Project MUSE Fail

I was psyched when I heard that our library would get a lot of eBooks through Project MUSE. I wasn't sure how the details would work--such as how to do lending--but I figured I could easily download books onto my iPad and have instant access to them.

I spent some time messing with it yesterday, though, and unfortunately the endeavor seems stuck in a middle ground between "eBook" and "file." You have no option for downloading the book. Instead, every chapter and section of the book (TOC, index, etc.) are separate PDF files. To have a "book" you would need to create a folder and stick all these files into it. All your bookmarks, notes, highlights, etc. are therefore scattered all over the place and hard to find.

Here is Project MUSE's FAQ on the topic:

Q. Why must I download a book chapter by chapter?

MUSE collaborated with the participating publishers in UPCC to bring thousands of university press books to the MUSE platform. In consideration of publisher concerns about their intellectual property, MUSE agreed to offer books in chapter-level PDFs. MUSE also wanted to accommodate institutions in areas with low bandwidth where the smaller chapter file would be easier to download.

So the basic point is that if we make the book cumbersome and hard to organize, then you won't be able to pass it on to someone else. It will also make it very hard to use, but that doesn't seem to be the concern.

You might think I am looking a gift horse in the mouth--this is still quick access to a lot of books. However, it could be easy to envision libraries not ordering paper copies of books at all if this cumbersome PDF version is available. That would leave the reader worse off than before.