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.

Publishing with the Purdue Community

September 14th, 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 the books series and projects we do with on-campus partners.

Our Press serves Purdue in many ways, one of which is projecting the university name to readers everywhere. Compelling and valuable scholarship is not hard to find at Purdue. This presents a wonderful opportunity to partner with the Purdue community to publish and disseminate the impactful work that is being done on and around campus.

In 2014, Purdue University Press published the first volume in the series The Year in C-SPAN Archives Research. The volumes of this series utilize the tools of the C-SPAN Archives and Video Library, with scholarship from experts and emerging voices in political science, journalism, psychology, computer science, communication, and a variety of other disciplines. Robert X. Browning, the series editor, is the Director of the C-SPAN Archives and Faculty Director of the Center for C-SPAN Scholarship & Engagement (CCSE) located in the Brian Lamb School of Communication.

This year, through the support of CCSE, Purdue University Press, and Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, the full series is now available as freely downloadable PDFs through the Purdue e-Pubs text repository. This series can now be accessed by researchers all over the world, fulfilling our commitment but to ensure this scholarship will have the greatest possible impact.

This is only the start of the list.

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures (PSRL) has long published books on topics of literary importance that make a significant contribution to Romance scholarship, and in November we will be publishing the 80th book in this series! Studies are written in English, Spanish, or French and deal with topics in French, Italian, Luso-Brazilian, Spanish, and Spanish American literatures. PSRL books are evaluated, edited, and prepared by the School of Languages and Literatures in the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts and published and distributed by Purdue University Press.

Our New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond series is led by series editors Alan Beck and Marguerite E. O’Haire of the Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine. The series has long produced books on the dynamic relationship between humans and animals. Books in the series range from studies on animal assisted intervention in populations that have experienced trauma to the heated debate over the issue of outdoor cats.

In May, we announced the new book series Navigating Careers in Higher Education. The series has been launched in partnership with the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at Purdue. The series will utilize an intersectional lens to examine and understand how faculty members and administrators navigate careers and their aspirations to succeed. Topics may include addressing sexism, homophobia, racism, and ethnocentrism; the role of higher education institutions; the effects of growing nontenure track faculty; the challenge of a research agenda that may be perceived as controversial; maintaining a life-work balance; and entering leadership positions.

We handle the review, editing, and publication of all Joint Transportation Research Program reports, including each year’s Road School proceedings, publish a host of open-access journals sponsored and edited by members of the Purdue community, and recently partnered with the Purdue College of Engineering on a project called Purdue Engineering Open Bytes, an effort to provide a collection of engineering educational resources that will be available online to anyone in the world.

Our efforts in all these projects would not be possible without the volume of incredible scholarship available here at Purdue University. We’re proud of our part in helping this hard work become published, and helping the world see it.

Supporting and Publishing Purdue’s Undergraduate Research

September 7th, 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 highlights the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research.

The Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research (JPUR) is a fully open access journal publishing outstanding research papers written by Purdue undergraduate students. The journal is published annually in physical form, and online readers may freely read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles. The aim of JPUR is to encourage the development of undergraduate research at Purdue by showcasing the best work in a tangible, centralized, and public way.

The journal is run completely by Purdue undergraduate students, including a journal coordinator and robust Student Editorial Board. Behind the scenes the journal maintains a unique partnership with Purdue University Press and other departments in the Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies, as well as Marketing and Media and the Purdue Writing Lab. The publication of JPUR is sponsored by the Office of the Provost.

“A lot goes into the annual publication, and it has been really exciting to work with the Faculty Advisory Board, Student Editorial Board, Purdue Press staff, and the student authors from start to finish,” said Ethan Edwards, the current journal coordinator. “I read all the proposals, drafts, and finalized publications, which means I have been able to absorb a lot of interesting information about the research that happens at Purdue.”

The research published in the journal is separated into two main sections: articles and research snapshots. The full articles are 2,500–3,500 words in length and include a minimum of five images/diagrams, while the research snapshots are 250 words in length. Other sections include “Out of the Box,” which showcases hands-on or innovative research activities; interviews; and alumni spotlights, which demonstrate how publishing in JPUR as an undergraduate helped students in their later education or careers.

Any current or just-graduated Purdue University undergraduate or professional student engaged in research may submit a proposal at jpur.org. The submitted proposals are reviewed by experts in the discipline and in scholarly writing, as well as by the Faculty Advisory Board. Selected student authors are then invited to submit a full article or a research snapshot.

Edwards, who is a senior pursuing a civil engineering degree at Purdue, had the opportunity to publish with the journal prior to his role as journal coordinator.

“From my experience, I learned a great deal about the scholarly publishing process and was able to improve my writing skills by gaining direct feedback on my work,” Edwards said. “Publishing in the journal also helped me establish a better connection with my faculty mentor and graduate student advisor by working closely with them for feedback. Although it may seem daunting for first-time authors, the satisfaction of seeing your work published to a broad audience both online and in print is absolutely worth it. It is also a great way to show graduate schools, employers, and others your willingness to take the next step with your research.”

You can now access JPUR Volume 10 at jpur.org or wait to pick up a free physical copy from the shelves across from the Purdue University Press office in Stewart Center.

Recording and Preserving Purdue’s History

August 31st, 2020

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

This post celebrates our work in supporting those who record and preserve Purdue’s distinguished history.

Purdue’s history is vast and distinguished, but preserving the stories of the thousands of students, faculty, and staff that make their way through campus each year ultimately falls to a small group of authors and archivists.

During last year’s celebration of Purdue’s 150 Years of Giant Leaps, Purdue University Press published two incredible new books, Purdue at 150: A Visual History of Student Life by David M. Hovde, Adriana Harmeyer, Neal Harmeyer, and Sammie L. Morris, and Ever True: 150 Years of Giant Leaps at Purdue University by John Norberg.

