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Supported by £300,000 from the Provost's Strategic Initiatives Fund, the centre is policy-led, research-driven and aspires to be the world's leading centre for research scholarship and teaching on publishing in all forms and media and for all audiences.

Director of ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº SLAIS, Professor David Nicholas said: "It will have important training, professional development, advisory, think-tank and research functions for an industry facing the challenges of new media and new business models. Its ambitions are to generate the personnel, ideas, insights and evidence the industry needs to ensure its success in a global dynamic and challenging environment."

The new centre builds on the work of the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (CIBER) group within SLAIS, whose Virtual Scholar research programme has already attracted over £1million in research funding and the wide attention of the publishing community.

Situated in Bloomsbury, a location with resonance in the world of literary and scholarly publishing, the centre will draw on the resources of both ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº SLAIS and the ¹û¶³Ó°Ôº Faculty of Arts and Humanities to offer a new MA in Publishing. The centre's teaching and research will benefit from links with well-established training programmes for librarians and archivists, and leading research in electronic publishing and informatics.

Announcing the new venture, Jane Fenhoulhet, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, said: "The Centre will serve as a focus for a range of activities centred on various aspects of publishing and as a stimulus to new projects."

Mr Richard Charkin, CEO of MacMillan Publishers, will be giving the opening speech at the launch of the centre on 3 March 2006. The event will be jointly sponsored by MacMillan and Emerald Publishing.

To find out more, use the links at the bottom of this article.

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