Brittany Nicolaysen, Marketing Operations Lead at Harvard Education Press, reports on visiting Duke University Press

Rationale for visit

The announcement of the Week in Residence arrived in my inbox at the perfect time. In my daily work, I had accumulated a number of specific questions I wished I could discuss with others in the publishing industry to get their insights. The residency was a unique opportunity to connect directly with another press, allowing me to explore different perspectives and ideas.

For seven years, I’ve had the privilege of working at Harvard Education Press (HEP), where I’ve spent the majority of my career. Being part of a small yet dynamic team, I have many opportunities to learn new parts of the business and explore my curiosities. My focus often involves enhancing systems and innovating our processes. However, with HEP as my sole reference point for university press operations, I’ve increasingly sought external resources and support. It was clear to me that the residency would be an ideal occasion to talk through a wide range of questions, and to observe how another press addresses challenges similar to our own.

I sought out Duke University Press (DUP) as a host because I knew them to be experts with business systems, particularly Firebrand title management. In 2018, I saw a presentation from Ashley Postlethwaite (DUP’s Business Systems Manager) at a Firebrand community conference, and her deep understanding and application of the system’s capabilities have stuck with me. Ashley was immediately warm and responsive to my inquiry about the residency, and I could not have asked for a better host.

Summary of experience

My residency with Duke was fully remote over the course of three days in February. Ashley and I envisioned a series of Zoom meetings with staff members from a variety of departments, which would include one-on-one conversations, group calls, and sitting in on regular team meetings. Little did I know that Ashley is not only a business systems expert, but she also has extensive knowledge of many areas of the business—the perfect contact to address my wide variety of questions. She facilitated an extremely comprehensive and organized schedule of meetings for me with her colleagues from multiple departments, arranging meetings that addressed every topic I wanted to explore: book and journal marketing, website management, business system administration, e-commerce, project management, and journal subscription management. Along with Ashley, the following individuals kindly gave me their time to discuss these topics: Arvilla Mastromarino, Cameron Ludwick, Mandy Brannon, Lee Willoughby-Harris, Kasia Repeta, Allison Belan, Katy Dillard, Ray Lambert, Jessica Ryan, Liz Smith, Cayla Miles, and Kate Mullen.

Additionally, I joined group meetings for the following topics:

• “Life of Title” meeting with stakeholders in DUP warehouse transition—staff from Business Systems, Marketing, Finance, and Production teams
• Business Systems team meeting
• Journal and Collections Marketing happy hour and team meeting
• Book Marketing team meeting

Takeaways

The residency provided me with insight into the operations of a larger-scale university press. HEP has 14 staff members, while DUP has 120 staffers. DUP’s size means that they have different approaches to distributing work than those with which I am familiar. For instance, DUP has separate marketing teams for books and journals/collections, which is different from HEP’s single team of five individuals who market all products. Although our small team could not necessarily replicate their model, speaking with each DUP team sparked ideas for new marketing strategies that HEP could explore.

Additionally, DUP features a distinctive department known as Business Information and Technology Systems (BITS). Established by Allison Belan, BITS brings together essential IT personnel and business analysts to ensure all software and enterprise systems function efficiently across all departments to support the press’s objectives. From their ticketing systems for website issues and requests, to the project management of long-term system innovations, I learned so much that I could take back to my press. My role at HEP has increasingly concentrated on business systems, and witnessing how BITS tackles projects in this field and collaborates across departments has been immensely inspiring to me.

I was especially intrigued by DUP’s method of documenting processes and workflows. Their internal Wiki features detailed diagrams and flowcharts that depict all systems and processes. During the residency, I frequently witnessed the value of diagramming as various teams referenced documents in the Wiki to provide a visual for our discussions. In the “life of title” meeting, key stakeholders in DUP’s warehouse transition reviewed a diagram that that clearly mapped a product’s lifecycle from transmittal/turnover to pub date, demonstrating how different systems interact at every stage and highlighting triggers for manual steps. Over the past fiscal year, I’ve begun incorporating flowcharts into my work to better communicate changes in workflows. Observing how DUP uses diagrams in their documentation was affirming, and I gained valuable insights into effective diagramming from their examples.

Everyone at DUP was incredibly welcoming and generous, making the residency even more educational than I had anticipated. I’m deeply thankful to Ashley and the DUP teams for taking time out of their schedules to answer my numerous questions. Our conversations have left me feeling invigorated, and I expect to refer to my 40 pages of notes from the residency often. I’m looking forward to applying what I’ve learned to future projects at HEP.

Also, the virtual approach to the residency exceeded all expectations, and I highly recommend it. While traveling to another press has its advantages, a remote residency is more accessible, easier to schedule, and causes less disruption for both the resident and the host. Plus, it incurs no cost to AUPresses. Theoretically, work-shadowing could take place at any time that’s agreeable to both presses, but recognizing it as part of an AUPresses program lends credibility to an individual’s request and provides more incentive for hosts to participate. I hope more AUPresses community members will apply for remote residencies in future years.