ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

NC State happy with JSTOR backfiles

North Carolina State University Libraries is a charter member of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization that has digitized the entire backfiles of core scholarly journal literature and developed an easy-to-use, browsable, searchable, and retrievable system for accessing and using them. Currently offering or digitizing 53 U.S. journal titles in the humanities and social sciences, JSTOR’s mission is to take advantage of new information technologies to help solve many of the pressing problems in scholarly publishing now facing the user community, publishers, and research libraries.

Susan K. Nutter, NC State’s vice-provost and director of libraries, said, “This is an exciting new enterprise that we were able to join thanks to the tuition increase funding. At the charter discount rates, NCSU Libraries can purchase an extensive database at a reasonable fee. With JSTOR, the Libraries can keep all the journal backfiles that it has paid for, unlike the common commercial practice of a database reverting to the vendor if a subscription is dropped.

“Also, participating publishers must agree to leave all their digitized backfiles in the JSTOR archive, even if they decide not to stay with the project. This arrangement finally gives libraries the assurance we need that the archive will be a permanent resource, and it allows us to make management decisions about the longterm preservation and storage of print journals accordingly.”

Students and scholars gain flexibility of desktop access to information with all issues available around the clock. Duncan Holthausen, professor of economics at NCSU, said, “It’s a wonderful development for scholarship, like having a complete collection of all issues of the American Economic Review … right in my office. … We have lost touch with some of the best research done years ago because it isn’t easily available and often isn’t referenced in electronic databases. Perhaps JSTOR will help to revive interest in some of this work which has fallen out of favor with today’s mathematically inclined economists.”

OhioLINK adds new members

Capital University and Mount Vernon Nazarene College, two central Ohio private colleges, are new additions to the Ohio Library and Information Network (OhioLINK). They are among 11 private liberal arts colleges that currently participate in OhioLINK, bringing the consortium’s total to 52 institutions of higher education. Patrons now have access to a combined catalog of 23.3 million books, journals, and other items and these items can be requested directly by the patrons from their home, office, dormitory, or library. For more information about OhioLINK, visit the Web site at http://www.ohiolink.edu.

Frick Art Library opens OPAC

The Frick Art Reference Library, an important center for art historical research, officially opened its online public access catalog, known as FRESCO (Frick Research Catalog Online). Since 1986 the library has cataloged its book collection on RLIN and all of those entries—approximately 20% of its book collection—are available online to readers who visit the library. The entries are also available through the Internet by telnetting to fresco.frick.org. A Web site is under development. The library also plans a retrospective conversion of the remaining catalogs and indexes of its vast text and image resources which include historical photo archive and auction sales catalog collections.

The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation provided much of the funding needed for FRESCO.

CHOICEnames 1996 Outstanding Academic Books

The January 1997 issue of CHOICE featured its list of Outstanding Academic Books (OAB) of 1996, selected by CHOICE editors from more than 6,000 works reviewed in the magazine during the previous year.

Since 1962 CHOICE has published reviews of scholarly titles as an aid to those librarians who build collections in undergraduate libraries. Titles are selected based on excellence in scholarship, relevance, and originality in serving the needs of undergraduate scholars. The more than 600 reviews each month are classified in more than 50 disciplines and subsections— humanities, social and behavioral sciences, science, and technology.

CHOICES3,000 reviewers are teaching faculty and librarians at undergraduate institutions across the U.S. and Canada. Reviews carry weight in the academic library community because of CHOICES commitment to excellent scholarship and timely evaluation of works.

For a copy of the booklet listing the 600 OAB titles please call or write Steven Conforti,

CHOICE, 100 Riverview Center, Middletown, CT 06457, (860) 347-6933 ext. 33, or SConforti@ala-choice.org. The cost is $3.00 plus $1.00 postage.

Books-in-Reveal announced

The UnCover Company and Academic Book Center (AcBC) are offering “Books-in-Reveal,” an enhancement to Reveal, the electronic alerting service from UnCover that allows users to stay current on the latest periodical literature published. Reveal subscribers will now receive weekly announcements of new books published in their fields of interest.

The Reveal service automatically e-mails subscribers the table of contents from selected journals whenever the new issue is entered into the UnCover database, which typically coincides with the arrival of the paper copy at local libraries and newsstands. The service also alerts users to the latest articles published on their topics of interest. Through the partnership between UnCover and AcBC these capabilities were extended to books at no additional cost to subscribers. AcBC will provide UnCover with bibliographic citation information for 600 new titles handled in its approval plan each week. The approval plan reviews more than 36,000 titles from more than 1,200 publishers each year and automatically ships appropriate titles to participating libraries within 10 days of publication. UnCover will then match these titles against the search strategies that Reveal users have stored for new article alerting and e-mail notices for new book titles matching those search strategies will be sent to users. Reveal subscribers can order the book by sending reply e-mail; UnCover will forward the order to AcBC for fulfillment.

