21 April 2020
Over the last few weeks, Project MUSE has been working closely with participating non-profit publishers who have offered to make their scholarly content temporarily available for free on our platform.
MUSE in Focus: Contextualizing Pandemic is a small sample of temporarily free scholarship from Project MUSE publishers on the broad topic of pandemic and its effects throughout history, in culture, and on humanity as a whole. The hope is that bringing these pieces together will help to bring historical and cultural context to the current crisis, so that it is possible to look to the knowledge of the past to guide us forward.
More than 80 of MUSE's participating publishers have temporarily made all or some of their content freely available on the Project MUSE platform, in response to the need for remote access to reliable, vetted teaching and research materials during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. Over 25,000 books and 300 journals are now available to any user worldwide, with no restrictions on access or usage. MUSE has also made available tools to help libraries with discovery of the free resources.
MUSE has also launched a new set of resources for instructors, along with a one-stop-shop for libraries to assist with managing access and discovery for MUSE.
Project MUSE for instructors
In the new instructors area, teaching staff may:
- access over 40 temporarily free books and articles about online teaching and learning, from MUSE’s participating university press and non-profit scholarly publishers
- explore subject-specific lists of peer-reviewed content from MUSE suitable for use in courses and research
- review tips for incorporating MUSE journals and books in class use
Project MUSE will continue to update and build on this set of resources for instructors, now and after the COVID-19 crisis fades. Instructors are encouraged to visit, and sign up to receive regular updates to these resources.
Library resources during COVID-19
With most educational and research activity moving into an online environment, and a large amount of content either temporarily available for free or permanently open access on the MUSE platform, MUSE is experiencing both high demand for and high usage of the resources on offer. Both current library customers, and those to whom MUSE is a new resource, may benefit from tools and tips gathered to help with discovery of and access to reliable and vetted scholarly content. The new library resources page brings together information about:
- publishers currently making content available for free on MUSE
- open access books and journals on MUSE
- discovery tools, including MARC and KBART files, for both free and OA content
- details for activating free and OA MUSE content in commonly-used knowledge bases
- enabling remote access to a library’s MUSE holdings
- resources for users, including the new For Instructors area
Suggestions for other information or tools that could be provided to assist libraries with the challenges they are facing at this time would be welcomed. Contact the library support team with questions or suggestions.