#AcBookWeek

A celebration of the diversity, innovation and influence of academic books.

The inaugural Academic Book Week took place from 9-16 November 2015, and formed the centrepiece of the Project’s engagement activity. This week-long series of events took place all over the country, as well as internationally, and aimed to:

• increase awareness of the variety and accessibility of the academic book (particularly the arts and humanities academic book), engaging media and alerting policy-makers to its importance as part of the intellectual ecosystem of the UK
• make the academic book more accessible to a wider general audience
• promote the skills and services of bookshops and libraries to readers of the academic book
• promote the processes and skills of creating an academic book via both academics and publishers
• open up opportunities for conversation and collaboration between publishers (via the PA, the ALPSP), the booksellers (via the BA), librarians (via RLUK and CILIP) and researchers (via the AHRC, British Academy, Jisc, HEFCE, and the Wellcome Trust).
• extend the debate about the Academic Book of the Future for the AHRC/BL Academic Book of the Future Project
• enhance the wider debate about the value of arts and humanities research in the UK

Academic Book Week was aimed at and created by all those who write, make, sell, work with, or use, academic books, and was intended to influence the policy-makers behind the AHRC AcBookFuture Project (see the members of our Strategy Board), as well as challenge assumptions of researchers, publishers, booksellers, librarians and the general public regarding what academic books ARE and what they can DO.

For events and activities that took place during the 2015 Academic Book Week, see https://academicbookfuture.org/event-reports/.  To get involved with the 2017 Academic Book Week, see: https://acbookweek.com/.