Reminder: New Project MUSE Platform Launches on January 1, 2012

Project MUSE's new books + journals combined platform is on schedule to go
live on January 1, 2012. Redesigned to coincide with the addition of books
to the existing journals content, the new platform is available for
preview on our beta site, released in August, at http://beta.muse.jhu.edu.
At the launch of the new platform, over 14,000 books from 66 university
presses and related scholarly publishers will be available alongside
MUSE's over 500 electronic journals.

At launch on January 1, all of the books in MUSE's new UPCC Book
Collections will be visible for searching and browsing on the platform,
fully integrated with journals. Users at libraries which have purchased or
subscribed to book collections on MUSE will have immediate full-text
access to content from those collections.

MUSE will provide a one-month preview period during January 2012 to allow
librarians and scholars to discover the significant breadth and depth of
book content available on Project MUSE.  At the end of the preview period,
January 31, 2012, search results will default to only content to which the
searcher has full-text access. At this point, users will have the option
to toggle the search to show all available books and journals relevant to
a search, if desired.

A search box on every page of the site offers users the option of
searching both books and journals, or filtering by content type prior to
running the search. At the search results level, users may again filter to
just books or just journals, as well as to only content for which they
have full text access.

Highlights of the new Project MUSE platform include:
- Powerful new hierarchical subject structure, allowing users to drill
down to the most relevant content and encouraging discovery
- Faceted searching, with options to filter search results by subject
area, author, and language
- Enhanced browsing by subject area, title, or publisher, across books and
journals or filtered by content type
- Search box on each page of the site, with predictive search terms
- New access icons to help users clearly identify content to which they
have paid access through their institution, free sample content, and open
access content
- Discovery and research tools at both the book and journal article level,
including More by This Author and Related Content links, citation
downloading/exporting, and social sharing
- "Search Inside..." feature for both books and journals
- DOIs at title and chapter level for books, article level for journals

The redesigned MUSE website will feature new search and discovery
functionality to help users make the most of their searches and of the
greatly expanded content available. The beta site highlights just a few of
the new features that will be available when the new site launches on
January 1.

As has always been the case with journal content on MUSE, UPCC books on
MUSE will offer unlimited usage, downloading, and printing for purchasing
libraries. Book content is offered in DRM-free, chapter-level PDFs.
COUNTER-compliant statistics and free MARC records will be available for
UPCC Book Collections on Project MUSE.

MUSE expects to make preliminary tutorial material for the new site
available in December, with more extensive instructional materials
available in January. The beta site and the current site will continue to
operate in parallel until December 31, 2011, with the new platform going
live January 1, 2012 at the current Project MUSE URL, http://muse.jhu.edu.
To reiterate, for the one-month preview period of January 2012, searches
on the new platform will default to displaying all relevant book and
journal results, unless the user selects to filter to only books or only
journals at the time of searching. After January 31, 2012, search results
will default to only that journal and/or book content to which a user has
full-text access.

Questions about the platform transition, UPCC Book Collections on MUSE,
and any other issues may be directed to Project MUSE Customer Support at
muse@press.jhu.edu.