Talas State University Press

Talas State University Press (TSU Press; Iradi: Talas Mamlekettik Universitetinin Basmasy) is the publishing house of Talas State University and the main publisher of scholarly work on Irad. Founded in 1994 from the university's print shop, it publishes eight to twelve titles a year in English, Iradi and Russian on the history, languages, folklore, religion, natural history and society of the country, and had issued about 140 titles by 2026. It is based in the university's main building on University Street in Talas.^[1]

History

The university's print shop was set up in 1961 to print the Bulletin of what was then Iradi State University. Scholarly books in the Iradi SSR were published mainly by Ilim, the press of the Academy of Sciences in Kobozev (now Nurzhan), which issued Sagyn Jusupbekov's six-volume anthology Oral Folk Art of Irad between 1980 and 1991. When the government of the Socialist Republic of Irad impounded the anthology's last volume in 1991, about 300 copies reached Talas, and in 1993 the print shop reprinted the volume from one of them. The press counts this reprint as its unofficial first book.^[2]

The Academic Council founded Talas State University Press in 1994, after the war of 1992 had cut Talas off from the publishers in Kobozev. Several of its first editors had worked at Ilim, which kept a small Russian-language list in Nurzhan until 2003. Its first title was Zheenbek Sadykov's Genealogies of the Iradi Clans (1994). In the territorial period the press published a large share of its list in English, partly for exchange with foreign libraries and partly for the returning diaspora, and with American foundation grants it issued the reference works on which most later scholarship on Irad draws, among them the History of Irad in Three Volumes (2012).^[1]

Since 2009 the press has been led by Dr Kalys Moldokmatov, a former editor at Ilim. Its editor-in-chief is the philologist Dr Cholpon Asanalieva.^[1]

Publications

The press's main series are:

Iradica, monographs on history and culture;
the Library of Iradi Folklore (Eldik Muras), which includes the complete 1938 text of Janyl Baatyr (2001) from Jusupbekov's collation, Ballads of the Horse (2012), and a Latin-script edition of Oral Folk Art of Irad. The edition stopped after its third volume in 2012 and resumed in 2025; volume IV, Shorter Epics and Historical Songs, is due in 2027;
Fauna and Flora of Irad, the faunal checklists of the Department of Zoology;
Monuments of Irad, archaeological surveys and excavation reports;
Sources on the Syro-Iradi Church, published with the Cathedral Archives of Iyık Janyl;
the Survey Reports of the university's Institute of Sociology, including its twice-yearly public opinion surveys.

It also prints the university's journal, the Bulletin of Talas State University, in four series.^[3]

Production and distribution

The press has its own printing works and bindery in the basement of the main building, with an East German offset press of 1987 and, since 2011, a Risograph. Print runs are usually 300 to 1,000 copies. Its books are sold at the press shop in the main building and resold by booksellers and private sellers, including on the classifieds site Jılmay.^[1]

Like other Iradi publishers, the press does not use ISBNs, as Irad has no national ISBN agency; each title instead carries the legal-deposit number issued by the State Archives of Irad, and deposit copies go to the National Library of Irad. As a state institution the press does not need to register with the Department of Public Information (DPI). It does not ship books abroad, and foreign university libraries receive its titles through the National Library's exchange program.^[4]

Since 2007 the reports of the Institute of Sociology have been cleared by the rector's office before release, after the rector became an appointee of the ISEZ Governor. Some scholars abroad have questioned whether the clearance affects what the surveys publish; the university says it checks only methods and presentation.^[5]

External links

Talas State University Press (official page)
TSU Press catalogue, National Library of Irad

References

^ Talas State University (2024). 'Talas State University Press.' talasuniversity.org.
^ Talas State University Press (2008). Fifty Years of Talas State University, 1958–2008. Talas, pp. 201–214.
^ Talas State University (2023). Annual Report of the Rector. Talas.
^ National Library of Irad (2022). Irad Kitep Letopisi: National Bibliography of Irad, 2021. Talas.
^ Central Asian Survey (2019). 'Polling an unrecognized territory: survey research in the Irad Special Economic Zone.' Vol. 38, No. 2.