24 September 2026, 15.00-16.30 CET
(2pm-3.30pm BST, 9am-10.30am EST)
Webinar hosted by Gold Leaf, sponsored by De Gruyter Brill
The book is the keystone of recorded history. For centuries before the journal, it was the chief means of exploring and storing knowledge. Books arouse strong emotions: are revered, respected or repudiated. Today they can be delivered virtually, interactively or in segments. Some act as compendia for multimedia research outputs. Others are AI compilations of human authors’ works or even “written” by machines. Has the book lost its integrity or is it still authoritative? Does it sit on the brink of yet more exciting new departures? What might its future look like? Two distinguished librarians explore.
Speakers are:
Jeremy Upton, Director of Library and University Collections at the University of Edinburgh.
Charles Watkinson, Associate University Librarian for Publishing at the University of Michigan and Director of the University of Michigan Press.
The webinar is sponsored by De Gruyter Brill and will be moderated by Linda Bennett of Gold Leaf. Registration is free of charge.
For more details and to book your place on the seminar, click here.
Who should attend
Academic librarians; public librarians; publishers; members of librarian support groups; members of consortia and trade associations; academics and students interested in sustainability; environmentalists.
Since 2015 Jeremy Upton has been the Director of Library and University Collections at the University of Edinburgh. Previously he was Deputy Director at the University of St Andrews. A music graduate, he started his professional library career as a music librarian before moving into a technical services management. He is currently the co-chair of the Jisc Publisher Negotiations Expert Group and has a long-standing interest in the procurement and provision of content.
Jeremy is responsible for ensuring the professional management of and access to Edinburgh’s Library and Museum collections, both physical and digital. He has encouraged the Library to embrace a more open approach to research and publication and has led the creation of an institutional rights retention policy now used widely across the UK and Europe. Edinburgh supports its own book and journal hosting platform.
In January 2024, Gold Leaf interviewed Jeremy to open the series “Academic Librarians on Intellectual Freedom”. The interview can be found here.
Charles Watkinson manages Michigan Publishing, an integrated division encompassing the University of Michigan Press (UMP), Michigan Publishing Services (MPS), and the Deep Blue repository and research data services. He was previously Director of Purdue University Press and Director of Publications at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. He has served as the President of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), as a founder of the Library Publishing Coalition, and on the board of the OAPEN Foundation / Directory of the Open Access Books. His professional focus lies at the intersection of open access, digital scholarship, and the evolution of the monograph. He co-leads Fulcrum, an open-source platform designed to support media-rich monographs that integrate narrative with 3D models, GIS data, and other research outputs. He advocates for “diamond” open-access models that remove financial barriers for authors and the untapped global demand for specialist humanities scholarship.
Gold Leaf 