During the academic year 2020-2021 Publicacions de la Universitat de València (PUV), the Universitat de València's editorial house, celebrates its centenary. Although books and university life have always gone together, it is from 1920 onwards, with the birth of the journal Anales de la Universidad de Valencia, that we have evidence of a continuous and structured publishing activity at the heart of our University.
die xxv octobris anno domini M.cccc.xcvij [25 octubre 1497]. [Universitat de València. Biblioteca Històrica. BH CF/2(2)]
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Universitat de València was immersed in a process of modernisation. Specialised scientific journals began to proliferate, and it was in this context of great intellectual and academic effervescence that the cloister approved the creation of Anales, which would see the light of day in 1921. The magazine reported on the University's activities, the work of the teaching staff, the opening lectures of the academic year and the management budget, among other information. It was the first regularly published periodical, which had to appear every year and therefore required the existence of a minimum editorial infrastructure: the origins of a continuous activity that, over time and with increasing professionalisation, was the embryo of the current Servei de Publicacions.
elevados al Excmo. Sr. Ministro de Fomento, por el cláustro de la facultad de medicina de Valencia.
Valencia: Imp. de Ferrer de Orga, 1877 [Universitat de València. Biblioteca de Socials Gregori Maians. S A18 1114-21]
The consolidation of this incipient publishing activity, after the civil war, came with the creation of the secretariats for publications and scientific exchange foreseen in the LOUE of 1943, but it was not until the eighties of the last century that true publishing planning began, with the creation of collections, the configuration of a catalogue and the awareness of the need for editorial management and increasingly specialised staff.
PUV and, in general, university publishers in the 21st century have been the protagonists of major organisational, academic, educational, professional, commercial and technological transformations. They have had to reinvent themselves to meet the current needs and challenges facing the university, those required by the publishing sector and those demanded by the society to which they belong.
However, what is university publishing? What are university publishers like? How do they edit and what do they edit? Do they only serve their faculty? How is the quality of university publications guaranteed? What are they projections? How do they reach the public?
The exhibition 100 ANYS FENT LLIBRES accompanies us on this journey that combines tradition and modernity and illustrates historical and current aspects of the publishing activity at the heart of the Universitat de València, with an eye to the future. Publicacions de la Universitat de València (PUV), which has established itself as one of the most prestigious university publishers in Spain, is at the service of the university community and the society in which it operates.
