July 2007 Archives

Gale released a new search interface and range of new features in Biography Resource Center.

Streamlined navigational elements allow for more direct access to the open Web from the Web sites tab. Category Browse creates a new pathway to biographies on highly notable individuals from ancient to current times. And, results for full-length biographies will be ordered by update date and the Recent Update news icon has been made easier to see, leading users to updated biographies more efficiently.

The enhanced Biography Resource Center will offer:

• A freshened, more contemporary interface


• Category Browse, with biographical profiles in more than 15 categories


• Results lists that display and order full-length biographies by date last updated


• Word counts following citations for individual full-length biographies on results lists


• Renamed reference content tabs for improved clarity and navigation

For more information and to read about other product updates, visit the Gale Product Update Bulletin.

BioOne announced the availability of their new Library Administration Panel. This new feature, developed in response to requests from the library community, allows library administrators to log-on with their pre-existing reporting username and password and customize their subscription by:

• Viewing and editing institutional contact information


• Applying specific branding to your patrons’ view of BioOne (including uploading institutional logos, custom 'This resource brought to you by..." text and relevant hyperlinks)


• Managing institutional authentication by viewing and updating IP range information


• Accessing COUNTER-compliant usage reports without a separate log-in


• Managing your patrons' view of BioOne content by suppressing unsubscribed content


• Contacting BioOne Customer Support with questions or subscription changes and easily accessing "Librarian FAQ"

For more information or a username/password reminder, contact BioOne Senior Support Specialist Susie Thompson.

Each month OVID features databases through their Resource of the Month program. During the month of July, you can try out the Disaster Medicine & Public Health Preparedness journal on OVID Gateway and Social Work Abstracts on SilverPlatter. Visit the OVID website for more information.

MD Anderson Oncology was just added to McGraw-Hill AccessMedicine.

The Librarians website on AccessMedicine has the latest list of titles and urls.

Other recently launched titles:

The Bioterrorism Sourcebook,
Lichtman's Atlas of Hematology
Jawetz, Melnick, & Adelberg's Medical Microbiology
CURRENT Consult Medicine 2007
Practice Guidelines in Primary Care 2007
Poisoning & Drug Overdose 5/e
Pulmonary Physiology, 7/e
CURRENT Rheumatology Diagnosis & Treatment
Clinician's Pocket Reference, 11/e
Greenspan's Basic & Clinical Endocrinology, 8/e

More than 65% of Elsevier Journals increased in impact factor in 2006, with top rankings in 53 categories, according to the 2006 Journal Citation Reports(c). See the Elsevier press release for more information.

MINITEX Library Information Network and Minnesota Department of Education’s State Library Services, our state library agency, are pleased to announce that we have elected to exercise our option to renew the following resources available to Minnesota residents through ELM: Electronic Library for Minnesota:  EBSCO Publishing’s suite of general and scholarly databases aimed primarily at academic, public, and government library users; Gale’s K-12 and Spanish-language electronic resources; OCLC’s WorldCat; and ProQuest’s Newsstand Complete for two additional years (July 1, 2007 – June 30, 2009).  

In addition, we had indicated to the Minnesota higher education committees our desire to add a health and science database to ELM in FY08 with additional funds. We probably will only be able to add one database with the existing additional funding and no final decision yet has been made.  

Resources currently available through ELM:

ELM is available online all the time from school, home, work, or @ your library. Visit www.elm4you.org for access and more information.

Gale has been sending out updates regarding their new PowerSearch interface and cutover the past few weeks. As part of the national migration date to the PowerSearch interface that was scheduled for Tuesday, July 17 at 8pm (EST), four Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM) resources were migrated from the old interface to the new PowerSearch interface:

• Discovering Collection
• Junior Reference Collection
• Professional Collection
• ¡Informe!

The following two ELM resources were not moved to the new interface on July 17: InfoTrac Junior Edition and InfoTrac Student Edition. Kids InfoBits will also retain its graphic interface; so, it will not be migrated to the new interface.

MINITEX will be working with Gale and our Minnesota school media centers and libraries over the next few months for Gale PowerSearch options of InfoTrac Junior Edition and InfoTrac Student Edition. Watch ELM and MINITEX listservs for future news.

So, what's driving the new delivery platform? A super-powered search engine called Gale PowerSearch™ that features innovative cross-searching capabilities! Users can access all the Thomson Gale content in your library's collection by exploring one, several, or all available databases simultaneously.

Visit the Gale website for a guided tour, handouts, and more information are available.

Ulrich’s Serials Analysis System and Ulrichsweb.com will join the Serials Solutions family of e-resource management tools for libraries on August 1, 2007. As a result of this announcement, libraries purchasing new subscriptions to the Ulrich’s online services can take advantage of Serials Solutions’ special MINITEX program discount.

The alignment of Serials Solutions and Ulrich’s will provide libraries and publishers with the broadest and deepest coverage of serials information available anywhere. It also creates opportunities for further interoperability and integration of the Ulrich’s and Serials Solutions’ services, as well as presents opportunities to promote further service development.

For specific questions surrounding the addition of Ulrich’s Serials Analysis System and Ulrichsweb.com to the Serials Solutions service line, download an FAQ. If you are not yet a subscriber to Ulrich's Serials Analysis System and Ulrichsweb.com please review the Ulrich's Serials datasheet or the Ulrich's Web datasheet.

