Technology has transformed the ways we communicate and engage with one another and with the wider world on an ongoing basis. At WLU Press, we have an impressive record of embracing such moments of change as opportunities for creative experimentation, scholarly exploration, collaboration, and expanding the reach of our authors’ publications.
Over the last fifty years, the Press has been clearing paths in this regard, embracing new technology and digital platforms in our publishing practices and incorporating them into our publishing programme.
Early on, WLU Press used software developed by WLU Computing Services to handle our sales and subscription services. In 1984, the staff expanded to include a technician with publishing experience to help us move into the era of publishing from digital manuscripts.
Subsequently, the Press embraced early opportunities to experiment with developing digital formats. In 1994, we became the first university press to host a website. Journal publishing at the Press expanded in the late 1990s and we were one of the first publishers in Canada to create an electronic journal, braving the new world of hyperlinked references and digital subscriptions. Likewise, WLU Press recognized early on the significant value of digitizing its backlist, an undertaking that proved vital to supporting our publishing activities and that foregrounded our reputation as a university press prepared to lead the Canadian industry in new digital directions.
Following these transformative undertakings, we have since become leaders in collaborative, research-based experimentation with born-digital and accessible publications. Our publishing programme includes print and ebooks, (which are now seen as conventional, but not long ago, required a remarkable revolution from within for publishers), a book app, audiobooks, and scholarly podcasts.
The Press built on its 2017 SSHRC-funded pilot peer-reviewed podcast and has been partnered with scholars across Canada, most recently, collaborating to develop the first podcasting network for scholarly podcasts: Amplify Network.
We continue to explore the potential of multi-modal, hybrid scholarship that pushes insistently at the boundaries of scholarly conventions and foregrounds equity and accessibility as driving principles of our work.
Our embrace of digital and accessible publishing have made our authors’ work more broadly accessible, including:
- 2019: We launched a series of open educational resources in the form of educator’s guides, available in print and as downloadable .pdfs on our website;
- 2020: We launched an audiobook list, drawing on backlist titles of general interest, each with a DAISY accessible audiobook available through NNELS (National Network for Equitable Library Service). We now have 40 audiobook titles in print;
- 2021: We supported the print and O/A publication of Amplify Network’s A Guide to Academic Podcasting, by Stacey Copeland and Hannah McGregor;
- 2022: WLU Press became a Global Certified Accessible Publisher by Benetech, then only the third university press in North America to achieve this standard;
- 2023: We published our first O/A edition of one of our titles, A Sentimental Education, by Hannah McGregor (first published in print and ebook in 2022);
- 2023: We created a born-digital catalogue and enhanced the general accessibility features of our website.
We are looking forward, always, to continuing to develop our hybrid publishing programme, working closely with researchers, library colleagues, academics, and institutional partners to contribute in lasting ways to the evolution of scholarly publishing.