An Update from Chapel Hill
In light of the increasing health hazards associated with Covid-19, UNC Press and Longleaf employees are now working almost entirely from home. We have a handful of staff visiting our campus offices to ensure a few vital functions are performed. Orange County, NC, where we are located, is under a “Stay-at-Home” order until April 30.
While this transition has been abrupt and challenging, I’m pleased and proud to report that essential infrastructure and activities are operating well. We are acquiring, editing, designing, printing, shipping, and marketing our books. Longleaf’s call center and publishing services are fully staffed. Yesterday, the Press’s Board of Governors met (virtually) and approved a new slate of manuscripts for publication. We don’t currently have any plans to delay our book schedules, but we are diligently reviewing every project and working closely with our authors and promotional partners to ensure that this is the correct strategy going forward.
Not surprisingly, some of our standard procedures are evolving. This page will be updated to capture those changes. If you don’t see what you need, don’t hesitate to contact us.
John Sherer
Spangler Family Director
Latest Update
Wednesday, 8 April 2020, 10:30am EST
For Our Authors
Please see the most recent update from the Acquisitions team (docx) regarding current policies and workflows for incoming manuscripts.
Open Access to Digital Collections
This is an extraordinary moment. Pedagogy and research are sprinting swiftly to online platforms, while at the same time, we’re devolving into an increasingly unstable economic environment. In order to fully support those managing this transition, UNC Press has agreed to remove the paywalls from the book content that we have in platforms like Project MUSE, Books at JSTOR, and ProQuest. I’m very pleased that our partners at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture have agreed to join us in this effort.
To be clear, this will have a cost for us at UNC Press at a moment when we almost certainly need to be watching costs and revenue sources as closely as possible. But we are a mission-driven organization and moments like this are when we should embrace our core values. My hope is that by making it seamless and inexpensive to utilize these resources now, that libraries, students, teachers, and administrators will realize the enormous value the scholarship in these kinds of collections have. And when the current crisis has passed, they will dedicate the resources needed to support them.
Book Orders and Shipments
Our Customer Service team at Longleaf Services is processing orders, and our warehouse and distribution partner, Ingram, is operational. You may order books from our website or support your local independent bookstore by ordering online through indiebound.org or bookshop.org.
Amazon has temporarily suspended incoming shipments of books to their warehouses in order to prioritize medical and emergency supplies. But what books they already have in stock they will be shipping out to customers.
Conferences, Exhibits, and Festivals
UNC Press has cancelled all business travel until at least September 30. See our blog post with a message from the director for more details.
We’re getting creative, though, so stay tuned here as we connect you to our “virtual exhibits”!
American Society for Environmental History (ASEH)
Browse our ASEH virtual exhibit
Organization of American Historians (OAH)
Browse our OAH virtual exhibit
Author Events
Some in-person author events are still on the schedule as planned. Many have been cancelled or transformed into virtual events. We’re updating our Author Events page each morning with the latest.
Office Staff
Most of the UNC Press staff is currently working remotely. Email is the best way to reach folks at this time. See our Staff Directory for email contact information. Please allow for extra response time as we are all making our way under extraordinary circumstances, often with additional demands at home.
Media Review Copies
We are checking in with all of our usual reviewers to see if they would prefer to receive packages at their homes, or, preferably, digital review copies. Media inquiries can be directed to publicity@uncpress.org.
Educator Exam and Desk Copies
We continue to offer texts in print and electronic formats. Please see our For Educators page for details about making a request.