In a message to the Carnegie Mellon University community, Provost and Chief Academic Officer James H. Garrett Jr. announced that all university press activities, including the Carnegie Mellon University Press, ETC Press and the Library Publishing Service (LPS), will now be centralized in one home under the University Libraries, effective June 1, 2024.
Under the leadership of Keith Webster, Helen and Henry Posner, Jr. Dean of the University Libraries, the University Press will continue to serve the CMU community and outside authors as a resource for publishing and press activities. By sitting under the umbrella of the University Libraries, CMU’s publishing and press activities will have a centralized and consistent approach. Additionally, it will capitalize on the Libraries’ expertise and existing processes in the domain of digital publication and help the university expand its publishing capacity in various formats.
The Carnegie Mellon University Press was founded by Gerald Costanzo, a professor in the Creative Writing program, in 1972 as Three Rivers Press. Now publishing for more than 45 years, the CMU Press was among the first to publish works by poets who would become Pulitzer Prize winners, including Rita Dove, Ted Kooser, Franz Wright, Stephen Dunn and Peter Balakian. Currently housed in the Department of English in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the CMU Press will continue its strong commitment to literary works following its transition to University Libraries.
The ETC Press was founded in 2005 by Drew Davidson, teaching professor and past director of the Entertainment Technology Center, as an open-access, digital-first publishing house. The ETC Press publishes peer-reviewed work, general audience work, trade nonfiction, and research and white papers. The common tie for all of these is a focus on issues related to entertainment technologies as they are applied across various fields. Its authors come from a range of backgrounds and disciplines, but they all write about the impact of emerging technologies and its significance in society.
The Library Publishing Service (LPS) will bring additional expertise and resources to this unit. LPS provides an infrastructure to publish and host born-digital scholarly content. It is part of the emerging innovations and services the CMU Libraries offers to support the growing digital scholarship and publishing needs of the CMU community. The mission of the LPS is to maximize open and free access to scholarly publications and products in a sustainable fashion for the benefit of scholars, students and the general public. It champions open access to promote learning, share research and create greater opportunities to engage the general public.
This new future for publishing at CMU is core to the university's mission of creating a collaborative environment open to the free exchange of ideas, where research, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship can flourish. This new horizon for CMU’s press services and activities will play a vital role in the university’s long-term success.