Roll over, Gutenberg
With the help of a $1.5 million gift from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the University of Chicago Press has launched the Chicago Digital Distribution Center (CDDC), the first short-run digital print facility operated by an American university press. The digital technology allows the Press to print on demand anywhere from a single copy to several hundred copies of a title. Although the retail prices of the short-run books are slightly higher than average, titles in such small quantities are too expensive to produce with conventional offset printing methods.

Opened in late November, the CDDC can print up to 36,000 copies a year. Titles that otherwise might be labeled out-of-print-and indeed some scholarly texts that have been out-of-print for some time-will now be stored as electronic files in a depository known as the BiblioVault, to be called up when the need arises for a small quantity to be printed. Eventually the Press will use the electronically stored books to create a database available to scholars for online searches.

Press director Paula Duffy praised the Mellon Foundation for enabling the Press "to continue to provide the content that universities and their presses have invested in over the years." The 18-month grant will support the development of the CDDC and the BiblioVault, as well as the electronic preparation of 5,000 books for future short-run digital printing.
-C.S.

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