More after the break (including link to preview). The most essential piece of information is:
MUSE will provide a one-month preview period during January 2012 to allow librarians and scholars to discover the significant breadth and depth of both book and journal 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.
(Currently Middlebury has no eBooks available in full-text on MUSE.)
Project MUSE’s redesigned platform, incorporating both books and journals in an integrated interface, goes live on January 1, 2012. A preview of the new platform is available on our beta site at http://beta.muse.jhu.edu.
Over 300 free sample books remain accessible on the beta site through the end of 2011.
Two video tutorials for searching and browsing within the new interface are now available. Additional instructional materials will be provided shortly after the platform launch. View and share the new tutorials here:
Search Books and Journals on Project MUSE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bhldo-sLktk&feature=youtube_gdata
Browse Books and Journals on Project MUSE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrR9wM-R2dM&feature=youtube_gdata
The new platform will provide digital access to over 14,000 books from 66 university presses and related scholarly publishers, alongside MUSE’s over
500 electronic journals. 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.
At launch on January 1, all of the books in MUSE’s new UPCC Book Collections will be visible in search results and when browsing on the platform. Users at libraries which have purchased or subscribed to book collections on MUSE will have 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 both book and journal 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.
Further highlights of the new Project MUSE platform include:
– Faceted searching, with options to filter search results by subject area, author, and language of publication
– Enhanced browsing by subject area, title, or publisher, across books and journals or filtered by content type
– Powerful new hierarchical subject structure, allowing users to drill down to the most relevant content
– 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, 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 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.
The Project MUSE URL remains http://muse.jhu.edu. Links to scholarly content in MUSE (journal articles and issues) will not be affected by the platform change, but libraries and users which have bookmarked informational pages within the site may need to update these bookmarks after the January 1 transition.
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 Project MUSE, or related issues may be directed to Project MUSE Customer Support at muse@press.jhu.edu.