Supporting Digital Scholarship

“Since 1998, I’ve worked on converting the journal articles (and later books chapters) provided by publishers into what users around the world see when they browse Project MUSE. As senior production coordinator, I’ve also served as the liaison between the production team and MUSE’s publishing partners, helping to create, streamline, and document the journal production process. In a typical year, I interact with 150 publishers, 500 journals, three conversion vendors, and colleagues across the MUSE’s staff.

“Highlights of my years with MUSE include helping to develop the PDF to XML workflow and production tools, converting ‘legacy’ articles to current XML standards for more than 100,000 articles, and welcoming publishing partners to MUSE for the first time.

“When outside publishers joined MUSE, we agreed to take any file format they had and find a way to get it through our conversion tool at the time. It took some creativity and many scripts (often customized by journal) to get the desired HTML output. All of the conversion was done in house by a small production staff.

“We have always had a dedicated, innovative staff who want to see MUSE succeed. We’ve provided the user with quality content, top notch tools for both users and publishers, and excellent customer service. I’m proud to have been part of the early days of MUSE, and to see where we came from and where we are now, to see how our processes, tools and product evolved over time to benefit all our users and partners.”

—Chris O’Shea