Out-of-Print Books: Cornell University Press Receives NEH Open Book Program Grant

From Cornell University Press:

Cornell University Press is proud to announce it is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant worth $83,635.
The grant will enable the Press to make classic out-of-print books available electronically and free of charge to teachers, students, scholars, and interested readers around the globe. The grant is one of the first in the NEH’s new Humanities Open Book Program, jointly sponsored by the NEH and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and part of nearly $2.5 million in NEH grants that are being awarded to projects in New York State this year.
“As America’s first university press we are extremely honored to receive this generous grant from the NEH and expand our role as a leader in open access scholarship,” said Cornell University Press Director Dean Smith. “Our close collaboration with the Cornell University Library and noted scholars in the field ensured that the Cornell books chosen for this project are ones that will truly make a significant global impact in each of their respective fields—literary criticism and theory, Slavic studies, and German studies.”
“The NEH project builds on a successful six-year collaboration among the Library, the Press, and Cornell scholars on book publishing in the Signale program, which also includes an open access component four years after publication,” said Kizer Walker, Director of Collections for Cornell University Library. “Signale publishes new English-language scholarship on the literature, culture, criticism, and intellectual history of the German-speaking world and several of the titles that will be opened up with NEH support will closely complement our Signale books.”
Oya Rieger, Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Preservation Services at Cornell University Library, added, “We are delighted to hear the news and look forward to partnering with the Press in exploring how to turn outstanding out-of-print books in the humanities into freely accessible e-books. This new program will be instrumental in expanding the reach of terrific books written by scholars throughout the years.”

See Also: NEH & Mellon Announce Pilot Grant Program to Digitize Out of Print Books in Humanities and Make Them Available With CC License (January 15, 2015)

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Funding, Libraries, News, Open Access, Preservation, Publishing