Location: University of Santo Tomas

Publishing House
Beato Angelico Building, Espana,
Manila
THE UST PUBLISHING HOUSE is the
publishing house for the University of
Santo Tomas, tracing its origins to the
UST Press, which was founded in 1593,
and therefore antedates the University
itself.
The UST Publishing House is a member in good standing of the Philippine
Association of Scholarly and Academic Publishers, Inc., the Book
Development Association of the Philippines, and the Philippine Filipinas
Copyright Licensing Society, Inc.

It maintains its own bookstore inside the campus, distributes its titles
through the major bookstores, and participates in all major book fairs in the
country.
The World's Oldest Press - Tried and Tested By Centuries of Commitment

The University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, formerly the UST Press, is
probably the oldest continuing press in the world today. A historical marker in
Spanish put up by the National Historical Institute in the old printing press
building in 1940 called it "one of the oldest existing in the world."
The Pacific War was shortly to explode after
that but the vicissitudes of war and the
vagaries of fate did not stop the press from
churning out publication after publication.
Writing in 1991, the respected Dominican
historian and archivist Fidel Villaroel said that
the UST Press is "a printing press that has
never closed for one day, until our day No
other press in the world has survived 366
years, or 389 years, if we start counting from
1602." The friar called the press resilience as
something worthy of the Guinness Book of
World Records.
1602, the Dominican Blancas de San Jose together with a Chinese convert succeeded
in making molds, types and instruments needed for typography, the conventional
printing by movable type; thus, typographic printing in the Philippines was really
indigenous, not imported from other countries. Wenceslao Retana hailed it as "the
semi-invention" of the press in the country.

In 1625, the press wound up at the Colegio de Santo Tomas, soon to become a
university, and had since been known as the UST Press.

It published Diego Aduartes Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de Filipinas (that
is, the Dominican Missions in the Far East), widely considered to be the best printed
book of the 17th century and the last of the incunabulas, and the classic book by the
Augustinian Manuel Blanco, Flora en Filipinas, consisting of four big volumes with 479
plates, half of them in splendid color lithographs (a copy of the colossal publishing
project is preserved in the Rare Books Section of the UST Central Library).
 Through the centuries, the press has published a host of religious,
devotional and scholarly titles; there was even a time when the press
published 150 titles written by the Universitys faculty members and
alumni.

It is safe to say the press has contributed to the countrys intellectual and
cultural progress by consistently producing publications of high quality
mirroring the Universitys goal of promoting a dialogue between faith and
reason, so as to integrate knowledge about man, nature and God.

In 1996, the UST Press was renamed UST Publishing House.

 The UST Publishing House has been awarded
Publisher of the Year by the National Book
Development Board and the Manila Critics Circle
for 2011.
The award was presented by eminent scholar and
Manila Critics Circle founding member Dr. Isagani R.
Cruz, and National Book Development Board
(NBDB) chair Neni Sta. Romana Cruz at the 30th
National Book Awards held on November 12, 2011
at the Marble Hall of the National Museum. Deputy
Director John Jack G. Wigley accepted the award on
behalf of the UST Publishing House.
Titles published by the UST Publishing House were
also honored, with nominations in the Literary
Criticism/Literary History category.
This is the third time that the UST Publishing House
bagged the Publisher of the Year award. It previously
won the award in 2003 and 2004.