January 2011 Archives

Minitex is now offering Mango Languages. You can trial this language learning program now through February 28, 2011, at http://libraries.mangolanguages.com/minitex-consortium/try/a393f8170. Password: 15Andersen

Please contact cpers@minitex.umn.edu for more information and pricing.

from ProQuest

Dear Colleague,

I'm writing to update you on the all-new ProQuest platform.

We have heard from you that you wanted to preview the platform prior to its live debut with users and to be in control of your own migration date. Previews and early migrations are giving us a wealth of direct feedback that's enabling us to focus on important refinements to the platform... refinements that will allow this important initiative to meet your high standards for performance, and ours.

Many libraries have already successfully migrated to the new platform. At the same time, some items have arisen that may or may not affect you. If you are still in the planning stage, I encourage you to schedule your migration when the products and features most important to your library are fully ready. In the weeks ahead, I'll be updating you on the completion of:

• MLA International Bibliography, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, International Bibliography of Art (IBA), and ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times with Index
• One Click® for Illumina databases. If your institution does not depend on One Click®, you can use a link resolver to link to full-text resources now and can migrate to the new platform at any time. For your reference, a list of Illumina databases is archived at http://www.proquest.com/go/dbsupported
• Further auto-redirect solutions for linking into the new platform. If you are an Athens user, please click on this link for more information at http://www.proquest.com/go/athensredirect
• Linking functionality with Ex Libris products. If you subscribe to Ex Libris SFX, Primo and/or MetaLib, please visit http://support.exlibrisgroup.com

If any of these are critical to your library's service, I recommend scheduling your migration after you hear from me.

Try them free at www.hwwilson.com/new/retros

Your faculty and students expect digital access to all materials necessary for their research. Wilson's archival Retrospective Databases provide access to a vast collection of periodicals from peer-reviewed scholarly journals in subject fields as science, business, art, literature, biographies, essays, short stories, and books.

• Applied Science & Technology Retrospective: 1913-1983
• Applied Science & Business Periodicals Retrospective: 1913-1983
• Art Index Retrospective: 1929-1984
• Biography Index Retrospective: 1946-1983
• Book Review Digest Retrospective: 1905-1982 -- Now with links to full-text books online!
• Business Periodicals Index Retrospective:1913-1982
• Education Index Retrospective: 1929-1983
• Essay and General Literature Index Retrospective: 1900-1984 -- Now with links to full-text books online!
• Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective: 1907-1984
• Index to Legal Periodicals Retrospective: 1908-1981
• Library Literature & Information Science Retrospective: 1905-1983
• Readers' Guide Retrospective: 1890-1982
• Short Story Index Retrospective: 1915-1983 -- Now with links to full-text books online!

Contact CPERS to receive your customized quote.

from EBSCO:

EBSCO Publishing has released World Politics Review™ (WPR), a new full-text database on EBSCOhost® providing extensive coverage of international politics and foreign affairs. World Politics Review is updated daily and provides in-depth background material on global issues that are not deeply covered by mainstream media sources. WPR offers articles that synthesize expert opinion from multiple sources presenting unbiased overviews or an alternative analytical approach to global relations topics.

World Politics Review includes more than 3,000 original articles written by a network of more than 400 contributors from around the world--subject-matter experts in journalism, research organizations, academia, government and elsewhere. The resource is used by academic researchers with a serious interest in international relations, foreign affairs, world politics and geostrategy as well as foreign policy professionals working primarily within government, military, academia, intelligence and diplomacy.

World Politics Review is a vital tool for researching foreign policy, international politics and foreign affairs. The resource covers topics of key relevance including:

• Aid and Development
• Crime
• Culture
• Defense and Military
• Domestic Politics
• Economics and Business
• Homeland Security
• Human Rights
• International Law
• Political Theory
• Public Diplomacy and Propaganda
• Terrorism
• U.S. Foreign Policy
• War and Conflict
• Weapons of Mass Destruction

Content from WPR is fully linked to other full-text resources from EBSCO, enabling users to easily access the relevant analysis and match it to other full-text commentary and information. World Politics Review Publisher Hampton Stephens says World Politics Review provides expert geopolitical analysis for a global audience. "World Politics Review is designed to allow users to both closely follow and deeply understand the events, issues and trends that constitute international affairs. We do this by combining the analytical depth of a scholarly journal with a continuous publishing frequency and a variety of content formats. Being able to search WPR content alongside EBSCOhost resources provides additional context for researchers, and is an exciting extension of our capabilities and mission." In addition to access on EBSCOhost, subscribers will have full access to content on the World Politics Review website.

