Project MUSE founded in 1993 is an online database of thousands of current and back issues of peer-reviewed humanities and social sciences journals. Hundreds of libraries subscribe to its service. On January 1, 2012, Project Muse went live with a new platform that will incorporate academic publisher eBooks in addition to the traditional journals, with the promise of even other types of content in the future.
The arena for this type of enhanced access had worthy contenders like Oxford University Press, JSTOR, and Cambridge. And The University Press eBook Consortium (UPeC) was looking for a partner to provide functionality and host a potentially large collection of 20,000 eBooks.
Project Muse had initially explored partnering with commercial eBook vendors like as eBrary, NetLibrary, and Electronic Book Library (EBL). But inspired by some of its membership decided to create their own multi-format model that would “Do for e-books what MUSE does for journals.”
It was decided that Project Muse would undertake this project with the help of the Johns Hopkins University Libraries and have something that was "By the Academic Community, For the Academic Community". Part of the motivation was to "...help save the scholarly monograph from extinction as the costs of print book publishing continue to increase in the face of diminishing sales."
Project Muse already had arrangement with 28 publishers for eBook content for the new platform. At this time, an organization known as the The University Press eBook Consortium (UPeC) was looking for a partner to provide functionality and host a potentially large collection of 20,000 eBooks.
Even though they were developing their own system, Project Muse joined the bidding for this solicitation. The competition was tough. But given Project Muse's expertise and creation of their own platform, along with adjustments to the pricing model and its willingness to hire additional staff, UPeC selected them as their partner. As the winner for the Request for Proposal, Project Muse now would have 66 publishers to contribute eBooks to their developing platform.
The new collection has been named University Press Content Consortia (UPCC) indicating that in the future, more that journals and EBooks will be hosted on the new platforms. Plans are to also "...to include reference works, datasets, multimedia, annotation, collaboration and commenting features."
So what began as an innovative individual effort by Project Muse, has become a major platform that can provide what more than 1000 librarians surveyed by UPeC said they wanted : "...the same unlimited downloading privileges that existed for journals. They wanted limited to no DRM. They wanted ownership."
UPCC Books Frequently Asked Questions
Tutorials for New MUSE Platform Now Available
Comments