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Weekly News Digest
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March 14, 2011 — In addition to this week's NewsBreaks article and the monthly NewsLink Spotlight, Information Today, Inc. (ITI) offers Weekly News Digests that feature recent product news and company announcements. Watch for additional coverage to appear in the next print issue of Information Today.
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Two University Press Ebook Initiatives Announce Merger
Project MUSE Editions (PME) and the University Press e-book Consortium (UPeC) have joined forces. The result of this merger—the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC)—will launch Jan. 1, 2012. The partnership allows ebooks from an anticipated 60-70 university presses and non-profit scholarly presses—representing as many as 30,000 frontlist and backlist titles—to be discovered and searched in an integrated environment with content from nearly 500 journals currently on MUSE.The merger is part of a multimillion-dollar commitment to the ongoing growth and expansion of Project MUSE, according to director Dean Smith. “By leveraging the MUSE brand and investing in technology that ensures the program's future performance, we can grow at a rapid pace while continuing our 15-year tradition of providing quality scholarly content at a fair price.” Representatives of UPeC and PME worked closely with librarians over the past 2 years to develop a scholarly ebook model that benefits both libraries and presses. Incorporating extensive research and feasibility analysis from both groups, the UPCC Collections will be sold exclusively by MUSE in comprehensive and subject-based collections, with minimal digital rights management. (It will not sell titles individually, though presses will still be able to sell ebooks individually to libraries and readers.) The University Press e-book Consortium emerged in 2009 to explore the feasibility of a university press-based ebook initiative. Five press directors serve as UPeC principals: Steve Maikowski (http://www.arl.org/bm~doc/mm10sp-maikowski.pdf), New York University Press; Alex Holzman, Temple University Press; Marlie Wasserman, Rutgers University Press; Eric Halpern, University of Pennsylvania Press; and Donna Shear, University of Nebraska Press. UPeC planning and development was supported by two grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Project MUSE is a provider of digital humanities and social science periodical content; since 1995, its electronic journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, special, and school libraries worldwide. Source: Project MUSE
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Brandi Scardilli
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