ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Stephanie Orphan

ACRL/ARL announce recruitment video

ACRL and ARL (the Association of Research Libraries) have produced a recruiting video for academic and research librarians. The video was developed as part of ACRL’s Academic and Research Library Campaign and was coordinated by the ACRL/ARL Joint Task Force for Recruitment into the Profession.

The seven-minute streaming video is aimed at attracting college and graduate students and highlights the role of academic librarians and the satisfactions to be realized in the profession. The video includes interviews with academic librarians who discuss what they do and why they made their career choices. The video can be viewed on the ACRL Web site (www.ala.org/acrl, click “Issues & Advocacy,” then “Recruiting to the Profession”). It is also available for download as a zipped file.

Columbia University expands overseas and at home

Columbia University has opened a new library as part of the Dakhleh Oasis Project, an archeological fieldwork and research program in southern Egypt. The library is housed in a 16,000-square-foot dig house, built to provide housing and research facilities for faculty, staff, and Columbia undergraduates enrolled in the semester-long fieldwork program. Roger Bagnall, professor of classics and history at Columbia, successfully raised funds to build the two-story building. The materials at the library represent the only thematic scholarly collection in the entire Western Desert. Holdings currently number 300, with room to expand to approximately 1,000 volumes.

In New York, at Columbia’s Butler Library, a new African Studies reading room was opened in December. The reading room houses a special noncirculating collection of materials on African history and humanities and is part of the expansion of reading rooms in the renovation of the library.

Innovative Interfaces celebrates 25th anniversary

Innovative Interfaces began celebrating its 25th anniversary in December and will continue the celebration through 2004. The provider of Web-powered, Java-based automated library systems will host several employee and customer events throughout the year under the banner, “Celebrating 25 Years of Being Innovative.”

Updated Create Change brochure available

ACRL, SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have published the second print edition of the popular Create Change brochure. The new brochure provides up-to-date statistics on the stresses facing scholarly communication and offers options for action by scholars. It reflects the gathering momentum of the open access movement and recommends ways that faculty action can bring about constructive change. The brochure can be distributed in campus mailings and used in presentations to university departments or at education programs on scholarly communication.

Create Change was introduced in 2001 as a comprehensive advocacy resource with both print and online components. An electronic copy of the revised brochure is available on the Create Change Web site at www. createchange. org/resources/brochure. html. Print copies can be purchased in bundles of 50 copies for $10 per bundle by e-mailing arl@pmds.com.

EDGAR enhances Online Pro serviceFinancial information company EDGAR online has added a complete collection of conference call transcripts and company Webcasts, as well as an events calendar, to its flagship EDGAR Online Pro service. Other recent additions to the service include complex fundamental, ownership, initial public offering and secondary offering datasets, and advanced search tools.

ALA Web site updated to feature shortened URLs

ALA introduced major enhancements to its Web site in January, with the most noticeable improvement to members being shorter URLs. The new URLs allow for easier reference to the site in print and online publications. The URL solution is the result of an alteration to the site structure and of the content management system itself. Prior to its launch, the solution was extensively tested by ALA staff and ALA’s Web site Advisory Committee, which is responsible for making recommendations concerning technical issues that have policy implications and to advise the association on priorities and strategies that promote utilization and continued development of the ALA Web site.

UC Irvine exhibit focuses on Japan's comic culture

The University of California-Irvine (UCI) is displaying a selection of materials from its holdings of Japanese comic series in its book exhibit, “Champions of Comic Culture in Japan,” which runs through the end of February. UCI’s East Asian Collection includes complete runs of Shonen Magajin {.Youth Magazine), one of Japan’s most popular comic magazines, and a series featuring the character Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy), which became an icon of the comic world. The exhibit is made up of materials from the two titles. The library’s holdings of these runs are unique among library collections in the United States. Comic readership claims about 40 percent of the annual output of all Japanese publishers today.

ATLA introduces preservation program catalog

The American Theological Library Association (ATLA) has created the ATLA Preservation Program Catalog Online (APCAT). This new database resource includes more than 32,000 entries of the extensive monograph and serial titles preserved during the past 50 years of the association’s preservation activities. APCAT allows users to search by multiple search fields, to download and/ or print citations, and to directly order microfilm or microfiche from the collections. The catalog is available online at www. atla.com.

ebrary ads D&B and Harris InfoSource databases

ebrary has launched two complementary, publisher-branded databases from D&B, a provider of global business information and technology solutions, and its subsidiary, Harris InfoSource. The databases will allow researchers simultaneous multi-user access to interactive, full-text databases of up-to-date international and U.S. business data. D&B International Business Reports includes three of D&B’s most popular products: Country Report, Country RiskLine, and Export Guides. Harris InfoSource Industry and Manufacturing Reports provides comprehensive overviews of major U.S. industry sectors and individual companies.

Astro Boy © Tezuka Publications, used with permission.

University at Albany-SUNY launches URL Clearinghouse

The University Libraries of the University at Albany-SUNY has launched the URL Clearinghouse. The clearinghouse is a freely available set of instructions for creating URLs to vendor-mediated databases and e-journals licensed by libraries and other information providers. These are the URLs that librarians maintain in OPACs, Web sites, databases, course pages, guides, and the like.

The clearinghouse was created by Laura B. Cohen, network services librarian/ Webmaster, out of her interest in the challenges of creating URLs to licensed electronic resources. It is organized by vendor and focuses on URLs that point to databases and e-journals at the title level. The URL Clearinghouse is located atlibrary. albany. edu/clearinghouse/.

Thompson Gale exclusive distributor for Sociometrics

Thomson Gale has signed an agreement to become the exclusive worldwide distributor of Sociometrics’ Social Science Electronic Data Library. Sociometrics is a for-profit research and development firm specializing in social science research applications. The data library is a premium health and social science resource that consists of original research data from more than 200 studies comprising eight topically focused collections. Its contents are selected by scientist expert panels based on scientific merit, substantive utility, potential for secondary data analysis, and program and policy relevance.

ISO publishes international Dublin Core standard

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published ISO 15836: 2003, Information and documentation—The Dublin Core metadata element set. The Dublin Core metadata standard provides a core set of 15 metadata elements for cross-domain information resource sharing. Dublin Core has gained worldwide recognition and use since its development in 1995 and has been translated into 20 languages. The issuance of the ISO standards provides the official international endorsement for use of the Dublin Core metadata.

UIUC hosts expert meeting on digital libraries and scholarship

A group of experts in cultural informatics, digital libraries, and computer science met last fall at the University of Illinois-Urbana/ Champaign to discuss the possibilities for establishing a framework to make possible the collaborative building of tools to make humanities content in digital libraries more useful to humanities scholars. Representatives from humanities research computing centers in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom and faculty from the university’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, library, department of computer science, and NCSA agreed to pursue a joint research and development agenda. The proposed project would disseminate widely tools derived from cutting-edge experimental software and analytical techniques. The group’s planning meetings have been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; additional grant funding is being sought to support the project.

New EBSCO services simplify e-journal orders

In order to expedite the e-journal ordering process, EBSCO’s publisher services department now collects required registration numbers for customers from publishers. The service was desigend to keep customers from having to search for registration numbers in order to verify e-journal subscription information or to gain access to publisher Web sites. After determining which publishers require registration numbers, EBSCO targets new orders that require registration numbers, receives the number from the publisher, and e-mails it to the appropriate library staff member. The company also expedites e-journal orders through its arrangement with more than 400 publishers and fulfillment houses to accept orders via e-mail. ■