Of the Making of Books (Part 7)

Today’s guest blogger is Ken Smith, General Manager of Electronic Publishing Services at Logos.
(This is the next installment in a series of articles about our nearly 60 publishing partners who market their own electronic products using our technology.)

Liturgical Press
One of our earliest publishing partnerships was with Liturgical Press, the publishing arm of St. John’s Abbey and University, a Benedictine monastery and college in central Minnesota.

In 1997, Liturgical published an electronic edition of the Vatican II Papers. This was followed in 1999 by The Rule of St. Benedict Library, an ambitious project that includes numerous primary and secondary sources relating to Benedictine study. This product is a significant beneficiary of electronic technology, as the various translations of and commentaries on the Rule are able to be scrolled in parallel and set as preferred targets for keylinking.

In February of 2001, Liturgical released a set of reference titles in a collection they titled The Collegeville Catholic Reference Library, which was updated in August of 2002 to the Libronix Digital Library System. The set includes the most popular reference works from Liturgical Press: The Collegeville Bible Commentary, The New Dictionary of Sacramental Worship, The New Dictionary of Catholic Spirituality, The New Dictionary of Catholic Social Thought, The New Dictionary of Theology, and Consecrated Phrases: A Latin Theological Dictionary.

While they are clearly a progressive organization, the folks at St. John’s haven’t lost sight of their roots. As evidence, take a moment to appreciate one of their newest and most ambitious print projects, The Saint John’s Bible. “The first handwritten, illuminated Bible commissioned since the printing press was invented five centuries ago.”