"Two Major University Press E-book Initiatives Announce Merger"

From the Announcement:

Two major university press e-book initiatives—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 January 1, 2012.
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The partnership allows e-books 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.
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“The University Press Content Consortium will be the online destination for peer-reviewed university press scholarship,” said Steve Maikowski, director of the New York University Press and one of the press directors spearheading UPeC. “The efficiencies and cost savings resulting from this collaboration will bring far more revenue to participating presses than current third-party models,” he said. “Because both initiatives are university-press based, there is a strong mission alliance.”
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“Members of the academic library community appreciate that these two groups sought our input before developing their product offerings,” said Charles B. Lowry, executive director of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). “We have been saying for some time that we would prefer to see university press e-book content not proliferated across multiple platforms creating undue complexity and duplicative cost. I feel sure that librarians nationwide will be excited about this convergence, which is a huge step in the right direction.”

UPDATED (3/10/11)
An article by Jennifer Howard from The Chronicle of Higher Education “University Press E-Book Consortia Join Forces to Sell to Libraries”

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Associations and Organizations, Libraries, Publishing