O'Reilly Media (publishers of O'Reilly tech books) presents a Tools of Change webcast on Google eBooks; cost is free:

Google eBooks is a device-agnostic e-commerce platform that helps publishers, authors and retailers reach new, connected readers. Two months since launch, what does Google eBooks mean to you? Test your know-how, refresh your memory and learn the latest about the web reader, apps, retail and reader trends from Google. The fact-filled presentation will be followed by a lively and interactive Q&A session. Register here.

About the Presenters

Abraham Murray is a product manager on Google's Books team. He works on multiple Books products, including Google Editions and Metadata. Prior to Books he worked on Google Maps where he launched the US Voter Info product to answer user questions around [where do I vote] for the 2009 elections.

Chris Palma is Strategic Partner Development Manager for Google, where he is responsible for Google Books partnerships in the Western U.S., India, Australia, and New Zealand. The Google Books Partner Program now has over 30,000 publisher partners world-wide, representing over 2 million full-text books discoverable from the Google index in over 70 international domains.

ProQuest® will be performing infrastructure maintenance on January 29, 2011. A twelve (12) hour maintenance window will be required for this maintenance. The window will take place from Saturday, January 29, 2011, at 22:00 EST to Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 10:00 EST. See below for a more complete list of times and time zones.

The following products will be unavailable during these windows:

• ProQuest platform products, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (traditional and graphical K12 interface), American Periodicals Series
• Chadwyck-Healey products only in North America
• CSA Illumina products such as CSA Technology Research Database, Illustrata: Natural Sciences, and CSA Sociological Abstracts
• Genealogy and local history products including African American Heritage, Ancestry Library Edition, HeritageQuest Online, Historic Map Works Library Edition, ProQuest Obituaries and Digital Sanborn Maps
• K-12 products, including eLibrary and SIRS
• UMI products including ProQuest Digital Microfilm and online dissertation products

from OCLC

Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community, a sequel to the 2005 Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, is now available for print ordering and free download.

Perceptions of Libraries, 2010: Context and Community, a follow-up to the 2005 Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, is now available. The new report provides updated information and new insights into information consumers and their online information habits, preferences and perceptions. Particular attention was paid to how the current economic downturn has affected information-seeking behaviors and how those changes are reflected in the use and perception of libraries.

The OCLC membership report explores:

• Technological and economic shifts since 2005
• Lifestyle changes Americans have made during the recession, including increased use of the library and other online resources
• How a negative change to employment status impacts use and perceptions of the library
• How Americans use online resources and libraries in 2010
• Perceptions of libraries and information resources based on life stage, from teens to college students, to senior Americans.

The membership report is based on U.S. data from an online survey conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of OCLC. OCLC analyzed and summarized the results in order to produce this report.

Download the free report here or order print copies of the report here for a nominal fee to cover the cost of printing and shipping.

Let us know your thoughts, questions and ideas about this publication here.

OCLC and the HathiTrust Digital Library have developed a unique WorldCat Local user interface for discovery of items accessible through the HathiTrust Digital Library. Available at hathitrust.worldcat.org, the WorldCat Local prototype for the HathiTrust Digital Library was designed and implemented by both organizations in close cooperation as a means to further develop a shared digital library infrastructure. The WorldCat Local interface for the HathiTrust Digital Library is based on the WorldCat database, and will run along with the current HathiTrust catalog during the prototype testing period.

As a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, the HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the massive digitized collections of partner institutions. HathiTrust offers libraries a means to archive and provide access to their digital content, whether scanned volumes, special collections, or born-digital materials. The representation of these resources in digital form offers expanded opportunities for innovative use in research, teaching and learning.