E-mail now available on InfoTrac SearchBank

Information Access Company (IAC) has added e-mail retrieval and delivery to its InfoTrac SearchBank Web interface.

The enhancement allows researchers to electronically transmit the text of articles or citations to any valid e-mail address and frees them from reliances on printed documents and the availability of a printer.

Ethelene Whitmire

Winner of the ACRL/Blackwell’s Student Paper Award announced

To encourage leadership in research, ACRL and Blackwell’s offered a $350 cash prize award and free conference registration for a student whose research paper was selected for presentation at the ACRL 8th National Conference in April. The Contributed Papers Committee is pleased to announce Ethelene Whitmire of the University of Michigan is the winner of this award. Whitmire’s paper, “The Campus Environment for African-American and White Students: Impact on Academic Library Experience,” will be presented at the conference in Nashville on Saturday, April 13, 2:00–3:00 p.m. The paper describes a research project which analyzed campus influences such as interactions with peers, faculty, and administrators on academic library experiences. Whitmire is a doctoral student studying higher education. She received her MLS from Rutgers in 1993.

Foundation Center launches Web Electronic Reference Desk

The Foundation Center has launched an Electronic Reference Desk at its Web site, on which a librarian is available to answer questions submitted via e-mail about foundations, nonprofit resources, corporate giving, and the best use of the center’s services and resources. Currently, the Electronic Reference Desk has three parts: responses to frequently asked questions (FAQs), the Online Librarian, and a directory of links to other nonprofit sites of interest. The FAQs include responses to common questions such as “Where do I begin my foundation/grants research?” and “How do I find out about grants for my subject area or field of interest?”

Visit the Web site at http://fdncenter.org or e-mail a message to the online librarian at library@fdncenter.org. Most queries are answered within two business days.

RLG databases now available on Web

The Research Libraries Group (RLG) opened a new searching option to its RLIN bibliographic database, CitaDel citation files, and English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC). Eureka, RLG’s user-friendly searching interface, now makes all of them available through Web browsers.

Patricia Renfro, director of public services for the University of Pennsylvania, welcomed the new service: “In the last two to three years, networks campuswide and worldwide have become a major change agent in higher education—in how people learn, teach, and interact. Equipped with the necessary connectivity and ease of use, users now are challenging their librarians to supply them with good information through a well-organized, smart interface, around the clock. RLG’s new Web version of Eureka will help us to do just that.”

For more information about Eureka on the Web, including actual demonstration search sessions, visit www.rlg.org/eurekaweb.html. To learn about Eureka search accounts for individuals, departments, or campuswide use contact RLG at bl.sal@rlg.org or call (800) 537-RLIN, option 3.

Call for presentations for off-campus library services

Presentation proposals are sought for the 8th Off-Campus Library Services Conference sponsored by Central Michigan University (CMU) Libraries and CMU’s Extended Degree Programs. The conference, to be held April 22–24, 1998, will be in Providence, Rhode Island. Proposals are sought for papers, panels, poster sessions, and forums on topics such as administration, promotion, outcomes, staffing, etc. The call for presentations is available from Connie Hildebrand, Park Library 313, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI 48859; e-mail connie.hildebrand@cmich.edu. Proposals submitted by March 15, 1997, will receive first consideration.

SALALM and WILU to meet in May

The 42nd annual Seminar on the Acquisitions of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM) will be held May 17–21, 1997, in Rockville, Maryland. The theme of the conference is “Religion and Latin America in the 21st Century: Libraries Reacting to Social Change.” Registration information is available from Terry C. Peet, SALALM XLII, 4910 Herkimer St., Annandale, VA 22003-5138.

The 26th Annual Workshop on Instruction in Library Use will be held May 14–16, 1997, at the University of Montreal. The theme of the workshop is “Gateways to the Information World.” Program details and registration information may be found at http://brise.ere. umontreal.ca/~bullj/wilu97 or e-mail: robertg@ ere.umontreal.ca; phone: (514) 343-6070.

“Reference Sources for Rare Books” course offered

The Indiana University Division of Continuing Studies and the Lilly Library will sponsor a week-long course, “Reference Sources for Rare Books,” May 12–16, 1997. Course participants will be given an overview of general sources and a detailed discussion of the principal works in specific fields. Registration information is available from Jane Clay at (812) 855-6329; e-mail: jclay@indiana.edu; Web: http:// www.indiana.edu/~scs/bookarts.html.

New systems installed

Sirsi Corporation has licensed its UNICORN system to the following institutions: Victor Valley College in California, Imperial Valley College in Southeast California, and the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore.

WESS special election results in

Heleni Pedersoli, bibliographer, University of Maryland, was elected vice-chair/chair-elect of ACRL’s Western European Studies Section (WESS). A special election was held to fill a vacancy caused by a resignation. Pedersoli’s term begins immediately. ■