LIBRARY NEWS, number 3, October 1998. An electronic newsletter published by The University of Texas at Austin General Libraries to share news about library collections and services.
NEW ELECTRONIC JOURNALS ON THE LIBRARY WEB SITE (UT LIBRARY ONLINE)
Academic Press International Digital Electronic Access Library (IDEAL):
Provides full-text access to 174 scholarly journals published by Academic
Press. Access to these journals was arranged by a consortium of UT System
libraries under the auspices of the UT System Digital Library
(http://www.lib.utsystem.edu/). Links to the individual journals published by Academic Press are being added to the UT Library Online Electronic Journals page (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ejour/) and to UTCAT and UTNetCAT.
ACM Digital Library:
Association for Computing Machinery's digital resource of bibliographic
information, citations, proceedings, and full-text articles. The
association's goal is to keep all of its journals, magazines, and
proceedings up-to-date and available back to 1991.
American Meteorological Society Journals:
Provides full-text access to 9 important meteorological journals.
Nursing Journal Collection:
Provides full-text access, including all graphics, tables, figures and
photographs, to 14 key nursing journals.
Among the most frequently used electronic journals on the library's web site in recent months (for which statistics are available) are: American Journal of Mathematics, American Economic Review, Econometrica, Ecology, The American Historical Review, Journal of Democracy, Reviews in American History, American Political Science Review, The Yale Journal of Criticism, American Sociological Review, Demography, Modernism/Modernity, World Politics, Journal of Political Economy, Annual Review of Sociology, The William and Mary Quarterly, and the Journal of Asian Studies.
THE GENERAL LIBRARIES E-JOURNAL STRATEGY
The library currently subscribes to over 1,000 scholarly electronic
journals. The library acquisitions strategy is one of fiscally conservative
experimentation. For more information on the Library's e-journal strategy
see http://www.lib.utexas.edu/admin/cird/policies/subjects/ejournalstrategy.html.
NEW SCHOLARLY DATABASES
A number of new scholarly web databases have been added to UT Library
Online in the last few months. These are listed alphabetically, with
descriptions, at the bottom of this newsletter. Among the more notable are:
*Academic Universe - A user-friendly web version of LEXIS-NEXIS, the University's most popular database.
*Congressional Universe - A comprehensive web resource of federal legislation, regulations, and related materials from Congressional Information Service, Inc.
*EI Village - Industry, research, scholarly, and business information pertaining to engineering and related fields.
*HarpWeek - Full-text and images from America's leading weekly of the Civil War era.
*Past Masters - The world's largest full-text philosophy database.
THE GENERAL LIBRARIES COLLECTING APPROACH TO ELECTRONIC DATABASES
Most of the library's electronic databases consist of standard scholarly
resources that have migrated over the years from print to CD-ROM and then
from CD-ROM to the web. The library has been fortunate to be able to add
these databases at little additional cost, simply by keeping up with the
times and converting our subscriptions to include the newer formats
whenever the financial terms were favorable.
Databases are acquired as a result of faculty and student requests, though budgetary, legal, and technical issues also play a large part in the acquisition deliberations. The library is currently attempting to acquire the major scholarly database for each of the University's academic subject areas. We are also attempting to acquire electronic full-text in all University subject areas (e-journals, reference resources, dictionaries, encyclopedias, classic texts, etc.) both to supplement the existing printed research and teaching resources held in the library, and to make it possible for students and faculty to conduct basic library research from their home or office computers.
The library has leveraged its available funds through consortia purchases with other libraries in the UT System, across Texas, and throughout the country; and by purchasing discounted packages of database and electronic journal groups. These efforts have enabled the library to provide online access to millions of pages of scholarly material that previously required physical visits to the library, or the use of inter-library loan.
BERKELEY, STANFORD, AND TEXAS SHARING LIBRARY RESOURCES
The Research Library Cooperative Program (RLCP) makes the library resources
of the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, and the
University of Texas at Austin available to scholars from each of these
institutions. For University of Texas scholars this means access to the
additional ten million volumes that reside in two of the nation's premier
research libraries. For information on how to participate see
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/about/news/rlcp.html.
In the first phase of this program, the circulating collections of the participating libraries are available for loan to program participants through on-site visits or inter-library loan. In another phase collection specialists and bibliographers at the three libraries are exploring shared purchase agreements to concentrate acquisition efforts in focused areas. The first part of this phase involves Latin American collections. The program will also seek to add other institutional partners, particularly in Latin America, to join in cooperative programs and digitizing projects.
