Cooperative Purchasing & Electronic Resources Services

from Britannica:

This summer, the next generation of Britannica School Edition -- Britannica School -- will be live for all subscribers at school.eb.com. With this new version, you will find more than just a new look. You'll discover new and effective ways to differentiate instruction and learning, advanced interactive features for students and educators, and easy access to Britannica content, anytime, anywhere, and on any device!

Streamlined Homepage
Choose your learning level with one click! With every search, an easy toggle enables every student to access the same content at their reading level while exploring in an age-appropriate environment. Students will also find easier access to images, videos, magazine articles, primary sources, and more!

New Features
Many new features are now available in Britannica School, including My Britannica and the Lesson Plan Builder. Teachers can create, save, and share interactive activities with other teachers and students. Learning games, animated lessons and study guides offer even more opportunities to connect with the content.

Responsive Design
Enjoy the same viewing experience on a tablet, smartphone, laptop, desktop computer, or any Internet-connected device with a Web browser. Retrieve and explore content anytime and anywhere ... classroom, library, home, or on the go!

Get ready for this valuable resource when you return to school in the Fall! Become a Britannica School expert in just one hour! Please join us for our new webinars specifically designed to introduce you to Britannica School. Find ways to support Common Core and State Standards, locate STEM resources, and find new and exciting ways to research! Simply click on the link below to sign up for a webinar.

We've posted the Spring 2013 Trials of potential vendor/e-resources that CPERS is considering offering:

• INTELECOM
• LEGO Education StoryStarter for Language Arts

We compile this page of trials from suggestions we receive from libraries; products that are of current interest and/or need; and solicitations from vendors. Whether or not we offer these e-resources depends on feedback we receive from our libraries. So, if you have any questions or comments about these e-resources, please contact us.

We're always looking for suggestions on vendors or e-resources that you're interested in or have heard about.

Please send suggestions, comments, and questions to cpers@minitex.umn.edu.

Alexander Street's Music collections offer the most comprehensive set of online music materials to support teaching and research in music and related disciplines. Now, with the new Music Online: Premium package, you can have unlimited subscription access to Alexander Street audio tracks and albums, videos, scores, and reference works. Enjoy 904,835 tracks, 124,091 pages of full-text reference, 26,015 scores (454,376 pages), and 1,312 hours of video--and the numbers continuously grow!

Music Online: Premium includes all the content in these Alexander Street collections:

• Classical Music Library
• Smithsonian Global Sound
• Jazz Music Library
• American Song
• Contemporary World Music
• Classical Scores Library
• Classical Scores Library: Volume II
• Opera in Video
• Dance in Video
• Classical Music in Video
• The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Online
• Classical Music Reference Library
• African American Music Reference

The price of the Music Online: Premium package is discounted up to 50%, compared with the prices of the collections individually. We've added even more attractive options for community colleges, and we've removed any limits on simultatneous usage! If you've subscribed to one or more of our music collections, you can now upgrade to access them all, at a great price. And if you've already purchased perpetual rights to any of the component collections, the price of the Music Online: Premium package will be discounted further. Contact Susan Buczkowski for a trial, pricing, or more information.

from ProQuest

ProQuest is pleased to welcome Ebook Library (EBL) to the family! On May 13, 2013, the agreement announced in January was finalized, completing the acquisition of EBL and significantly expanding our e-book delivery and aggregation capabilities to libraries globally. By combining the complementary strengths of EBL and ebrary, we will create the best possible research experience, connecting e-books with the vast array of other content and services offered by ProQuest. This supports our goal of enabling researchers to seamlessly discover content across multiple formats including books, journals, dissertations, newspapers, and video.

from EBSCO:

EBSCO introduces Civil War Primary Source Documents™, a comprehensive collection of primary source materials chronicling various aspects of the American Civil War. Drawn from the holdings of the New-York Historical Society, the collection captures various accounts of the Civil War as it was experienced on land and sea.

Civil War Primary Source Documents represents both Northern and Southern perspectives. The archive focuses on the War as it was fought from 1861 to 1865 and includes important contextual documents in the crucial years leading up to the War and after the fall of the Confederacy.

The collection is comprised of over 110,000 pages and includes information from over 400 individual collections. The invaluable primary resources include original manuscripts of letters, diaries, administrative records, photographs, illustrations and artifacts. Personal accounts appear in various scrapbook journals and family portraits, and strategic initiatives are evident in maps featuring details of troop movements and local landmarks.

Highlights include letters and first-person accounts from such well-known leaders as Ulysses S. Grant; the papers of David Cronin, a famous soldier and artist; soldiers' diaries chronicling daily life and experiences as prisoners of war; Union Defence Committee records and Confederate Army records.

EBSCO provides access to these materials via its Historical Digital Archives Viewer. The viewer brings content alive and allows users to explore, manipulate, collect, and export content. The unique functionality of the Historical Digital Archives Viewer enables it to reproduce the best aspects of the physical library research experience while incorporating the advances in modern digital technology.

