My role as Pre-press Controller at Oxford University Press began in July 2005. It is positioned in the ‘Publishing Services Group’ within the ELT Dictionaries department. In a nutshell, I am the link between editorial and production to make sure the printer receives files suitable for press.
On a day-to-day basis the job involves image manipulation, illustration gathering, labelling and formatting, making corrections and outputting PDFs (or requesting film) for reprints and laying out pages for the appendices, guides and other non A-Z pages. Much layout and design work is carried out by freelancers so keeping in touch with them is important to make sure they have the time to spare, complete the work on time and remember to send in their invoices.
The department publishes many dictionaries each year so scheduling is an important task. Schedules are placed in to Project and made visible on the department’s own intranet so everybody is aware of timescale and workload.
Longer term plans include the creation of an image library and improvement to the intranet pages.