Even though the volumes had already been scanned as part of UC’s work with the Google Books project and the HathiTrust Digital Library, many questions remained. What permissions did students grant the university when they filed their dissertation paperwork?
UC libraries will gain access to all books already on the MUSE platform in the 2022 collection, with the remaining titles being added as published. The MUSE annual front list collection conveys perpetual access rights and interlibrary loan permission for the included books. All books are DRM-free, with unlimited simultaneous use, downloading, and printing.
Looking ahead, the eScholarship team is eager to address this issue of aging and idiosyncratic technology by engaging more fully with leading open source, community-based solutions–both as a consumer of and contributor to these efforts.
The Rosemont Shared Print Alliance and the Partnership for Shared Book Collections recently launched a new Shared Print Toolkit that brings together resources from a variety of shared print programs across the US.
This means that books will be available alongside journals in a single place for the first time. The Oxford Academic platform will be familiar to users already, through UC access to journals on this platform.
We look forward to helping our colleagues at Irvine build upon their existing University Archives and Publications collections in Merritt, while also working with our colleagues at Merced to shepherd in new content related to their work with UC Cooperative Extension programs.
The article also notes the role the two North American shared print federations (the Rosemont Shared Print Alliance [focused on print serials and journals] and the Partnership for Shared Book Collections [focused on print monographs]) and the CCH Collaboration play providing additional structure and coordination to shared print efforts and advocacy for improved infrastructure to support this critical