MANIFOLD 1.0: “An Open-Source Platform to Publish and Read Networked, Interactive, Media-Rich Books Online” Officially Launches

From Today’s Official Release Announcement:

The University of Minnesota Press, in partnership with the GC Digital Scholarship Lab at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York and digital development agency Cast Iron Coding (Portland, OR), are pleased to announce the release of Manifold, a free, open-source platform to publish and read networked, interactive, media-rich books online.

Manifold was developed from the ground up to integrate the publication of media-rich, networked monographs into existing university publication workflows. Publishers, and any group wanting to publish open-access works on the web, can quickly and easily turn existing files into online publications, through a robust ingestion system that can import texts from EPUB, HTML, Markdown, and Google Doc source files.

Why Manifold? from Zach Davis on Vimeo.

Authors, working with their publisher, can easily enhance their projects with primary research documents and data, audio and video, links to archives, while engaging with readers and integrating social media conversations. Manifold also enables an iterative approach to publication so that authors can choose to share their work-in-progress as it develops.

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Manifold is a mobile-friendly application that is compatible with all modern devices—smartphones, tablets, notebooks, and desktops. Readers have a beautiful, deep reading experience that encourages discussion and fosters community with the integration of social media.

Four major beta versions of Manifold have been released to the public since development of the platform began in April 2015, culminating in Release 1.0 this week.

During the three-year project, the Manifold team has spoken with university presses, institutes and centers, library publishing groups, and individual scholars, all who can use Manifold to publish the content produced by their group.

Today there are three installations of Manifold, the University of Minnesota Press, CUNY,and the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at Cornell University with the University of Arizona Press in the process of branding a Manifold installation.

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Manifold is funded by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Direct to Manifold Website

Learn More, Read the Complete Launch Announcement

Coverage
Minnesota Press Launches Free Digital Monograph Platform (via IHE)

See Also: U. Minnesota Press, CUNY Grad Center Develop Hybrid Publishing Platform (May 5, 2015)

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