ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

News from the Field

Mary Ellen Davis

Univ. of Pittsburgh provides access to Chinese journals

The University of Pittsburgh (UP) Library System, through its East Asian Library, has established a demonstration Gateway Service Center for Chinese Academic Journal Publications to deliver digital copies of Chinese language academic journal publications from six Chinese libraries via the Internet to scholars throughout the United States.

Through this center, patrons and scholars have free and easy access to full-text Chinese language journal articles stored in Chinese libraries, not otherwise available in the United States.

The project is funded by a National Leadership Grant from the Federal Institute for Museum and Library Services. A pilot study was funded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange.

Research libraries in China partnering with the UP in this consortium include Peking, Tsinghua, Fudan, and Shanghai Jiaotong Universities, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the Academia Sinica of Taiwan.

To request a copy of Chinese journal articles or to learn about the service, visit http:// www.library.pitt.edu/gateway/.

Elsevier Science acquires JAI Press/ Ablex Publishing

Elsevier Science Inc. and JAI Press/Ablex Publishing have entered into an agreement whereby JAI Press/Ablex Publishing will be acquired by Elsevier Science. The JAI/Ablex businesses include the JAI journals and serials and the Ablex Publishing journals and books. Barbara Barrett, Global Publisher Social Sciences at Elsevier Science said, “The combination of JAI Press products and services with our journals and electronic services will create a unique integrated service to the social sciences and business and economics communities.”

Join the Friends of ACRL

The Friends of ACRL was created to provide a means for ACRL to take bold steps above and beyond its traditional member programs and services. Rapidly changing demographic, economic, and technological trends are presenting academic libraries and librarians with new challenges and competition that demand immediate solutions. The Friends of ACRL is a response to these “new challenges” and renders a means for academic librarians to give additional support that will enhance and ensure the relevance of our profession.

By becoming a Friend of ACRL, your tax deductible donation (to the extent allowed by law) will help supplement the funding of initiatives that will strengthen and assure the importance of our profession in this time of dramatic change. You can help open new worlds to the academic librarian community and specifically to MLS students, and entry-level and minority academic librarians. You can enrich our profession by supporting the development of cutting-edge seminars and workshops. You can promote excellence within our profession by supporting Best Practices in academic librarianship and libraries. You can support our global outreach to international academic librarians and libraries.

To learn more about Friends of ACRL and its funds, please check out the Web page at http://www.ala.org/acrl/friends. html.

NISO standards and technical reports available online

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has made its standards and technical reports available online on the Web at http://www.niso.org. The online availability of NISO information is the result of an online delivery and copyright license agreement with CSSinfo, of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Under the agreement, CSSinfo will provide the electronic gateway to the NISO Web site to search, order, and download NISO documents.

LSU athletics raise money for libraries

Louisiana State University’s (LSU) second annual “Stampede to the Stadium” run, held on the morning of the first 1998 home football game, raised $22,000 with $11,000 for LSU Libraries and the remainder to other academic projects connected with athletics. A new “Tigers Rock N Roar” benefit concert, a project of an LSU marketing class, generated another $4,000 for the libraries, and two corporate projects featuring BellSouth and Burger King added another $5,000 to the library. The $20,000 will be used to purchase computer workstations for the main library.

John Updike was the featured speaker at a November Celebration of Literary Biography in Columbia, South Carolina, sponsored by the University of South Carolina's Thomas Cooper Library, Gale Research, the university provost's office, Columbia publisher BruccoliClark-Layman, and other university departments. Updike was presented with the Thomas Cooper Medal for Distinction in the Arts and Sciences from the library's support group, The Thomas Cooper Society. The celebration also marked the publication of the 200th volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biograrphy edited in Columbia and published by Gale Research, and introduced the Cooper Library's project to develop an American Literary Biography Depository.

Founder/editor of science journal breaks with publisher

Biologist Michael Rosenzweig is abandoning the thriving scholarly journal he founded 12 years ago because he believes the publisher has made it so expensive that many libraries and colleagues no longer can afford it. He says price increases on his journal averaged almost 19% annually and harmed the scientific community, the same group that supplies articles to the journal for free. With the endorsement of SPARC (Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the University of Arizona professor is staking a considerable amount of his own money on independently launching a new journal focusing on evolution and ecology. Evolutionary Ecology Research (EER), the comparatively low-priced alternative to his original project, begins publication this month. Rosenzweig has pledged to base the journals price on the actual production costs, which he projects will be substantially less than the commercial publisher’s prices. EER will be offered to libraries in 1999 for $290, with Internet access available for an additional $15. ■