This is part 6 of the Travels with Terence series, following our digital projects editor on his pilot press in-person training program. Last week Terence set off on his first trip of 2019, journeying to Atlanta to meet with faculty and staff across Emory University. Unlike other pilot programs, Manifold at Emory isn’t centered around a university press or library. Instead the initiative is being spearheaded by Sarah McKee of the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry and Wayne Morse, Allen Tullos, and Yang Li of the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, for use by students and faculty with local projects and programming and as a means to introduce the community at large to new modes of publication that publishers with whom local scholars may already be working can take advantage.

When they heard they were selected for the first pilot round, the Emory team noted that “Manifold offers an intuitive and consistent experience for digital monograph publication, scholarship, and readership. We are excited that it is professionally maintained with design and sustainability in mind.”

And that’s a thread which persisted through training. As we discussed his trip, Terence said,

One of the themes that is emerging very clearly is that when people see Manifold, they get it. And because it’s so easy to set up an instance, they start thinking of how they can use it for projects they have now and how they can both reinvigorate old titles and cultivate future ones in ways not available to them previously. Between sessions there was always a lot of talk among the various groups in the room, thinking about all the different projects they could bring to Manifold and the ways it could help enrich them. You could really feel the energy and excitement, and it was so great to have such a wide swath of the Emory community together in one space. In addition to those from the Fox Center and ECDS, we had a great turnout from folks from the Scholarly Communications Office and the Center for Faculty Development and Excellence. As an added boon, we had some friends from the University of Georgia Press who made the trip down from Athens, as well as Deboleen Roy, chair of the Department of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Emory, who is already making use of Manifold with the University of Washington Press.

• Miles traveled: 924
• Meal of note: Authentic Southern meatloaf wrapped in bacon followed by some kind of magic pistachio dessert. Fantastic!

Thanks for reading! Feel free to reach out on the community Slack channel, tweet us at @manifoldscholar, and follow along on Github for more details and to request features.