Published by Communications and Public Affairs 519 824-4120, Ext. 56982 or 53338

News Release

October 26, 2006

U of G Recognizes 2005 Campus Authors

The University of Guelph will pay tribute to its 2005 faculty, staff and student authors with an inaugural Campus Authors event Nov. 1 at 4:30 p.m. in the Florence Partridge Room on the third floor of the McLaughlin Library. The event is free and open to the public.

Campus Authors was created to give campus-wide recognition to Guelph faculty, staff and students who write, edit and translate books. McLaughlin Library received 18 submissions of books published in 2005 and is now collecting books published in 2006 by faculty, staff, students, retirees and alumni.

“The beauty of this program is that these authors will be properly acknowledged by the campus community,” said Michael Ridley, U of G’s chief information officer. “A tremendous amount of the publishing happens within a fairly defined community, so these authors are known within their own discipline, but many of their colleagues probably don’t realize that they’ve published a book.”

McLaughlin Library has created a database of all new U of G books and their authors, starting with books published in 2005. Honoured books will contain a bookplate indicating U of G authorship, and the library catalogue will be linked to the new database.

This program is also a way of making sure McLaughlin Library has copies of all new U of G-authored books, said Lynn Campbell, the library’s manager of development and public relations. “In the past, it was difficult for the library to acquire all these books if we didn’t know they were being published. Now we can guarantee that new campus-authored books will be in our collection.”

The 2005 books cover an “astonishing” array of topics, said Campbell. They range from Arboretum staff member Chris Earley’s Waterfowl of Eastern North America to integrative biology professor Ryan Gregory’s Evolution of the Genome. A list of all the books and short author biographies are posted on the Campus Authors website, www.lib.uoguelph.ca/author/2006. Signed copies of the 2005 books will be for sale at the Nov. 1 event.