Project MUSE is pleased to announce that over 550 humanities and social science books from several distinguished university presses are now available on our platform as fully open access (OA). These books are provided through the permission of their publishers and are freely available to libraries and users around the world. Open access titles may be searched and browsed using the same tools for all content on the MUSE site, and will appear in search results alongside MUSE journals and books already owned by participating libraries. Users need not register or log in to access the books, and – like all book content on MUSE – the OA titles are offered in a DRM-free format with unlimited downloading and printing.
Publishers with open access books on MUSE include Cornell University Press, Utah State University Press, University of Ottawa Press, University of Michigan Press, Ohio State University Press, University Press of Colorado, Leiden University Press, and Brandeis University Press, among others. These titles have been made open access via a variety of mechanisms, including collaborative initiatives like Knowledge Unlatched, grant-funded programs such as the NEH’s Humanities Open Book, and publishers’ partnerships with their university libraries or other campus entities. A complete list of the books now available open access on MUSE may be found on our web site.
To assist libraries who wish to make the MUSE open access books more discoverable to their users, MUSE is providing a downloadable set of free MARC records. MUSE will also be working with discovery services to provide metadata for a package of MUSE Open Access titles so that they may be easily activated. All of the open access books will be preserved with Portico, as are all books on MUSE.
For more information about open access books on MUSE visit our site, or email us with any questions.
