Supporting Digital Scholarship

“University libraries and academic presses have long been partners in delivering journals, books, and other materials that our communities need to do the work of scholarship and higher education. Over time, new technologies and conceptual innovations transformed various aspects of this work and occasionally the nature of the partnership itself. 

“Publishers, for example, embraced new technologies that allowed books and journals to be produced more quickly or economically, or more beautifully and completely, or via innovative formats and delivery systems. Libraries developed new services, such as data preservation and curation, and began scanning their historic collections, enabling new areas of research through such techniques as data mining.

“The invention of computing, digital technologies, and the internet was truly disruptive and transformative of this work—creating unprecedented opportunities to deliver content, and blurring the traditional boundaries that differentiated libraries and publishers.

“This year, we celebrate what talented and visionary colleagues at Johns Hopkins did at that transformative moment 25 years ago, when the internet was new and its potential undefined. The press-library partnership that created Project MUSE aspired to take full advantage of the digital revolution to benefit the academic community. It reflected our university’s core values of curiosity, innovation, and collaboration across departments and disciplines. We take enormous pride in what Project MUSE has achieved and become, and we congratulate colleagues past and present at our library, our press, and throughout Johns Hopkins who had a hand its remarkable success.”

—Winston Tabb