De Gruyter Launches the University Press Library Offering Complete Collections for DRM-Free, Unlimited Use

The University Press Library is the result of a five-year pilot project initiated by De Gruyter, the three prestigious presses of Harvard, Columbia and Princeton Universities with collaboration from LYRASIS, a non-profit organization offering open source solutions to academic, museum and state libraries, and ten other participating university libraries.
A Blog Post by Eric Merkel-Sobotta.
The pilot project behind the University Press Library has sought to address the challenges of acquiring complete frontlist eBook collections of university press content free of digital rights management (DRM) or access controls for both university-based publishers and academic libraries. The data gathered from this successful pilot have inspired the University Press Library, as a sustainable model that aims to meet the financial and academic needs of both university press partners and their associated libraries in a digital environment.
As Steve Fallon, Vice President Americas and Strategic Partnerships, has indicated, “[t]he collaboration and cooperation of presses, libraries, consortium and partners over these many years has been remarkable. We were committed to identifying a sustainable and predictable solution for all parties and the University Press Library is the outcome of these efforts. Coupled with our recently announced expansion in the United States, we will not only better serve our partner presses but have the capacity to work with more institutions.”
De Gruyter is an independent international academic publisher with a focus on scholars and their research. Since launching its Partner Program in 2012, De Gruyter has shared the mission and values of its university press partners by bringing ideas to the world stage through their academic scholarship, advancing scholarly knowledge and promoting human conversation. De Gruyter has been publishing first-class scholarship for more than 270 years. Headquartered in Berlin, and with further offices in Boston, Beijing, Basel, Vienna, Warsaw and Munich, De Gruyter publishes over 1,300 new book titles each year and more than 900 journals in the humanities, social sciences, medicine, mathematics, engineering, computer sciences, natural sciences, and law.
The publishing house also offers a wide range of digital media, including Open Access journals and books. The group includes the imprints De Gruyter Akademie Forschung, Birkhäuser, De Gruyter Mouton, De Gruyter Oldenbourg, De Gruyter Saur, Düsseldorf University Press, Deutscher Kunstverlag (DKV) and Jovis Verlag, as well as the publishing services provider Sciendo.
Written by Eric Merkel-Sobotta
Edited by Pablo Markin
Featured Image Credits: A 18 College Hill, John Hay Library (1910 & 1939), 20 Prospect Street, Brown University, Looking North-West, Providence, Rhode Island, United States, August 17, 1990 | © Courtesy of Will Hart/Flickr.
This post is based on a press release that originally appeared in degruyter.com, 7/10/2019, https://www.degruyter.com/dg/newsitem/350/.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Pablo Markin (October 7, 2019). De Gruyter Launches the University Press Library Offering Complete Collections for DRM-Free, Unlimited Use. The DGO Blog. Retrieved March 16, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/132wi