, administrators tried to remedy the problem by printing smaller runs of books and balancing profitable books with those deemed academically significant, according to Daily archives.
Since then, the Press has benefited from a Mellon Foundation grant for publishing in Slavic studies and continued support from the university administration, Shear said. Even in the midst of that year’s financial losses, the Press’ academic victories helped even the score.
“One of our authors (Imre Kertesz) won the Nobel Prize, so that’s really been a feather in our cap,” Shear said.
The University Press and the University Library function on similar models in terms of financing, as well as publishing and disseminating information, University Librarian Sarah Pritchard said. Those similarities help for collaborations between the two organizations.
“What we look at is what’s the investment we make in scholarly information,” she said. “In effect, when we find that the Press doesn’t bring in as much as it needs to operate, we look at that cost as the price of providing scholarly information. That’s the goal of a scholarly press: to increase the amount of scholarly information to people all over the world.”
The Press and the library both see changes in the publishing world because of the availability of electronic resources, Pritchard said.
“We have librarians who cover different subjects so that we in the library can keep up with scholarship,” she said. “The Press is looking at the same thing, but they look at it earlier in the pipeline. They keep their finger on the pulse of the same scholarly world that we (do).”