From ProQuest:

"ANN ARBOR, Mich., January 6, 2011 - As its content-unifying new search platform rolls out to libraries around the world, ProQuest has acquired acclaimed e-book pioneer ebrary, setting the stage for significant acceleration of the process of serious research. The agreement will marry both companies' inventive, user-centric technologies and add a growing pool of a quarter-million e-books to ProQuest's monumental content offerings."

See the ProQuest press release for more information.

ProQuest® will be performing infrastructure maintenance on January 29, 2011. A twelve (12) hour maintenance window will be required for this maintenance. The window will take place from Saturday, January 29, 2011, at 22:00 EST to Sunday, January 30, 2011 at 10:00 EST. See below for a more complete list of times and time zones.

The following products will be unavailable during these windows:

• ProQuest platform products, ProQuest Historical Newspapers (traditional and graphical K12 interface), American Periodicals Series
• Chadwyck-Healey products only in North America
• CSA Illumina products such as CSA Technology Research Database, Illustrata: Natural Sciences, and CSA Sociological Abstracts
• Genealogy and local history products including African American Heritage, Ancestry Library Edition, HeritageQuest Online, Historic Map Works Library Edition, ProQuest Obituaries and Digital Sanborn Maps
• K-12 products, including eLibrary and SIRS
• UMI products including ProQuest Digital Microfilm and online dissertation products

from H.W. Wilson:

New enhancements to H.W. Wilson's WilsonWeb service include improvements to the WilsonWeb Mobile interface, expansion of the "My WilsonWeb" individual user account functions, increased customization, and more.

Highlights include:

• Record previews. Users can preview individual records without navigating away from the "brief display" search results screen, by mousing over the new "quick view" icon. The pop-up "quick view" includes important fields such as Abstracts, Title, Author, Source, Publication Year, and Subject. The preview vanishes when you mouse away from the icon.
• Zotero compatibility. FireFox users will now be able to use the Zotero pane with their WilsonWeb databases. Zotero is a popular tool that helps users collect, organize, cite and share their research sources.
• Custom background images. Add your own background image to the Search, Browse, and Thesaurus screens: your school crest, a holiday image, a campus view, or whatever suits your fancy. You can also choose images selected by H.W. Wilson--a rotating sequence of colorful backgrounds that changes each time the user logs into WilsonWeb.
• New tools for the "My WilsonWeb" individual user accounts. WilsonWeb users can now access any embedded "widget" added to the WilsonWeb interface from their "My WilsonWeb" individual user accounts. (Formerly, widgets were only visible on the search results screen.) They can also now create folders to organize their "My WilsonWeb" notes, as well as email notes from within "My WilsonWeb."
• ReadSpeaker text-to-speech converter enhancements. WilsonWeb's ReadSpeaker now allows users to highlight sections of text for listening, and regulate the speed of narration. Available on WilsonWeb full-text databases, the ReadSpeaker "text to speech" converter lets users listen to articles as streaming audio, or download as MP3s for playback later. ReadSpeaker usage stats are available in WilsonWeb statistics reports for library administrators.
• WilsonWeb Mobile enhancements. The WilsonWeb Mobile interface--designed for use on smart phones and other devices--now allows libraries to add up to 3 custom links. At the bottom of the search results pages, new search boxes have been added, allowing users to launch new searches without returning to the main search screen. Additionally, Wilson Mobile usage statistics are now available for administrators, and the interface has been adapted to work with Shibboleth Authentication.
• An all-in-one WilsonWeb login screen. Libraries can direct all users to a single, convenient webpage for authentication, whether by user ID and password, patron ID number, barcode number or library card number, or any of the Shibboleth access links (UK Federation, SWITCHaai, InCommon, and EduID.cz).

For more on the WilsonWeb enhancements, including additional news, details and illustrations, visit www.hwwilson.com/enhancements.

Do you have too many FirstSearch pay-per-searches and are wondering what to do with them?