EBSCO has continued to significantly increase the number of resources offered in its collection of digital archives. For more information on the complete collection please go to: http://www.ebscohost.com/archives

Join ProQuest rep Sarah Palmer on Friday, April 19th, to review Statistical Abstracts. Sarah will demonstrate how to browse and search for statistics and cover the Facets and Excel options. The webinar will run about 45 minutes and cover the background of how ProQuest took over the publication of the Statistical Abstract from the Census; product features; and then a live demo. Sarah will look at some serious issues (gun control), some popular issues (same sex marriage) and some silly topics (Sudoku). Sarah encourages attendees to bring questions (don't forget you can trial this resource before the webinar). This webinar will also be recorded.

Webinar access info:

Meeting Number: 711 773 050
Meeting Password: statab

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To join this meeting (Now from mobile devices!)
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1. Go to https://proquestmeetings.webex.com/proquestmeetings/j.php?J=711773050&PW=NNTIyYzRkOTJl
2. If requested, enter your name and email address.
3. If a password is required, enter the meeting password: statab
4. Click "Join".
5. Follow the instructions that appear on your screen.
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Audio conference information
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Call-in toll-free number (US/Canada): 1-877-668-4490
Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-408-792-6300
Global call-in numbers: https://proquestmeetings.webex.com/proquestmeetings/globalcallin.php?serviceType=MC&ED=198164677&tollFree=1
Toll-free dialing restrictions: http://www.webex.com/pdf/tollfree_restrictions.pdf

Access code:711 773 050
http://www.webex.com

from ProQuest

On April 17, 2013 ProQuest is scheduling a very brief network maintenance window in order to update our systems.

A one hour (1) hour maintenance window is needed to install these updates, lasting from 10:00 UTC through 11:00 UTC . See below for a more complete list of times and time zones.

• Eastern Daylight Time: April 17, 2013 at 06:00 AM for one (1) hour
• Brazil Time: April 17, 2013 at 07:00 AM for one (1) hour
• British Summer Time: April 17, 2013 at 11:00 AM for one (1) hour
• Central European Summer Time: April 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM for one (1) hour
• China Standard Time: April 17 2013 at 18:00 for one (1) hour
• Japan Standard Time: April 17, 2013 at 19:00 for one (1) hour
• Australia Eastern Standard Time: April 17, 2013 at 20:00 for one (1) hour
• New Zealand Standard Time: April 17, 2013 at 22:00 for one (1) hour

During this time databases on ProQuest and ProQuest Dialog will not be available.

The Minitex Spring e-resources trials are available for the month of April, and with the trials:

Britannica Image Quest is now available at a special value for you!

Because Minitex provides your institution access to Britannica Online through ELM, you are now eligible for a 40% discount on another of Britannica's most popular online resources, Image Quest. But, you need to act soon because this special offer expires on June 30th, 2013.

Image Quest offers:

• Immediate access to three million rights-cleared educational images from over 50 proprietary sources, including Dorling Kindersley, Getty, The Granger Collection, the National Geographic Society, and Oxford Scientific - all at one safe, advertising-free site;
• Complete citations and metadata for each image, including the source, copyright holder, caption, and related keywords, on one page;
• Ease of use - search, download, print, e-mail, or save images for standards-based lesson plans, assignments, research reports, school Web sites, or newsletters with only a few simple keystrokes.

We encourage you to preview Image Quest to see for yourself what a great value it is, especially at 40% off its regular price. Use the following user name and password for the next 60 days to preview Image Quest at http://quest.eb.com/

User Name: minitex
Password: trial

If you would like a quote, please contact Minitex or John Russell at Britannica.

from EBSCO:

As of August 2013, some changes will be made to Harvard Business Review (HBR) article access for Business Source customers. This change will not affect institutions that have already purchased the expanded rights from Harvard Business Publishing. Further, customers buying a site license will not be impacted.

As you are likely aware, full-text licensing agreements with publishers are subject to change in all databases, and EBSCO is committed to providing our customers with as much advance notice as possible on full-text content changes as often as we possibly can. With that said, we would like to inform you that as of August 1, 2013, all databases containing HBR will experience a change for 500 of the articles. These articles will become read-only, and will be clearly marked as such.

For example, in Business Source Complete, there are currently 12,824 full-text articles from HBR, and 12,324 will continue to have the existing access functionality. If libraries wish to prevent the read-only limitation on these 500 articles, and expand usage rights to all 12,824 HBR articles to include course use, they should contact Harvard Business Publishing for expanded rights. For an upgrade fee, Harvard Business Publishing offers full course use rights for all articles. For pricing information please contact us at permissions@harvardbusiness.org.

We thank you for your understanding, and please don't hesitate to contact us at information@ebscohost.com if you have any questions.

from ProQuest:

ProQuest is streamlining research by enabling ebrary® and ProQuest® content to be discovered within a single search experience. Now, researchers can surface e-books side-by-side with relevant reports, videos, journal and newspaper articles and more in one step. The advance in searching comes via linking technology that enables users to navigate seamlessly from search results to the platform that best supports the content they want to explore.

"Our research shows that e-books are important to both scholars and students, but there has been some frustration in trying to find them," said Kurt Sanford, ProQuest CEO. "We're addressing that barrier in a way that respects the nuances of different formats. E-book content is supported by the ebrary platform, which includes tools designed specifically for e-books and traditional scholarly content is supported by its own set of tools."