Some of the highlights include:

Look and feel - HathiTrust has been given a fresh, user-friendly design that unifies all parts of the website.
Accessibility - HathiTrust continues its tradition of style with function, paying particular attention to accessibility in major and minor functional components of the interface.
An engaging homepage - A consolidated search area and prominent links to user collections, hand-picked books, and the mobile interface, invite users to explore the HathiTrust collection. Links to social media, the HathiTrust Research Center, and HathiTrust projects provide updates on activities and invite engagement.
Login benefits - Users can now log in from anywhere on the site, and the login area of the homepage highlights the benefits of logging in to users from partner institutions.
Improvements to the reading interface - Our new online reading interface increases the amount of space available for reading books, while still keeping reading controls and bibliographic information readily accessible.
Persistent tabbed search box - Options for searching the bibliographic catalog and full-text of works have been combined into a single tabbed search, with help information to guide users in deciding which search to use. A persistent search header allows searches to be performed from any page on the website.

Download the HathiTrust Guide

Trial access via EBSCO:
http://wiki.lib.umn.edu/CDM/ElectronicResourcesTrials.html

Current access:
http://www.lib.umn.edu/get/2971

http://www.jstor.org/action/showJournals?alphaList=1&cookieSet=1

Register for either session:

Time: Thursday, October 23, 2008 2:30 PM -- 4:00 PM
Location: S30C - Wilson Library
Available Seats: 20

Time: Monday, October 27, 2008 1:00 PM -- 2:30 PM
Location: S30C - Wilson Library
Available Seats: 20

http://www.lib.umn.edu/get/oiso
{Access for the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities only.}

MNCAT record

"A growing collection of content, including more than 3,000 reference articles and chapters by leading scholars and specialists in their fields, and much more. Qur'anic studies resources, including two Oxford World's Classics translations of the Qur'an, linked to the first online version of A Concordance of the Qur'an by Hanna Kassis. Primary source documents with editorial introductions. Timelines covering major events in the Islamic world and corresponding events in general world history for context. Images provide useful visual perspectives on Islam. Users can refine the rich array of content to search and browse by era, topic, and geographic region, filter to view a specific type of content, and make use of a variety of search forms to set criteria for locating biographical entries, bibliographic references, primary sources, terms in the Qur'an and Concordance, and much more."/ "Oxford Islamic Studies Online includes regularly updated features and a program designed to add a substantial amount of new content to the site."/ Editor-in-chief, John L. Esposito./
Here is a source list for Oxford Islamic Studies Online:

Reference Sources (title and ISBN)
[Oxford] Encyclopedia of the Islamic World (2008) 9780195305135
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World 9780195148039
The Islamic World: Past and Present 9780195165203
The Oxford History of Islam 9780195107999
The Oxford Dictionary of Islam 9780195125597
What Everyone Needs to Know about Islam 9780195157130
Concordance of the Qur’an (Hanna Kassis) 9780520043275
The Koran Interpreted (A.J. Arberry) 9780192835017
The Qur’an (Abdel S.Haleem) 9780192831934

Primary Source Documents (title and ISBN)
Islam in Transition: Muslim Perspectives 9780195174311
Modernist Islam: 1840-1940: A Sourcebook 9780195154689
Liberal Islam: A Sourcebook 9780195116229

http://www.libraryjournal.com/search/siteall?q=periodicals%20price%20survey%202008

Check out this article and note the tables of cost history, projections etc.

Read about the Libraries' efforts to help keep faculty informed about ways to retain your rights in the recent Daily article. and also note this article in the Chronicle:

The Chronicle of Higher Education
February 12, 2008
Harvard Faculty Adopts Open-Access Requirement

Why look into this?

Authors Rights and Scholarly Publishing

The cost of acquiring scholarly publications have risen dramatically in the last decade and the the Libraries' are actively working to educate scholars on how authors may retain the rights to their writings after they are published. At its May 3 meeting, the University Senate unanimously endorsed a new CIC Author's Addendum and its accompanying statement on publishing agreements. By signing the addendum and submitting it with the publisher's standard agreement, U of MN authors can retain their rights: * to use their own articles in their teaching and other professional activities * to post their articles on their own web sites or on sites maintained by the U of MN / scholarly societies / funding agencies (6 months after the date of publication) * to grant the U of MN the right to distribute their articles for teaching and research purposes For more information on what you can do to secure your rights as an author, check the Author’s Rights page at http://www.lib.umn.edu/scholcom/au-rights.phtml.

For more information on alternative publishing models, what others in the academic community are doing, publisher’s policies, and copyright issues see the new Transforming Scholarly Communication website at http://www.lib.umn.edu/scholcom/index.phtml .

We would like to hear what you think about these issues! Please contact your librarian or post your thoughts to our blog at http://blog.lib.umn.edu/scholcom/accessdenied/079191.html .