Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Our Institutional Home at Purdue

September 21st, 2020

This blog series, Putting the “Purdue” in Purdue University Press, is celebrating PUP’s 60th Anniversary by featuring the work the Press does in service to its parent institution. You can find the whole series here.

This post celebrates our relationship with the Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies.

While Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies (PULSIS) is our departmental home at Purdue University, much of our relationship is defined by the wonderful services PULSIS has to offer that help Purdue University Press accomplish its mission.

As we’ve noted earlier in this series, the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections, a department within Libraries, plays a large part in many of the books we publish, specifically those about Purdue University.

The Neil A. Armstrong Papers provided the source materials for two recent books, Dear Neil Armstrong and A Reluctant Icon, both compiled by Armstrong’s authorized biographer James R. Hansen. The books examine the life and legacy of the first man on the moon through correspondence he received throughout his life.

The Archives also played a significant role in the books we published for Purdue’s 150th celebration. Purdue at 150 was co-authored by four of the archivists, and utilized many pictures coming directly from the collections there. Ever True author John Norberg often remarks on the long hours he has spent in the archives.

“In working on Ever True: 150 Years of Giant Leaps at Purdue University and other books, I spent many long hours in the archives. I was able to look at the material available online and request what I wanted to see. I sat at a table and the always very helpful archivists brought boxes to me. I opened the boxes and found letters, speeches, diaries and much more.” said Norberg in a previous interview. “History is the stories of people and in the Purdue Archives people came back to life, sat beside me and told me their victories and tragedies, joys and sorrows.”

We have published books on Purdue for a long time, and the Archives is the most important source for many of them. Thanks to another service provided by PULSIS, Purdue e-Pubs, you can access several of them for free online.

Purdue e-Pubs is a service that provides publishing support for original publications as well as hosting for Purdue-affiliated articles, reports, conference proceedings, student scholarship, and more. Purdue e-Pubs hosts many projects for Purdue University Press, including a collection of completely open-access books. This includes projects made open-access through Knowledge Unlatched, classic books on the history of Purdue, and our series The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research, which we recently announced was becoming completely open access.

Other Purdue University Press resources made available through Purdue e-Pubs include a collection of open-access journals, free previews of each new book we publish, and all Joint Transportation Research Program reports, including each year’s Road School proceedings.

Our Press is administratively a unit of PULSIS and the Director of our Press reports to the Dean of Libraries and School of Information Studies. PULSIS provides wonderful resources and services that help us achieve our goal of disseminating valuable and worthwhile scholarship. For that we are very thankful.