University of Missouri Press to live on in new form
In May, University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe made the highly unpopular announcement that the Mizzou-based University of Missouri Press would be shut down, and all 10 employees would lose their jobs.
Yesterday, MU stepped back slightly from the system’s previous statements and said the press will live on in a new form. “[T]he University of Missouri announced today that it is launching a reimagined University of Missouri Press that will use innovative techniques for scholarly communication,” the school said in a statement. So what does that mean for the press that was founded in 1958 and has published 2,000 books? It sounds like it’s not quite yet determined, but it will be a campuswide effort and will embrace digital as well as print publishing.
MU Chancellor Brady Deaton said the press will be integrated into the university’s Mizzou Advantage initiative. He describes this as, “[A] two-year-old initiative that harnesses the power of inter- and cross-disciplinary research to advance knowledge in four thematic areas. One of these areas is Media of the Future which provides a platform to reinvent the role of university presses in future scholarly communications and outreach to the public.”