MAINTAINING A COLLECTION BALANCE AND SPECIAL REGENTS FUNDING
The General Libraries attempts to maintain an appropriate balance among
both the subjects and formats in the collection. Libraries at large
research universities generally spend 35% of their funds on monographs
(books and other one-time purchases) and 65% on serials (journals and
continuing obligations), with 7-10% of the serial figures being composed of
electronic information.
The General Libraries is right in the middle of these elite universities in its spending on electronic information, but where it differs is that it currently spends approximately 72% of its funds on serials (more than our peers) and 25% on monographs (less than our peers). Next fiscal year the library estimates that it could spend between 81 and 83% of its budget on serials and as little as 15-17% on monographs. The causes of this worrisome estimate are the continuing high inflation rates experienced by print journals and a lower budget for the purchase of library materials than that of our peer institutions.
The University's librarians have been concerned about the funds available for the purchase of books and related monographic research materials for some time. In 1997 the Board of Regents responded to these concerns by authorizing a million dollars of Permanent University Fund bond proceeds to be used for Academic Library Collection Enhancement at UT-Austin. The Regents asked that these materials be chosen in conjunction with the other component institutions in the University of Texas System so that other System schools could benefit from these materials by their accessibility through our several resource-sharing programs.
As part of this collection-building process, a consulting vendor identified 42,233 mainstream scholarly books published in the U.S. over the last four years which the library had not been able to purchase. Forty-five librarian subject specialists researched each of these titles, and identified and purchased the 3,576 volumes that were most critical to existing UT-Austin programs. In addition, consultation between librarians and faculty on each System campus resulted in the identification of specific titles necessary for long-term research needs. These titles were then compiled into ballots and voted on by the University System libraries. As a result of these efforts $667,625 of special research sets (books), microfilm research collections, newspaper and journal backfiles, and manuscript collections were identified for addition to the University collections. The component schools also authorized the purchase of the world's largest collection of digital philosophy texts, Past Masters, and the digitization of a portion of the George Sanchez papers held at the Benson Latin American Collection.
While this funding has assisted the library in its effort to maintain a proper balance in the collection, it has not resolved the underlying structural fragility of the current collection balance. More funds are needed for routine acquisitions, and academia's much discussed "journals problem" must be solved.
ELECTRONIC INFORMATION CLASSES
A calendar of the library's popular Electronic Information Classes may be
found at the following web site: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/calendar.
Librarians are also available to talk to classes about how to research and find information in all formats. Call 495-4503 for more information, or contact your librarian.
NEW LIBRARY BIBLIOGRAPHERS
This fall the library has new bibliographers for English Literature,
History, American Studies, Australian Studies, Undergraduate Library
Audio-Visual Resources, and Children's Literature. To contact the library
bibliographer for your department, see the list of bibliographers
maintained at the following web site: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/admin/cird/
or contact a General Libraries Reference Desk for additional information.
RECALL, RENEW, AND DUE-LIST FUNCTIONS ADDED TO UTCAT AND UTNetCAT
Faculty and students can now view a list of items checked out to them,
renew an item, or recall an item checked out to another borrower, through
UTCAT and UTNetCat (the web version of UTCAT). Further information may be
found on both catalogs and on UT Library Online: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/.
Follow the link on the left-hand side of the main page to "news" and read the "September 1998" news. If you are looking for this information after September, it may be found via the "news archive" link at the bottom of the "news" page.
ALPHABETICAL LIST AND DESCRIPTIONS OF THE LIBRARY'S NEW SCHOLARLY DATABASES
ACADEMIC UNIVERSE - The web version of LEXIS-NEXIS, contains full-text
information from thousands of newspapers, magazines, journals, broadcast
transcripts, and other documents. UT was part of the nationwide consortia
of 700 university libraries that negotiated this contract. LEXIS-NEXIS has
been among the most popular databases on campus for many years, with
students and faculty logging in 275,000 times a year to the previous telnet
version.
ARCHIVES USA - An electronic database of primary archival literature integrating three major information resources: DAMRUS (Directory of Archives and Manuscript Repositories in the United States), NUCMC (National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections) and NIDS (National Inventory of Documentary Sources in the United States).
ATLA RELIGION INDEX - The American Theological Library Association's comprehensive index to religious, theological and related scholarship covering all major world religions in over 1,380 journal titles internationally, as well as 13,000 multi-authored books and reviews; updated semiannually. There are a total of over 847,000 citations. Coverage is comprehensive back to 1949, and includes earlier data for the Methodist Reviews Index.
