Oxford University Press is pleased to announce the creation of a groundbreaking online platform for university press monograph content. Having redeveloped the award-winning Oxford Scholarship Online platform, OUP is launching University Press Scholarship Online (UPSO) and inviting the University Press community to take advantage of a fully enabled XML environment with the cutting edge search and discovery functionality that has marked the success of Oxford Scholarship Online.

The expansion of Oxford Scholarship Online,” notes Tim Barton, Managing Director of Global Academic Business for Oxford University Press, “to include the research and scholarship of other university presses, creating a single platform searchable across many high-quality programs, represents a step forward in ensuring that academic content is increasingly accessible—and conveniently so.”

Responding to increased demand for online scholarly content, UPSO streamlines the research process by making disparately published monographs easily accessible, highly discoverable and fully cross-searchable via one online platform. Research that previously would have required users to jump between a variety of books, and disconnected websites can now be concentrated through a single search engine.

UPSO creates an individually-branded home for monographs from each participating university press just as it has done for Oxford Scholarship Online while allowing highly intuitive tools to deep search across all the content in the program. As such, UPSO will be the premier online research tool—for scholars, teachers, graduate and undergraduate students—and an essential resource for all academic libraries.

Oxford Scholarship Online was launched in 2003 and immediately hailed as “A superior e-book implementation” by Booklist, and “For ease of use, user-friendly design, and quality texts, Oxford Scholarship Online is among the best I have ever used” by Library Journal.  The only publisher with more than eight years of direct experience offering an academic monograph publishing model, OUP has developed a nuanced and highly successful service specifically developed to address digital monographs subscribed to by over 750 libraries and institutions of higher learning. The UPSO program builds on this experience to the benefit of the university press community, as well as librarians and users who understand the growing power provided by a post-PDF research solution.

Benefits of UPSO for academics, libraries, and partner presses:

▪ provides the highest quality scholarly content in all subject areas

▪ is fully cross-referenced and cross-searchable, with clickable citations from bibliographies and footnotes, including OpenURL and DOI-linking support, and more

▪ allows users to streamline research through a single online platform

▪ enables libraries to reduce subscriptions to multiple smaller websites

▪ can be easily integrated into library systems and updated frequently with new content

▪ offers full customer support services as well as flexibility and choice in purchasing models

▪ increase discoverability and usage of university press scholarly materials

▪ offers university presses unique opportunity to create an XML digital workflow and join a highly successful online scholarship platform, reaching the global academic market at low distribution costs

“We are very excited about the redevelopment of OSO and the opportunity to open up the platform to other presses,” said Casper Grathwohl, VP, Digital Publisher at Oxford University Press.  “I think the timing is right—over the past year the university press community has delved more deeply into strategic conversations about how to address their digital monograph publishing and we hope that the UPSO program will offer them a solution with a proven track record in an environment that is more flexible than most other offerings that are becoming available. Although the program provides all the links to other academic content needed by researchers, UPSO is really about unlocking the power of the academic monograph, and that singular focus makes it incredibly compelling. I believe it will make a significant contribution to the development of the monograph in its next phase of life.”

A pilot program with Fordham University Press is launching in March 2011, and OUP is in talks with a number of university presses for a full launch in Fall 2011. A marketing destination site, explaining the full range of benefits of UPSO in greater depth, is coming this February at www.aboutupso.com.

Even though I’d been to the Botanical Gardens dozens of times, I did not know anything about Enid A. Haupt. While I was waiting on line across from a carefully constructed model of the Statue of Liberty, I read that she was an avid horticulturalist and through her philanthropy she saved the Botanical Gardens from being demolished. However, she was also editor and chief of Seventeen Magazine. Publishing is everywhere!

Soon the lines dissipated inside the heart of the conservatory and we were free to mill about looking at the amazing creations out of twigs and bark that make up New York City landmarks.

One of my favorites is the Edgar Allen Poe house, which I remember seeing as a little girl when the exhibit was outside. I love the way the gnarled porch wound around the house and small berries framed the windows. I’ve never been to the actual house, which is located on the Grand Concourse and East Kingsbridge Road.

This year, my friend’s daughter saw the train show for the first time. It’s always great to see how children react. Life is still magical for them and she loved watching the trains weave around Yankee Stadium, the New York Public Library, and of course, St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

I myself am always amazed at the bridges that are so carefully constructed. The Brooklyn Bridge is as stunning as a well-crafted miniature as it is in life-size stone.

If you are interested in reading more about the landmarks of NYC that are brought to life at the Botanical Gardens, I would suggest All Around the Town: Amazing Manhattan Facts and Curiosities, Second Edition by Patrick Bunyan for great snapshots of information.

However, if you’re the focused reader, looking for a lot of detail on individual landmarks, I would suggest picking up Intersections: The Grand Concourse at 100 for a look into the area the houses one of our greatest American Gothic writers or Brooklyn Is—Southeast of the Island for the restless prose of James Agee that captures the spirit of the borough.

For our digital reader, I’d suggest Fifth Avenue Famous: The Extraordinary Story of Music at St. Patrick’s Cathedral by Salvatore Basile. Just out on the Kindle, as well as the Nook and Sony Reader, Sal Basile explores the colorful history of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

Merry Christmas!
Katie Sweeney

From the Official Google Blog:

Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices
12/06/2010 07:00:00 AM

Today is the first page in a new chapter of our mission to improve access to the cultural and educational treasures we know as books. Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. Find the latest bestsellers like James Patterson’s Cross Fire and Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, dig into popular reads like Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken and catch up on the classics like Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Gulliver’s Travels.

We designed Google eBooks to be open. Many devices are compatible with Google eBooks—everything from laptops to netbooks to tablets to smartphones to e-readers. With the new Google eBooks Web Reader, you can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud. That means you can access your ebooks like you would messages in Gmail or photos in Picasa—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.  READ MORE

Check out BarnesandNoble.com and Sony Reader to see our list of available titles.