ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Pennsylvania Academic Library Connection Initiative formed

A grassroots federation of 36 academic libraries, the Pennsylvania Academic Libraries Connection Initiative (PALCI, pronounced PAL-see), has been formed to spur the development of library cooperation within the Commonwealth. The initial focus will be to create a virtual online union catalog using a Web-based interface enabling

Z39.50 searches across multiple vendor systems. Searches will be conducted concurrently and the system will enable direct borrowing of materials by library clients at member libraries. PALCI is expected to be one of the largest Z39.50-based online statewide union catalogs. An additional goal is to negotiate and provide member purchasing of online resources and databases such as abstracting and indexing services, and electronic journals and other full-text databases.

PALCI is funded through membership fees and is believed to be the first grassroots effort in the country organized and completely selfsupported by its own membership. Formed during the fall of 1996, the membership has committed to an initial project life span of two years, after which members will reevaluate the program and determine its future.

Sara Randall, previously of Ameritech’s NOTIS system, has been named executive director. Further information about PALCI may be found at http://www.lehigh.edu/~arh5/ palci.htm.

ACRL Copyright Committee wants your comments on fair use

The ACRL Copyright Committee is soliciting your input on the fair use guidelines that have been developed and proposed through the Conference on Fair Use (CONFU). The last scheduled meeting of CONFU is May 19, 1997.

The proposed guidelines are available via the ACRL Web page at http://www.ala.org/ acrl.html.

Comments about the proposed guidelines can be directed to any ACRL Copyright Committee member (listed on the ACRL Web page).

Should any reader lack Web access, contact Erika Linke, chair of the ACRL Copyright Committee, for copies; e-mail: Erika.Linke@ cmu.edu; phone: (412) 268-2447; fax: (412) 268-6944.

Haverford College publishes finding aids on the Web

Haverford College has published detailed guides to its collections on its Web site at http://www.haverford.edu/library/sc/aids.html.

The finding aids cover Haverford’s many large collections of Quaker family and personal papers and future plans call for mounting collections of Quaker Yearly Meeting papers. Topics covered in these papers and in the finding aids include those of interest to Quakers from the late 17th century through the late 20th century: social reform, social justice, spirituality, abolitionism, education, Native Americans, and peace studies, as well as many private family matters such as financial and legal records.

The project has received five years of support from the Pew Charitable Trust as well as private donations. Haverford plans to add approximately 1,500 pages of “precomputer” text finding aids on the Web. Each finding aid includes biographical information, a summary of collections, information on arrangement of the collections, and related collections, as well as a few images.

Forty journals now available online through Project Muse

Project Muse, an electronic scholarly publishing venture of the Johns Hopkins University Press (JHUP), now offers 40 academic journal titles on the Web. The project, located at http: //muse.jhu.edu/, recently added Postmodern Culture, America’s first peer-reviewed electronic humanities journal, and launched Theory & Event, another electronic-only title.

JHUP and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library launched Project Muse in 1995 to enable worldwide networked access by subscription to the full text of the press’ scholarly journals, and to make works of scholarship more widely available within the individual university communities by using online technology to produce affordable electronic journals. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Project Muse offers materials relevant to the core curricula in major subject areas and is one of very few electronic journal resources in the humanities.

“While our initial schedule called for us to reach the 40-journal milestone at the end of 1997, we accelerated our production to begin the year with all forty journals online,” explained Ellen Sauer, project manager. “By offering a comprehensive database for a full calendar year while we still have grant assistance, we will have the opportunity to observe market reaction to our model, gather usage statistics, and make informed projections regarding the future potential of electronic publishing at the Johns Hopkins University Press.”

More than 260 campuses and institutions have subscribed to the full Project Muse database, including the entire Virginia state academic library system, the University of California system, the California State Universities, and the Library of Congress.

A Project Muse institutional subscription offers access to the full text of all 40 JHUP journals, along with advanced search functions that allow for searching by author, title, or keyword; in the tables of contents or full text of the journals; and across all the journals in Muse or just selected titles. When an academic library subscribes to Project Muse, access is provided to the entire campus through any computer connected to the campus network. From within the Internet domain of the subscribing campus, users are granted unlimited Web access to journal articles on the Muse file server. Substantial discounts on the $2,500 subscription list price are available. Sample issues can be found at http://muse.jhu.edu/ or contact Melanie Vandermark at melanie@jhupress.jhu.edu for additional information.

