Project MUSE Partners with HighWire BALTIMORE, MD & STANFORD, CA – 3 April 2013 The Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP) has reached an agreement with Stanford University's HighWire Press to transition to the HighWire Open Platform as the new digital hosting and delivery platform for Project MUSE. Over the past year, JHUP and its digital publishing unit Project MUSE have conducted an extensive search for a technology partner to assist in expanding the capacity of Project MUSE to support its current content offering and allow MUSE to pursue opportunities in developing new products, business models and service offerings for its growing community of more than 200 publishers and 2700 libraries. "HighWire brings a wealth of experience in hosting content for publishers and MUSE will leverage that experience in developing a similar hosting model for the humanities and social sciences," said Dean Smith, Director of Project MUSE. "Our vision is to deliver the definitive state-of-the-art research environment in servicing our communities of publishers, libraries, and researchers." "HighWire is committed to the widespread dissemination of scholarly research and to the latest advancements in information technology. They have developed a sophisticated platform and protocol for constant improvement that has served the needs of academic publishers large and small," said Kathleen Keane, Director of JHUP. "The Johns Hopkins University Press shares the objective of making scholarly research content available and usable." HighWire's history tracks very closely with that of Project MUSE, with similar missions and both having launched in 1995. Several of HighWire's publishing partners (Duke University Press, The Oxford University Press, and the University of Wisconsin Press) also have content on the MUSE platform. "We are proud to welcome such a prestigious leader in the humanities and social sciences to the HighWire community," said Tom Rump, Managing Director of HighWire. "We are excited to provide our innovative hosting platform to Project MUSE to ensure the highest levels of content integration, discoverability, and end-user engagement. Given the deep understanding of their customers' needs and their vision for the future of ebooks and publishing, MUSE will be an inspired digital partner." "This partnership offers new collaboration opportunities for MUSE and HighWire to advance the thought leadership, end-user research, and publisher communities that each organization has pursued individually," affirmed John Sack, Founding Director of HighWire. "We look forward to finding ways in which together we can foster the next evolution of research communication." The successful expansion of the Project MUSE publishing program is highly dependent on an advanced delivery infrastructure that combines rich functionality, customizability and a collaborative relationship with an innovative vendor of proven track record such as HighWire. This dynamic relationship will enable Project MUSE to create new products, incorporate new content types such as online references, foster personalization and collaboration, and continue to provide a sustainable model for libraries, publishers and researchers. About JHUP/Project MUSE A division of the JHU Press, Project MUSE is a leading provider of digital humanities and social science content for the scholarly community. Since 1995 the MUSE journal collections have supported a wide array of research needs at academic, public, and school libraries worldwide. MUSE is a trusted source of complete, full-text versions of 580 scholarly journals and more than 20,000 books from the University Press Content Consortium (UPCC). Over 200 of the world's leading university presses and scholarly societies currently contribute content to MUSE. About HighWire Press At the forefront of strategic scholarly publishing, HighWire Press provides the latest in digital content development and hosting solutions to the scholarly community through its ground-breaking HighWire Open Platform. A division of the Stanford University Libraries, HighWire partners with influential societies, university presses, and other independent publishers, sharing ideas and innovations in publishing, and producing definitive online versions of high-impact, peer-reviewed journals, books, reference works, and other scholarly content. Since its inception in 1995, HighWire has embodied a commitment to helping publishers disseminate their content to the widest possible audience, facilitating the research communication process to meet the ever-changing needs of today's online and mobile readers. Twitter: @highwirepress highwire.stanford.edu For more information, contact: For Project MUSE Dean J. Smith Director, Project MUSE djs@press.jhu.edu 410-516-6981 For HighWire: Bonnie Zavon Public Relations HighWire | Stanford University bzavon@stanford.edu 650-723-0522
Primary Research Group Inc. has published The Survey of Academic Library Cataloging Practices, 2013 Edition, ISBN 978-157440-234-6. This 230+ page study is based on data from 80 academic libraries predominantly in the United States and Canada and gives a detailed picture of how libraries are responding to the challenging changes in the environment for academic library cataloguing. Among the many issues covered are: new resource description cataloguing rules, perceptions of the future of cataloguing and the prestige of the profession, productivity enhancement measures, use of outsourcing for many different kinds of materials, views on the preparedness of library science grads in various facets of cataloging. The report also covers developments in personnel, salaries, use of technology and more. Questionnaire development assistance for this report was provided by Michael A. Cerbo. Mr. Cerbo is the Bibliographic Access and Resource Management Librarian at the University of Rhode Island. Just a few of the many findings in the report are: • The majority of survey participants (60.49 percent) say the new Resources Description and Access cataloging rules will "not really enhance" the cataloger’s role in future library decisions. • Just 7.41 percent of libraries in the sample have marketed the new RDA cataloging rules outside the library. • The survey participants spent a mean of 49.09 hours of staff time in the past year in viewing webinars, videos, online tutorials, conferences, formal classroom training, and on other aids for cataloging education. • At least 50 percent of all those participants at schools with an annual tuition less than $18,000 say copy cataloging is performed mostly by paraprofessional support staff, while only 23.08 percent of those at schools where the tuition is more than $18,000 say the same. • 26.67 percent of research libraries and 23.53 percent of colleges with more than 20,000 students report that bibliographic upgrades in OCLC are handled by both paraprofessionals and professional librarians who work at the library. • Over the last five years, the libraries in the sample gained a mean of 0.42 positions in cataloging library support staff. • More than half (56.79 percent) of all survey participants say the cataloger’s pay rate has increased by less than 2.5 percent over the last four years. • 53.33% of research universities in the sample say that they outsource the updating of headings in bibliographic records. • 28.4% of survey participants outsource eJournal cataloguing. • More than 23% of librarians at colleges with an annual tuition of more than $18,000 per year spot check all vendor supplied records. For further information view our website at www.PrimaryResearch.com.