"The April 5th Colloquium on New Technology and the Future of Publishing featured guest speakers from a variety of different institutions and areas of study"

"Celebrating the Birth of a Press"
Lynley Loftin

On April 5, 2001, the Strom Thurmond Institute was buzzing with new ideas and projects, thanks to the speakers at the Colloquium on New Technology and the Future of Publishing. Guests from across the university, region, and country gathered to celebrate the birth of the Clemson University Digital Press (CUDP), an inspiration years in the making and not without complication. The idea of the Clemson University Digital Press started when then-Dean James Barker established a task force to explore the possibility of creating a press in the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities. When Barker relocated to Sikes Hall to become President of the University, he carried his interest in the press along with him. He gave charge to Professor Wayne Chapman to form another committee, supervised by Provost Steffen Rogers, to explore the possibility of establishing a twenty-first-century press as an institute, which engages two or more colleges across campus. However, with impending higher education budget cuts, the university has had to shelve the idea to prepare to meet the crisis. Consequently, the trademark CUDP has remained in the hands of the College of Architecture, Arts, and Humanities, where CU Digital Press is "housed" in the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing (CEDP), and administrative unit duly authorized by the state Commission on Higher Education in July 2000 and approved for implementation by Barker, Interim Provost Helms, and Acting Dean Moran on August 15, 2000. Chapman was named Director and began the work of implementing the Center and developing several projects for the press, including the colloquium.

The April 5th Colloquium on New Technology and the Future of Publishing featured guest speakers from a variety of different institutions and areas of study. The day began with opening remarks from President Barker followed by a few words from Professor Chapman, Executive Editor of CUDP. The first presentation of the day was on "Libraries and the Digital World," with mark Herring, the Dean of the Dacus Library at Winthrop University, Presenting on "Lost in (Cyber) Space: Libraries in the Cyber Age." Herring who was joined by John Price-Wilkin, who is the Head of the Digital Library Production Service at the University of Michigan and who addressed the topic "Leveraging the Digital Library for Publishing the past and Future."

The session on "Digital Publishing and Professional Communication" was one of special interest to students in the MAPC program, as two MAPC professors, Kathleen Yancey and Sean Williams, moderated the session. Steven Jones is the Co-Director of Romantic Circles at Loyola University of Chicago and presented his ideas about "Publishing Re-purposed: the Romantic Circles Website." Jones shared this session with James Inman, the Director of the Center for Collaborative Learning and Communication at Furman University. Inman engaged in a conversation, aided by Williams, on "Visible Media; The Implications of Publishing Technologies for Digital Publishing."

After lunch, a session on "Literary Studies and Digital Publishing" featured provocative work from Martha Nell Smith and Michael Groden. Smith is Co-Editor of the Electronic Emily Dickinson Archive and Director of the Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland. Her presentation, delivered in her absence by Assistant Professor Catherine Paul, addressed "The Emily Dickinson Archive Project as a Scholarly Edition." Groden is the Director of James Joyce's Ulysses Hypermedia Project at the University of Western Ontario (to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press), and he related his experiences with and demonstrated feature of his hypermedia project in a presentation entitled "James Joyce's Ulysses in Hypermedia: Problems of Annotation."

Eduard Fuehr, of the Brandenburg Technical University of Cottbus (Germany), began the session on "Digital Publishing and the Arts" with presentation of his trilingual (German, English, Russian) digital publishing venture in architecture entitled "The Architectural Journal Wolkenkuckucksheim-Cloud-Cuckoo-Land-Vozduchnyj samok: Integration of an Internet Journal into Praxis." Caroline Eisner, senior consultant to the Bread Load Teacher Network and the Associate Director of the Visible Knowledge Project, projected the audience in to the future with her presentation on "Active Engagement: Building a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the Humanities." Following the trend of threes, Michael Lentine, President of Earth Artist Traditigal Studios in Columbia (SC), spoke on "Film: Emerging Technologies in Production."

Throughout the day, special workshops and exhibitions occurred in and synchronous with the presentation of the colloquium. For example, Jo Anne paschal, Director of Nexus Press in Atlanta, assisted in a workshop and prepared an exhibition of "artist's books" (or limited-edition, high-quality publications characterized by fine printing and illustrations). She aided a workshop in the Lee Hall print studio, directed by Professor Sydney Cross, and was assisted in here book history display by Professor Karen Schiff. The display was complemented by a demonstration of new technology by representatives of the Xerox Corporation in the lobby of the Self Auditorium.

The proceedings of this extraordinary colloquium are being edited for CU Digital press by Catherine Paul and will be published on the website of the Center for Electronic and Digital Publishing at <http://clemson.edu/caah/cedp>.

The CEDP is also going to publish the proceeding of the President's Colloquium, the yearlong program established by President Barker, which examines "The Idea of the University." Professors Donna Winchell (English) and Bill Maker (Philosophy and Religion) have coordinated that event and are editing the corresponding online anthology with the aid of a grant to CEDP from the Provost's office. MAPC graduate student Kimberly Grissop is employed by the Center to prepare this work for webcasting.

While the CEDP acted as the main sponsor for this event, the colloquium could not have been successful without the help of many organization on campus, the main ones being the Strom Thurmond Institute, which donated facilities and advertising, and the University Vending Committee, the Department of English, the Pearce Center for Professional Communication, and the University Libraries. Also providing support for several notable speakers was the South Carolina Humanities Council and Write to Change/The Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network.