Publishing student Beth Jones recently got the chance to put theory into practice with a four week placement with Cambridge University Press. In a post-placement report for C.U.P. she said:

"I am lucky enough to be studying on the MA Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University, and with the help of Andrew Winnard (Publisher for Language and Linguistics) I recently enjoyed four weeks of work experience at the Press in Cambridge. I undertook a variety of tasks that gave me a fantastic practical grounding to my master's degree.

For the first two weeks I worked in the Academic and Professional department with Raihana Begum and her team who helped me to familiarise myself quickly with some of the administration systems. One of my major responsibilities was research: finding lecturers at US universities to contact about their preferences for a forthcoming linguistics title, investigating degree-level modules that are most common to universities around the UK, and endeavoring to find image permission contacts for a title close to publication.

The latter could be considered the most challenging task I undertook, as the primary commissioners and authors of images can be rather elusive. This opened my eyes to some of the legal concerns of publications. Overall, I witnessed some of the detailed background work that must be undertaken at the early, and even later, stages of producing a new text.

I also worked on some of the database systems and uploaded online materials for a couple of titles onto the web using a content manager system. It was highly motivating to be involved in a small way in a final product.

I had the opportunity to express my opinion on a set of cover designs and it was very educational to hear which design features traditionally work most effectively for a particular type of text book.

For my later two weeks I was based in ELT, an area I have some experience in being an English teacher and writer by trade. Under the guidance of Ron Ragsdale I took on a project to compile a proposal for a possible future title, and research questionnaire for the sales teams in different regions.

The future book was to be based on an old reference title and be adapted into an ELT cultural encyclopaedia. The work involved developing a sensitivity to the aims and content of the title and researching competing titles for their sales information, prices and production costs.

With a huge thanks to Raihanna Begum, Ron Ragsdale and their teams, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time and gained an awareness of real life publishing procedures that was unbeatable.

I am also pleased to be involved with the founding of the Cambridge Publishing Society, CAMPUS, an exciting new venture in the local area."

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