The new era of publishing at Yale: being an address delivered on alumni day, February twenty-third, nineteen hundred and fourteen
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The function and organization of university presses: being an address delivered before the Association of American universities at Princeton, New Jersey, November sixth, nineteen hundred and fourteen
(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
This book was digitized and reprinted from the collections of the University of California Libraries. It was produced from digital images created through the libraries’ mass digitization efforts. The digital images were cleaned and prepared for printing through automated processes. Despite the cleaning process, occasional flaws may still be present that were part of the original work itself, or introduced during digitization. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found online in the HathiTrust Digital Library at www.hathitrust.org.
George Parmly Day was an American financier, publisher, founder of the Yale University Press, and university executive.
Background
George Parmly Day was born on September 4, 1876 in New York City. He was the son of Clarence Shepard Day, a Wall Street broker, and Lavinia Elizabeth Stockwell. His boyhood traits of punctuality and salesmanship were humorously described by his older brother Clarence in Life With Father (1935), a best-selling memoir of the Day household.
Education
After attending Columbia Grammar School in New York City and St. Paul's School, Concord, New Hampshire, Day entered Yale University, from which he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1897.
Career
In 1897 Day joined the brokerage house of Clarence S. Day and Company as a clerk. In 1899 be became a partner in the firm, which was reorganized in 1903 as Day, Adams and Company. To a successful Wall Street career he added, in 1907, an innovative venture into academic publishing. With two other Yale graduates, his brother Clarence, and Edwin Oviatt, Day established the Yale Publishing Association to publish the Yale Alumni Weekly, the Yale Review, and other university-related publications. The following year, after consultation with Yale authorities, he founded the Yale University Press, which became, under his direction, one of the major scholarly presses in the world.
At first the entire staff of the press consisted of Day and his wife, Wilhelmine Octavia Johnson. The first volume to appear under the Yale imprint was Benjamin W. Bacon's Commentaries on the Gospel of St. Mark (1909). A year later the press issued its first catalog, with a listing of twenty titles. In 1910 Day resigned from his brokerage firm to become treasurer of Yale University and moved the offices of the press from New York to New Haven. In two influential addresses delivered in 1914, Day outlined his views on the function of a university press. Institutions of higher learning, he observed, were playing an increasingly active role in community affairs, and university presses must broaden their horizons accordingly. It was no longer sufficient for a press to serve the needs of a scholarly elite.
Besides soliciting manuscripts from professors in rival institutions around the globe, a university-sponsored enterprise should publish a substantial number of important nontechnical works that would attract the intelligent lay reader. Only in this way might a scholarly press fulfill its proper mission, which Day described as "university extension work of the finest kind. "
Day's interest in broadening the scope and appeal of university publications found a practical expression in the Chronicles of America Picture Corporation, a New York enterprise that he organized in 1923 to produce a series of films dealing with critical periods in American history. Prominent historians served as advisers for the project, which partly was designed to popularize the press's Chronicles of America series. When Day resigned as president of the Yale University Press in 1944, its publications included some 1, 800 titles in virtually every field except fiction and school textbooks. Day's innovative publishing ideas also extended to problems of distribution.
In 1914 he called upon the directors of other university presses to join in a cooperative marketing effort, and two years later he and Chester Lane established the University Press Association, which maintained a joint sales agency for its members in New York City. The association received little support from most presses, however, and collapsed after several years. Not until 1946, with the creation of the Association of American University Presses, was Day's farsighted vision fully realized. He was more successful in negotiating a foreign marketing arrangement with Oxford University Press, which agreed to distribute Yale publications abroad.
As treasurer of Yale University from 1910 to 1942, Day became celebrated for his effective fund-raising efforts. When he took office, the university's endowments totaled $12 million. By the time of his retirement this figure had risen to $101 million. Some of these funds were earmarked for the use of the press, which was able to install its own printing plant in 1919 as a result of alumni generosity.
Day also served as treasurer of the Yale Athletic Association (1916-1932), chairman of the President's Committee on University Development (1938-1941), and director of the Yale Alumni Fund (1942-1959).
He wrote the lyrics for several college songs, including "The Wearers of the Green, " the official song of Dartmouth College, and the humorous "Goodnight, Poor Harvard, " which long remained a favorite with Yale undergraduates. A collection of his occasional poems, Rhymes of the Times, was published by Yale University Press in 1956. Despite a crowded schedule, Day participated in local civic and philanthropic enterprises. Although he had no children of his own, he took a special interest in the work of the Connecticut Junior Republic, a juvenile rehabilitation agency that he, Irving Fisher, and other Yale figures helped to found at Litchfield in 1904. The Connecticut organization was an offshoot of William R. George's celebrated Junior Republic of Freeville, New York (1895), one of the most successful reform efforts of the Progressive period. Day also served as president and trustee of the Connecticut Junior Republic.