E-Book Collections Coming to Project MUSE Platform


September 9, 2010 - Project MUSE, a leading provider of humanities and
social science periodical content for libraries, is very pleased to
announce a new initiative to incorporate scholarly book content into its
research platform and product offerings. Beginning next year, e-book
collections will be available for purchase alongside MUSE journal
collections, with an integrated discovery environment that allows for
browsing and searching journal and book content side-by-side.

MUSE, a collaborative project which currently publishes online over 450
journals from more than 100 not-for-profit scholarly presses, will partner
with many of the same publishers to offer high quality, peer-reviewed
academic books electronically. Project MUSE is managed by the Johns
Hopkins University Press, which also operates Hopkins Fulfillment Services
(HFS) as a distribution arm for many distinguished university presses. HFS
client presses are also among the first group of publishers committed to
participating in the new book initiative.

The e-books program, called Project MUSE Editions, has to date signed
contracts with the following publishers to include in the new offering
books from their upcoming scholarly monograph frontlists: Baylor
University Press, Brookings Institution Press, ELT Press, Indiana
University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Kent State University
Press, Penn State University Press, Purdue University Press, and
University of Illinois Press. Talks are ongoing with several other MUSE
and HFS client publishers, with more participants expected to be announced
before the end of this year.

"For fifteen years, MUSE has successfully brought together publishers and
libraries to develop a sustainable, innovative model for digital scholarly
publishing," explains Dean J. Smith, Director of Project MUSE. "Our future
lies in leveraging our trusted relationships with both our library
customers and participating presses into new product offerings that
recognize the shared challenges faced by both these constituencies. And,
our user community will benefit greatly from the integrated research
opportunities presented by putting university press book content online
alongside MUSE's well-respected journal collections."

Publishers participating in the program will select and set prices for the
frontlist books they offer through MUSE e-book collections. The initiative
is focused on scholarly monographs, and is not expected to include
textbooks, reference books, trade titles or other books outside the
project scope. Project MUSE will reserve the right to reject books that do
fit within its collection parameters.

Kathleen Keane, Director of The Johns Hopkins University Press and
immediate past president of the Association of American University Presses
(AAUP), comments, "The economic challenges facing academic libraries and
university press book publishers are well known.  We think that a
well-planned initiative like Project MUSE Editions, which has been
developed with advice from many creative colleagues and customers, has the
opportunity both to distribute academic titles more widely and to test a
new business model."

Book content on MUSE will be offered via a purchase model, on a
twice-yearly seasonal (Spring/Fall) basis. Libraries will "pre-purchase"
access to a collection of the frontlist monograph titles included in the
upcoming season's publishing schedule from the participating publishers.
Details on the books included in the collection will be available prior to
the purchase. Books will be released electronically simultaneous with the
print publication, and libraries that have purchased a collection
including the title will have immediate access on the MUSE platform.

MUSE expects to offer its first e-book collection for the Fall 2011
season, with between 250-500 frontlist monograph titles anticipated for
inclusion in the collection. If there is a critical mass of titles in one
or more academic disciplines, subject-based book collections may also be
made available for the Fall 2011 season. Beginning with Spring 2012, MUSE
expects to consistently offer both comprehensive and subject-based e-book
collections for purchase.

Pricing for book collections on MUSE will be based upon the sum of the
list prices of the included titles, as set by the books' publishers, with
tiered discounting of the collection price modeled upon MUSE's Carnegie
Classification-based tiered pricing for its journal collections.
Consortium purchase programs will also be available.

Books on MUSE will be in PDF format, and will be searchable and
retrievable to the chapter level. COUNTER-compliant usage statistics will
be available to libraries purchasing book collections on MUSE. MARC
records for the e-books will be provided to purchasing libraries at no
charge. Users will be able to search across combined book and journal
content in MUSE, or limit searches by content type.

MUSE's focus is on offering digital book collections at reasonable prices,
much as it has done successfully with journal content for many years, and
the initial phase of the program does not include individual book title
purchase options. A separate initiative is underway to examine the
possibility of an offering of backlist e-books from the participating
Project MUSE Editions publishers. Further information on a potential
e-book backlist product will be available sometime in 2011.

Users and libraries may expect to see "beta" digital books on MUSE as soon
as the first quarter of 2011. Project MUSE plans to formally debut the
e-book collections, and provide information on specific titles and pricing
for the Fall 2011 offering, at the Association of College and Research
Libraries (ACRL) Meeting in late March 2011.

About Project MUSE
Project MUSE provides full-text, affordable subscription access to content
from scholarly journals in the humanities and social sciences. Our mission
is to excel in the broad digital dissemination of high-quality
scholarship. Through innovation and collaborative development, Project
MUSE anticipates the needs of and delivers essential resources to all
members of the scholarly community. Since 1995, MUSE’s electronic journal
collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic,
public, special, and school libraries worldwide. The journals are heavily
indexed and peer-reviewed, with critically acclaimed articles by the most
respected scholars in their fields.  MUSE is also the sole source of
complete, full-text versions of titles from many of the world’s leading
university presses and scholarly societies. Visit http://muse.jhu.edu.


For more information, please contact:
Dean J. Smith, Director, Project MUSE
djs@press.jhu.edu
Melanie Schaffner, Marketing and Sales Manager, Project MUSE
mbs@press.jhu.edu




Melanie Schaffner
Marketing and Sales Manager, Project MUSE
The Johns Hopkins University Press
2715 N Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21218 USA
P 410-516-3846
F 410-516-3846
mbs@press.jhu.edu