In Ever True, Norberg captures the essence of the university, delving into the stories of the faculty, alumni, and leaders who make up this institution’s past.

“Purdue is among the great universities of the world and it has an amazing history. It’s important to preserve the story of Purdue so people of today and tomorrow can understand it — the good and the bad. I learned from writing the most recent comprehensive history of Purdue, Ever True: 150 Years of Giant Leaps at Purdue University that the school has more history than can ever be put into one book. There’s a lot more work to be done.” said Norberg.

Carrying an encyclopedic knowledge of Purdue’s history and a zeal for all things Purdue, Norberg was the right man for the job. An accomplished writer, author, and journalist, he has frequently written books on Purdue and its alumni.

“In 1986 Purdue Bands wanted to celebrate its centennial with a book and I was hired to write it. I didn’t write anything technical involving music, orchestration, and marching — mainly because I didn’t know anything about that. Instead, I wrote about the people of Purdue bands, the people of 100 years ago and the people of today. I loved it. And people liked the book.” said Norberg. “In 1999 I suggested a book to Purdue about the role of its graduates in the story of aviation and space. It was approved and I’ve done a lot of writing about Purdue people in flight and space ever since. I grew up in the early days of the space race and I’ve always been fascinated by it. Purdue gave me the opportunity to write about that, including the stories of its 25 astronauts.”

The authors of Purdue at 150 take a different route to telling Purdue’s story, through rare images, artifacts, and words.  Sammie Morris, one of the four authors, is the University Archivist and Head of the Archives and Special Collections Division of the Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies.

“Writing Purdue at 150 was an exciting challenge. I and my co-authors from Archives had to balance research and writing of the book— and digitization of materials— with finding content in the Archives that would offer new and different aspects of Purdue history than what had previously been published.” said Morris. “We were fortunate to have a team in the Archives that was knowledgeable about Purdue history and committed to sharing the treasures in the Archives with a wider audience. Every staff member and student employee in Archives contributed in some way to the book, and it was exciting to offer this research and scholarship experience to our student employees, who did excellent work processing collections, scanning photos, and conducting research on Purdue history.”

Many of our books on Purdue wouldn’t be possible without the Purdue University Archives and Special Collections. The research for many of our books starts there, including both sesquicentennial books, and two recent volumes on Purdue alumnus Neil Armstrong that utilize the some 75,000 letters of his correspondence stored there.

“Authors writing books about Purdue frequently use the collections of alumni, faculty and staff personal papers in the Archives to write books about people and events in Purdue history. University records are also frequently used by authors, from consulting historical course catalogs and annual reports to University photos, campus maps, and historical enrollment statistics. These records provide important information needed to understand the work, culture, and identity of Purdue throughout its history.”

Ever True and Purdue at 150 are the most comprehensive histories of Purdue to date, but its history is so much deeper than one book can convey. Our Founders Series is filled with valuable projects on Purdue’s schools, departments, and alumni, many of which are also available for free through Purdue e-Pubs. Additionally, our series  Purdue Studies in Aeronautics and Astronautics has produced books on some of Purdue’s many astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, Jerry Ross, and Gus Grissom.

Even still, our entire catalog doesn’t even begin to encapsulate all the stories worth telling. There are thousands more to be told about Purdue, and as long as we have hard-working, passionate authors and tremendous colleagues in the Archives, we’ll keep finding them.

Putting the “Purdue” in Purdue University Press: Letter from the Director

August 24th, 2020

This post was written by the director of Purdue University Press, Justin Race. It is the first in a series celebrating PUP’s 60th Anniversary by featuring the work the Press does on and around campus. You can find the whole series, Putting the “Purdue” in Purdue University Press, here.

Though obvious, it bears stating: every university press belongs to a particular university. Though we publish authors who are located across the world and seek a global audience, it is Purdue that we serve first and foremost. In a broad sense, that means projecting the university brand to readers everywhere. In a more immediate sense, it means partnering with the Purdue community to produce and disseminate the worthwhile and impactful scholarship being done right in our backyard.

Each year we publish a volume with the Center for C-SPAN Scholarship and Engagement—books that are freely available open access through Purdue e-Pubs. In November we will publish our eightieth book in the Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures series through a decades-long partnership with the School of Languages and Cultures. Our New Directions in the Human-Animal Bond series showcases cutting-edge research on the interplay between people and animals. We handle the review, editing, and publication of all the reports of the Joint Transportation Research Program, including each year’s Road School proceedings. And just a month ago we announced a new partnership with the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence to launch a series on careers in higher education.

As the university is committed to student success, so is our press, offering two student-focused journals: the Journal of Purdue Undergraduate Research and the Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement. Both are open access—in addition to eight other open access journals sponsored and edited by members of Purdue.

Last year we helped celebrate Purdue’s sesquicentennial with two definitive, beautiful histories about the university and student life: Ever True and Purdue at 150. Both are part of our Founders Series, which includes a multitude of works on the university and its impact. We have always published departmental histories, most recently A Passion for Excellence: The History of Aviation Education at Purdue University.

Here in the “cradle of astronauts,” we have a ranging list of titles on space, including two volumes of letters written to Neil Armstrong, capitalizing on the collection of his papers held by the university’s Archives and Special Collections.

This is hardly an exhaustive list, but rather a sampling of the value a press can provide to its parent institution, which we have been doing for sixty years and counting. From giving students their first publication credit to producing government reports to publishing specialized monographs to documenting the university’s history to hosting a wide array of book series and journals edited by our faculty: our press is active throughout our community, working toward student success, fulfilling our mission as a land-grant university, and bringing to the world the worthwhile scholarship done here. Purdue University Press truly belongs to all of us.