P R E S S  R E L E A S E

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 27, 1999

PROJECT MUSE� EXPANDS WITH JOURNALS FROM OTHER UNIVERSITY PRESSES

Baltimore, MD -- Project MUSE�, the online journals database published by
the Johns Hopkins University Press and one of the pioneers in online
scholarly publishing, announces yet another groundbreaking initiative.
Beginning with the year 2000, Muse will expand to include full-text online
access to titles from other university presses. To date, nine other presses
have committed 62 titles to joining Muse, bringing the total to 110 and
more than doubling the size of the collection. The publishers involved are
Carnegie Mellon University Press, Duke University Press, Indiana University
Press, MIT Press,  Oxford University Press, Pennsylvania State University
Press, University of Hawaii Press, University of Texas Press, and the
University of Wisconsin Press. It is expected that even more titles may be
added by the end of 1999.

"Project MUSE has set a standard for scholarly electronic journals in the
humanities and social sciences," explains Mark Nolan, Project MUSE manager
at the Johns Hopkins University Press.  "Our subscribing libraries have
asked us to provide greater depth of coverage in these underrepresented
areas.  We saw this as an opportunity to develop a cooperative effort with
other university presses to make their titles available within an
established online publishing model that has been widely accepted and
appreciated by the library community."

Marie Hansen, director of Project MUSE, adds: "Such a joint effort by
publishers who are, after all, in competition with one another, to
collaborate in a publishing venture is an unprecedented undertaking. By
working together we can create an exciting collection of scholarly
materials that will be of far greater value to publishers, scholars, and
librarians than any of us could produce singly. Not only that, we will be
creating a broad and deep range of titles in many subject areas. We would
like scholars in many fields -- for example, history or literary theory --
to think of MUSE as the first portal to performing online research."

With the addition of the new journal titles, Nolan believes MUSE will
become even more attractive to libraries that wish to increase their
holdings while providing a variety of quality periodicals to their
communities. As of June 1999, over 650 universities, colleges and other
institutions worldwide have subscribed to Project MUSE as a cost-effective
means of supporting the research and education needs of their patrons.

The main thrust of Project MUSE's initial expansion will be in the subject
areas in which a number of university presses have established strong
reputations, such as literary theory and criticism, history, cultural
studies, philosophy, social sciences and performing arts.  The new titles
represent a broad array of interests, including African-American
literature, gender studies, medieval studies, higher education, health
policy, political science, and Asian culture and history. Over the next
year, science, technical, and medical periodicals will also be added to the
collection.

With the addition of the new titles to Project MUSE, a number of flexible
subscription options will be available to institutions wishing to access
either all or a selection of the journals offered.  Details on the packages
available, as well as pricing and discount plans, will be announced
shortly. A major mission of Project MUSE has been to create an economical
publishing alternative in an effort to help libraries deal with the high
prices of serials. The library price for all 110 titles is expected to be
in the range of $8,500 to $10,000 --still less than some single titles in
the sciences.

Hansen sees this initial expansion as the first step in an effort to
provide a quality online collection of academic journals with great depth
of coverage.  "We expect to eventually offer several hundred titles from a
group of publishers comprising university presses, scholarly societies and
other not-for-profit institutions," Hansen explains. "We believe we can
successfully provide a competitive model to those offered by commercial
publishers, while enhancing MUSE's commitment to partnerships as already
evidenced by our relationships with library consortia, aggregators and
third party vendors."

Project MUSE was launched in 1995 by the Johns Hopkins University Press, in
collaboration with the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins
University, to offer the full text of JHUP scholarly journals via the world
wide web.  In 1999, MUSE publishes online 46 JHUP titles in the humanities,
social sciences and mathematics, which are available for institutional
subscriptions either as a package or individually. Project MUSE has been
hailed for its library-friendly licensing and usage policies, easy online
navigation, reasonable pricing, and generous discount plans for consortia
and various categories of libraries.

The Johns Hopkins University Press is one of the country's oldest and
largest university presses, publishing more than 170 books each year and 52
scholarly journals.  By long tradition the Press has published with
distinction in such disciplines as literary studies, classics, history,
economics, political science, and the history of science and medicine.  Its
innovative publishing program embraces both traditional and newer modes of
scholarly communication.

Sample journal issues and more information about Project MUSE may be
accessed online at: http://muse.jhu.edu.  Trial access to the entire
Project MUSE database may be arranged for media review and for prospective
subscribers by contacting Melanie Vandermark, Marketing and Sales Manager
for Online Products at the Johns Hopkins University Press.  Please call
410-516-3846 or email melanie@jhupress.jhu.edu for more information.

** A complete list of the titles to be included in Project MUSE in 2000
follows as a separate message. **

CONTACT:  Melanie Vandermark
(410) 516-3846
melanie@jhupress.jhu.edu

or

Mark Nolan
(410) 516-6950
jmnolan@mail.press.jhu.edu

http://muse.jhu.edu