Jul 27, 2017 Library, Faculty Members, and University of Rochester Press Collaborate on Publishing

Anne Morrow, Head of Digital Scholarship Services, Catherine Mayes, Professor of Musicology, and Allyson Mower, Head of Scholarly Communication and Copyright worked together with Marriott Author Services to further promote Consuming Music.

Catherine Mayes, Professor of Musicology at the University of Utah, and Emily H. Green, Assistant Professor of Music at George Mason University, co-edited the new publication Consuming Music: Individuals, Institutions, Communities, 1730-1830. A collection of essays examining the consumer distribution of music in the eighteenth century, Consuming Music was published in 2017 by the University of Rochester Press.

Ahead of publication, a collaboration between the University of Utah’s College of Fine Arts, J. Willard Marriott Library, George Mason University, and the University of Rochester Press was developed with the aim of securing a subvention to lower the cost of producing the printed volume in order to lower the purchase cost for consumers.

The subvention, cost-shared by Marriott Library, the College of Fine Arts, and George Mason University, lowered the book’s original cost of $125 to just under $100. According to Mayes, “The publisher has a lot of costs associated with producing the product…everything from paying a copyeditor to paying a printer to produce the copies of the book, [to paying] the jacket designer. The cost of $98 may still be out of reach for a lot of individuals, but it might help libraries or smaller institutions…be able to afford this book.”

Photo credit: Ansicht vom Kohlmarkt by Carl Schütz (1745-1800). This photo was used as the cover photo for Consuming Music: Individuals, Institutions, Communities, 1730-1830.

An extension of the agreement to partially fund the subvention included a provision that Marriott Library’s Author Services would be able to further support editors Mayes and Green by establishing the library-hosted domain https://consumingmusic.lib.utah.edu. The site content includes Consuming Music’s Introduction and Table of Contents, as well as two audio interviews with Catherine Mayes. According to Mayes, “In the arts and humanities we often don’t have access to enough funding through our home institutions to support subventions…it makes it all the more imperative to find new ways of partnering and collaborating in our efforts to connect research and disseminate it.”

In the spring of 2016, Marriott Library’s librarian faculty approved a set of Author Services intended to support faculty, staff, and students with the stages of writing, publishing, and archiving their scholarship. Divided between the categories of Scholarly & Commercial Press Manuscript Preparation and Digital Scholarship Services, and arranged in a sequence that mirrors the stages of manuscript preparation, the library’s Author Services provide a suite of support for campus based authors.

The Consuming Music collaboration was first initiated as a manuscript preparation service, assisting the editors with fair use and copyright and, ultimately, assisting in arranging cost-share funding for the subvention. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), was then drafted as the editors entered into the Digital Scholarship Services stage of Author Services. The MOU was signed by the library, the editors, and the University of Rochester Press. The agreement defined the parameters of a service commitment the library would assume in order to support the editors and Consuming Music, as well as the obligations the editors would assume in order to receive the library’s services. The signed MOU served as the blueprint for the development of https://consumingmusic.lib.utah.edu.

For more info about how we can help you with your next publication or project, contact Allyson Mower or Anne Morrow.