UC-lrvine adopts express checkout

The University of California at Irvine (UCI) Libraries inaugurated an express self-checkout system in the Main and Science Libraries in February. UCI staff report being pleased with this new technology developed by 3-M because it frees them from the more routine tasks of checking out books. The system also enhances security and helps prevent loss of materials because it links ANTPAC, the libraries’ existing circulation system, with the security system. The Express Checkout stations guide users through each step of the transaction with on-screen prompts and graphics, that fully explain the process, eliminating the need for assistance. Users place their active UCI library card on the unit and enter their ANTPAC Personal Identification Number. The system then accesses the user’s circulation records, validates the library card in ANTPAC, and prompts the user to place the first item to be checked out on the unit. An internal scanner reads the item’s barcode, records the transaction, and prepares the item to be taken out of the library. After the user has completed checking out all the items, Express Checkout prints a transaction record.

DIALOG@CARL features interface for library users

CARL Corporation introduced DIALOG@CARL, a Web-based interface to DIALOG databases available exclusively from CARL Corporation. With DIALOG@CARL, information users can search more than 300 DIALOG databases quickly and easily through the graphical interface of the Web and powerful search capabilities. Prior to the introduction of DIALOG@CARL, the information resources required a familiarity with DIALOG search language to navigate the databases.

Full-text articles are provided from more than 3,0 journals and 100 newspapers with more than 100 million records online.

DIALOG@CARL is available for a flat annual fee beginning at $12,500 per connection for unlimited use of the databases on a per simultaneous user connection basis.

CARL and the Research Libraries Group (RLG) have entered a partnership to expand DIALOG@CARL to include RLG’s CitaDel databases and the RLIN Bibliographic Database. The CitaDel files are a set of international article-citation files that index and abstract journals, conference proceedings, books, and dissertations. The RLIN Bibliographic Database is a combined catalog created by more than 250 university libraries, museums, and archives containing more than 27 million titles.

EBSCO and Faxon offer new services

Under separate agreements, both the Faxon Company and EBSCO Information Services will offer expanded subscription services for electronic journals available via the new OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online service. Under the agreements, a library will be able to subscribe through either EBSCO or Faxon to a journal or a group of journals available via Electronic Collections Online, just as it would a print journal. Account information will be relayed by Faxon or EBSCO to OCLC, which will provide the library with access to the journal through the Electronic Collections Online account. Through a single Web interface the library will have access to full text from the journals it subscribes to as well as citations from all available journals.

EBSCO will also provide its customers with a Web interface to its EBSCOnet databases of more than 256,000 serial titles available in various formats from more than 49,000 publishers worldwide. EBSCO currently has approximately 1,0 online journals.

Mentor program ready for ALA attendees in San Francisco

ALA’s New Members Round Table is sponsoring a mentor program to help new conference attendees make the most of the opportunities to learn, network, and participate at ALA’s conference. If you would like to feel more comfortable attending conference or if you are a seasoned conferencegoer who would like to share your knowledge and experience by helping someone negotiate a path among the many meetings, programs, exhibits, and acronyms, the Conference Mentor Program wants to hear from you. Mentors should plan to meet with mentees at least once during the conference, but more contact is encouraged.

The Historic New Orleans Collection’s Louisiana photographs, manuscripts and slides are available at the Williams Research Center which includes this lovely reading room.

The participation form is available on the Web at http://128.118.90.101/ala-nmrt/ mntrprg.html, or by contacting Emerita Cuesta, assistant dean of access services, Axinn Library, 123 Hofstra University, Hempstead, NY 11550-1090; (516) 463-5076.

OCLC and JSTOR to cooperate in journal storage and access

JSTOR, a nonprofit organization providing electronic access to backfiles of periodicals, and OCLC have agreed to cooperate to help the scholarly community take full advantage of technologies in disseminating academic research. As a first step, JSTOR and OCLC will work together to implement a disaster recovery plan for the JSTOR database which presently contains more than one million pages of archival journal literature.

ACRL “Guidelines for the Preparation of Policies on Library Access” on Web

ACRL’s “Guidelines for the Preparation of Policies on Library Access,” prepared by ACRL’s Access Policies Guidelines Task Force, are now on ACRL’s homepage at http://www.ala.org/ acrl.html (under Publications, select Standards and Guidelines). The guidelines were approved at the 1993 ALA Annual Conference. Members of the task force included: Kathleen Gunning, chair, Peter V. Deekle, Helen B. Josephine, Nancy P. O’Brien, Carolyn Robison, and Natalie Schatz. ACRL’s other standards and guidelines are also available on the Web. ■