Gutenberg-e

[Ann Okerson <ann.okerson@yale.edu>]

Recent news postings in Library Journal and the Chronicle of 
Higher Education tell a somewhat confusing story about 
Gutenberg-e, the online series publishing worthy books by younger 
historians.  Begun under the leadership of Robert Darnton when he 
was President of the American Historical Association, it was 
grant-funded and published by Columbia University Press.  As near 
as one can tell, the sequence of events is something as follows:

1.  Nearing completion of its funded run of publications, 
frustrated that the series was getting few subscription customers 
and little recognition for scholarly content, Columbia Press 
negotiated to have the series become part of the Humanities 
E-Books project led by ACLS. The Humanities E-Book site lists 
twenty titles in the series and at present offers access to 6 of 
them.  This is a subscription series, typically paid for by 
institutional (library) subscriptions.  All the articles and 
releases cited below seem to agree that the fundamental business 
model of the series was not working.

2.  On 1 November 2007, volumes in the series were also made 
available for open access through the project's own site, 
www.gutenberg-e.org. Twenty-three titles are available there, 
with "Open Access Terms and Conditions" rather heavier on 
restrictions on use (e.g., one printed copy only per user, no 
multiple copies) than one associates with OA projects. The page 
bears a Columbia University Press copyright

3.  On February 12, 2008, the American Historical Association 
issued a press release entitled "Gutenberg-e Books Now Available 
Open Access and through ACLS Humanities E-Book".  Deep in the 
press release, Robert Townsend of AHA expressed concern that the 
series had not been financially successful.

4.  At the end of February, both LJ and CHE published articles 
emphasizing the new open access, but containing some indication 
of the financial challenges the series had faced.  In response, 
the director of Columbia University Press, Jim Jordan, wrote a 
cryptic blog entry http://www.cupblog.org/?p=99 in which he 
sought to clarify some facts of the case, somewhat distancing 
himself from the open access version of the project, which he 
reports as hosted by the Columbia libraries.

5.  The Columbia University Libraries website does not make it 
easy to find the Gutenberg-e titles.  The one time I succeeded in 
finding a page (yesterday: going back to write this note I was 
unable to locate it), the page was clearly marked as a 
subscription-only series accessible on the site only to Columbia 
users.  However, a Google search does find a free site.

I'd welcome any clarification and corrections of this outline of 
the facts I've been able to uncover.  Will all the titles of 
Gutenberg-e be included in the Humanities E-Book series?  Will 
the open access version continue indefinitely? Are the two 
versions identical?  How should we best represent these titles in 
our online catalogues?

Ann Okerson
Yale Library