Hello Everyone,

I thought this might be of interest (my apologies for cross posting):

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH THE
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION TO DEVELOP COMPREHENSIVE PRINT
AND DIGITAL PUBLISHING PROGRAM

BERKELEY, CA, JANUARY 15, 2004-University of California Press (UC
Press) and the American Anthropological Association (AAA) today
announced a multiple-year publishing partnership to produce the
Association's historical web-based communications initiative
AnthroSource.  An electronic portal designed to provide access to a
vast network of digitized materials on anthropology, AnthroSource
will unite over 100 years of anthropological material and all AAA
publications. UC Press has begun work on the development and
implementation of the AnthroSource and has assumed responsibility for
print and electronic production of 19 of the AAA's journals,
newsletters, and bulletins.

The AnthroSource initiative, financed in part through the generosity
of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, was conceived in response to the
challenges of scholarly publishing in anthropology.  According to
Bill Davis, the Executive Director of the AAA, the Association
envisioned AnthroSource "as a means to facilitate worldwide
communication among anthropologists and scholars in related fields
and to allow scholars to access a vast range of published and
unpublished material at a low cost, with great ease and speed."

After careful planning and consultation, the AAA selected University
of California Press as its partner for implementation of its
publishing program and the portal.  UC Press, which has long been on
the forefront of major anthropological scholarship, electronic
content, and production of award-winning journals, is well equipped
to guide the Association's publishing program.  Rebecca Simon,
Assistant Director for Journals Publishing at UC Press, commented,
"AnthroSource is an ambitious project that will most certainly change
the way that anthropologists, researchers, and students work.  It
will not only expand their access to a variety of data and content,
but also heighten the visibility for anthropological scholarship
worldwide.  We're pleased to have the opportunity to be a part of
such an important program."

As a first step, AAA will make past and current issues of its 29
print publications available online. Though the first viewable data
in AnthroSource will be text-based, the portal will eventually
provide single-point electronic access to all forms of media-sound,
video, photographs, collections, and related databases-enabling easy
retrieval of a broad range of emergent, established, and rare
anthropological material. AnthroSource will also include articles
from journals published by other organizations and provide access to
unpublished gray literature of relevance for anthropological research.

Founded in 1902, the American Anthropological Association (AAA) is
the world's largest organization of anthropologists and largest
single publisher of anthropological journals.  The AAA's unparalleled
and long-standing reputation as a publisher of seminal
anthropological scholarship uniquely positions the Association to
guide the development of AnthroSource. The AAA currently publishes 29
publications annually, and has over 11,000 members.  For more
information about the AAA, please contact Ghita Levine at
glevine@aaanet.org or 703.528.1902 ext. 3039.

The University of California Press produces 32 journals annually,
including the award-winning journals, Gastronomica: The Journal of
Food and Culture, Contexts: Understanding People in Their Social
Worlds, Social Problems, and Representations.  One of the oldest
scholarly publishers in the United States, the Press commands a
distinctive repertoire of periodicals in the humanities and social
sciences, with concentrations in history, sociology, cultural
studies, law, and area studies.  For additional information, contact
http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.

Media interested in setting up an interview regarding the partnership
between University of California Press and the American
Anthropological Association should direct inquiries to Rebekah
Darksmith, UC Press Journals Manager, at
rebekah.darksmith@ucpress.edu.

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