If you have questions about Serials Solutions’ or Ulrich’s services, please email Serials Solutions or to receive a quote for pricing details, contact MINITEX.

FRBR-applied WorldCat Comparison is the newest enhancement to WorldCat Collection Analysis. Individual subscribers now have the option of applying elements of the FRBR algorithm to their WorldCat comparison via the FirstSearch Administrative Module. Applying elements of FRBR groups various editions and formats of the same title together. Requesting a FRBR-applied WorldCat Comparison will not overwrite your existing, non FRBR-applied WorldCat Comparison. It will appear as an additional analysis.

This feature will be available to group subscribers in August.

It’s time to renew the MINITEX group subscription to ACM Digital Library. The subscription period is from September 1, 2007 through August 31, 2008. Renewal notices have been sent to current subscribers; please reply with your confirmation by Monday, July 30.

If you would like to join the group, please contact MINITEX for more information and for pricing.

ProQuest has signed an agreement with Cambridge University Press to offer more than 200 Cambridge Journals titles in selected ProQuest® platform products.

Cambridge University Press titles will be included in many products on the ProQuest platform, including: ABI/INFORM® Complete, History Study Center™, ProQuest® Research Library, ProQuest® Nursing & Allied Health Source, International Index to Black Periodicals, Ethnic NewsWatch, Periodicals Archive Online, International Index to Music Periodicals, Literature Online®, ProQuest ® Discovery, ProQuest® Social Science, ProQuest® Psychology Journals, ProQuest® Agriculture Journals, ProQuest® Science Journals, ProQuest ® Biology Journals, and ProQuest® Computing.

See the ProQuest press release for more information.

ProQuest will be taking a maintenance window to install enhancements to the ProQuest® platform. A twelve (12) hour maintenance window will take place to install these new enhancements. The window will begin Saturday, July 21, 2007, at 10:00 PM EST to Sunday, July 22, 2007 at 10:00 AM EST.

The following products will be unavailable during this window:

• ProQuest interface products, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (traditional and graphical K12 interface), American Periodicals Series
• Third-party databases such as ERIC® PlusText
• ProQuest Archiver™
• eLibrary®, SIRS®, and CultureGrams™
• "Digital Vault" products, including ProQuest Dissertations & Theses and Digital Sanborn Maps

CQ Press is now offering CQ Almanac Online

The almanac, which provides coverage and analysis of U.S. congressional legislation from 1945 to today, is available as one-time purchase with a yearly update fee of $640.

For pricing, please contact MINITEX.

Maricopa County Library District in Arizona came up with the idea of a Dewey-less library after annual surveys of the district’s constituency found that most people came to browse, without a specific title in mind.

Spoiler Warning: it doesn't end well for the decimal points.

Here's the full story fo the NY Times

From the Thomson Gale listserv:

Dear Thomson Gale Subscribers,

In the summer of 2007, Gale will be adding the following new hostnames to our products. These changes should only affect firewalls and proxy servers where configurations require specific hostnames for exception lists.

http://vs.galegroup.com
http://go.galegroup.com
http://auth.go.galegroup.com

Whenever possible, we try to encourage our customers to include everything within *.galegroup.com when configuring proxy/firewall exception lists. If you are already using *.galegroup.com in your exception list, then you can ignore this email message.

A complete list of names and IP addresses can also be referenced at the following web address:
http://support.gale.com/article.asp?article=1164&p=10

Best Regards,
Thomson Gale Technical Support
Gale.TechnicalSupport@thomson.com
800-877-4253 (Option 4)

For additional questions or comments contact MINITEX.

Effective June 30, EBSCO changed their domain name to ebscohost (from epnet).

From the EBSCO listserv:

Greetings,

As previously announced in our email communications, and in the Top Story on EBSCO’s Support Site, The EBSCO Publishing domain change is now in effect. EBSCO’s automatic redirect of search.epnet.com (etc.) will end on Saturday, June 30, 2007.

This domain change was concurrent with expanding our data center capacity, and will allow us to provide improved online service.

Please take a moment to ensure that you have made all necessary changes to your EBSCO URL’s to accommodate a smooth transition to the new domain.

PROXY SERVER INSTRUCTIONS: Proxy users MUST add the *.ebscohost.com domain to their proxy configurations in order to ensure uninterrupted access to EBSCOhost. To view a typical configuration example, please see this FAQ:

How will the new EBSCOhost domain changes affect my EZproxy config file?

Here is a complete list of URLs grouped by product that you should add to your list of exceptions as appropriate.

For a list of general questions and answers about this change, please see this FAQ.

Additionally, as the hosting needs of this service continue to increase, it is necessary to expand addressable IP space. Therefore, customers who have a firewall that allows specific IP ranges are asked to add this new IP address block (72.164.152.1-254), and any hosts on ebscohost.com to their allowable ranges, to avoid any blockage of users' access to EBSCOhost products. For assistance with firewall exceptions, please see this FAQ.

For assistance with the domain change or IP address range expansion, please contact EBSCO's Technical Support Department by calling (800) 758-5995, or sending an inquiry via our Ask Us form.

For additional questions or comments contact MINITEX.

Project Muse has announced 2008 pricing and a preliminary list of new titles.

Should you have questions, please contact MINITEX.