You can email a request to orders@oclc.org. The order department will let you know your remaining per-search balance and give you the option to convert the excess per-search credits to your OCLC/Minitex account

from ProQuest:

Start the New Year in great shape with our popular training sessions on the all-new ProQuest platform.

Our 60-minute webinars are an easy way for you, your staff, and your users to become familiar with, and take advantage of, all that the new platform offers.

Here are just a few of the webinars that are being offered:

• Introduction to the New ProQuest Platform:
  Tuesday, January 25, Thursday, January 27, and Thursday, February 8
• K-12 Introduction to the New ProQuest Platform:
  Friday, February 4
• My Research:
  Wednesday, January 26
• ProQuest Administrator Module:
  Thursday, February 3, and Tuesday, February 8
• Additional Sessions

Once you attend these sessions, we think you'll agree that the ProQuest platform is simply the best search and discovery experience in the industry!

Sign up for a webinar today--and start or continue your training while you get Switched On to the new platform in the weeks ahead.

Be sure to also check out our new demo and the continuously-updated list of databases on the new platform--and share these with your coworkers and users.

from Gale:

Managing your Gale resources has never been easier.

Introducing Gale Admin -- our new Web-based administrative and reporting utility that gives you the ability to easily manage your library's resources. Now you can customize and personalize your product preferences, access your usage statistics and much more!

To find out how you can begin using Gale Admin -- our new and dynamic management tool that replaces IT Config -- request your free credentials today!

from EBSCO:

The vendor ProQuest has recently released a new platform for their ProQuest, CSA Illumina, and selected Chadwyck-Healey products. ProQuest customers are being given the opportunity to switch to this new platform when they choose.

Due to the nature of the "soft" cut-over of customers, over the next few weeks we will be updating the A-to-Z Integrated Knowledge Base with new ProQuest packages which will link to the new interface. As part of this update, the old ProQuest packages will be renamed "ProQuest Legacy..." (ex: ProQuest Legacy Military Collection) to distinguish them from the packages that link to the new platform.

Once you have switched to the new platform through ProQuest, you will need to update your A-to-Z collection to reflect this change by selecting the new packages via the Title Wizard within the A-to-Z Administrator site and deselecting the old ones. Any notes or icons assigned to the old ProQuest packages will need to be reassigned to the new package via the Collection Editor. LinkSource customers will automatically have the new CustomLink assigned when the new ProQuest package is selected through the Title Wizard.

EBSCO will maintain both the old and new ProQuest packages through March 2011. At that time, we will discontinue updating the old packages, leaving them available for customers to use until ProQuest discontinues the old platform.

If you would like assistance updating your EBSCO A-to-Z collection during this transition, please contact EBSCO Customer Satisfaction.

Questions? Contact EBSCO Customer Satisfaction. Phone: (800) 758-5995, option 2 (U.S.A. and Canada), 00-800-3272-6000 (International Toll-Free), +1-978-356-6500, option 6 (International Toll). Support is available 24 hours a day, Monday through Friday. Email: support@ebsco.com.

from OCLC:

In March 2010, OCLC announced that it is transitioning from reselling eContent provided by publishers and other content providers as we increase our focus and investment on enhancing WorldCat and delivering new WorldCat platform services and Web-scale library services. Since then, we have moved forward with this strategy.

The following database changes are scheduled to occur during the next several months:

Access ends December 31, 2010 :

• Alternative Press Index Archive


• Arts & Humanities Search


• Business & Industry


• Business & Management Practices


• Contemporary Women's Issues

Access ends January 31, 2011 :

• AGRICOLA


• Environmental Science & Pollution Management


• MLA International Bibliography


• Philosopher's Index


• RIPM Retrospective Index to Music Periodicals

Access ends February 28, 2011 :

• ABI.INFORM per search


• Alternative Press Index


• Business Dateline per search


• Dissertation Abstracts per search


• GeoRefS


• Newspaper Abstracts per search


• Periodical Abstracts per search


• PsycARTICLES


• PsycBOOKS

Access ends March 31, 2011:

• AGRICOLA

A full summary of OCLC FirstSearch database transition information is available here