Talk:University of Michigan Press

Sources needed
This information needs sources for verification before it can be restored to the main page. -Classicfilms (talk) 22:21, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

Publishing at the University of Michigan was going on well before the Press was officially established. As early as 1858, the University paid $200 to have a book on an asteroid published. It was titled Tables of Victoria. Early publishing activities also included presidential inauguration papers and conference proceedings. Over the next 72 years, the University continued to support publications published under the imprint of the University; however, the number of departmental publications grew to such an extent, that “the situation caused great inconvenience.” In order for the University to have better organization of the publishing activities, it centralized the publishing activities under a university press. The University of Michigan Press was officially established in 1930 under Michigan's Graduate School to publish University materials such as conference proceedings and the 1931 Alumni Reading Lists.

The 1950s saw the directorship of Fred Weick, the first professional publisher to be Press director, who used his many contacts to publish Russian literature (including Pasternak), as well as to start the History of the World series, the Ann Arbor Paperbacks (reprints for classroom use), and English language textbook program, with assistance from the English Language Institute.

In the 1960s, while the publishing success of the Press continued under Glen Gosling, staff overheads increased and the contribution from the University decreased. In the mid-70s, the new director tried to bring a more balanced publishing approach to the Press by increasing the number of trade and text titles. While the Press was able to show a modest balance, the faculty was concerned the Press was moving too far away from the mission of a university press.

At the end of the 1980s, the Press went through another restructuring so that nearly all of the titles it published were considered scholarly monographs, so that by 2001, the Press published over 220 titles, most of them scholarly monographs.

Over the 75 years of the Press’s existence, it has published materials in a number of formats, including records, reel-to-reel tapes, cassettes, CDs, on-line editions, paperbacks, and cloth editions. It has published books in other languages including Russian, Spanish, Greek and Latin.

Tone, lead, structure, quotes
The tone of this article is obviously non-encyclopedic from the 1st sentence: 'The University of Michigan Press is a "vital component" of the University of Michigan Library'. See WP:LEAD. What other publisher articles in Wikipedia start with statements like that? There's also a general overuse of quoted snippets, when they add little. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:00, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

The only section besides "controversies" is "Digital media". I gather that's not all what this publisher is about. Both sections look like a large collection of quotes. Tijfo098 (talk) 09:03, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
 * ✅ - I've cleaned up and removed the tag. -Classicfilms (talk) 17:11, 6 December 2012 (UTC)