paula roush was a pioneer in the use of print-on-demand in the classroom. Back in 2007, she offered a seminar at London South Bank Unversity entitled “THE PHOTOBOOK PROJECT at LULU.COM,” which “takes place within the self-publishing environment provided by lulu.com, and considers if this online print on demand network can be used for educational photo publishing projects, while researching its advantages and limitations in relation to other publishing models” (paula roush, “Introduction”). In her opinion, possibly the greatest impact of print-on-demand was the “extension of the classroom into the publishing market.” Thus, as indicated by the syllabus, students were required to produce an individual photobook and participate in a networked, collective photo magazine.

Given the centrality of internet activity to self-publishing projects, they were also required to use and design the seminar’s and their own profile pages on the Lulu website as “storefronts” and explore and use the Lulu community social network—a feature the platform discontinued a few years later—to support their photo publishing practice with posts in the seminar’s blog and their own Lulu blog as well as reviews, feedback, and social bookmarking.