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ASIAN STUDIES - Contains records on all subjects (especially humanities and social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide. Includes citations to Western-language periodical articles, individually authored monographs (before 1992), chapters in edited volumes, conference proceedings, anthologies, and Festschriften, etc. Coverage is from 1971 to the present.
BIOGRAPHY INDEX - Coverage includes more than 2,700 English-language periodicals and more than 1,800 books. Includes autobiographies, bibliographies, biographies, critical studies, fiction and drama, pictorial works, poetry, juvenile literature, obituaries, journals, collections of letters, book reviews, and interviews.
BOOK REVIEW DIGEST - Provides indexing and partial full-text of book reviews published in approximately 100 periodicals from the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain, covering over 7,000 adult and children's books each year. Includes English-language fiction and nonfiction.
CONGRESSIONAL UNIVERSE - Provides access to information from and about the U.S. Congress. Includes legislation and public policy, statistical information including projections and analyses, legislative history, federal regulations, voting and financial records for individual members as well as hot topics currently being considered in Congress, congressional publications, links to other web sites with useful congressional information, and committee memberships.
CONTENTS FIRST - Contains the complete table of contents pages from individual issues of nearly 13,000 journals in science, technology, medicine, social science, business, the humanities, and popular culture. Most of these journals are published in English, but journals in other languages are also included. Similar to the "SwetScan" database also on UT Library Online, which covers another 14,000 journals.
DISSERTATION ABSTRACTS - Contains more than 1.5 million entries representing the work of authors from over 1,000 North American and European universities. All subject areas are covered. More than 47,000 new dissertations and 12,000 new theses are added to the database each year. Citations for dissertations published from 1980 forward include 350-word abstracts, and citations for master's theses from 1988 forward include 150-word abstracts.
EDUCATION ABSTRACTS - Covers more than 400 English-language periodicals, monographs and yearbooks published in the U.S. and elsewhere in the field of education. Includes articles, interviews, selected editorials, and letters to the editor, plus reviews of books, educational films, and software.
EI VILLAGE - A searchable, browsable collection of global information for technical professionals, students, and researchers in engineering and related fields. It includes industry and research information, business and financial data, news and newspapers, and career and education information.
ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA - A fully searchable and browsable collection of authoritative references taken from the Encyclopedia Americana database, a 25,000,000-word repository of text and images maintained by the encyclopedia's editorial staff.
FASTDOC - Gives you quick and easy access to records with full-text articles available online. It is updated weekly. The costs of full-text articles from this service are NOT subsidized by the library. Many of these full-text articles are available via the library's other online databases, e-journals, or through Inter-library Services.
HARPWEEK - "HarpWeek: The Civil War Era" provides an electronic presentation of all 7,500 heavily illustrated pages of Harper's Weekly from 1857 - 1865, searchable by several indexes either singly or in combination. These indexes have been carefully formulated to be user-friendly in locating information quickly and concisely, with headings that will be immediately relevant. This database is currently on the UT Library Online "indexes and abstracts test pages" until the proper printing software can be installed on library equipment.
LION - Literature Online is a fully searchable library of over 300,000 full-text works of English and American literature chosen by an academic advisory board. It includes several literary databases of poetry, plays and fiction as well as general reference works and links to other Internet sites.
MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEETS - Material Safety Data Sheets contain information on the safe handling, toxicology, and disposal of approximately 60,000 chemical compounds, mixtures, biochemicals, and materials.
NETFIRST - An authoritative database of Internet-accessible resources, and a practical, easy-to-use tool for Internet exploration and discovery prepared by librarians. NetFirst is continuously updated, and records are regularly verified to make sure the item is still available on the Internet. Each item is cataloged with a summary, Library of Congress subject headings, and Dewey classification numbers.
OCLC UNION LIST OF PERIODICALS - Includes more than 7.4 million listings linked to over 750,000 bibliographic records in OCLC WorldCat. The listings provide local holdings information so users can search for locations of periodicals in their own and other libraries. This database of periodical title listings is updated twice a year.
PAPERS FIRST - Contains citations to papers presented at worldwide meetings, conferences, expositions, workshops, congresses, and symposia. It covers published information received by the British Library Document Supply Center and is updated biweekly. Many of these papers are available through Inter-library Services, or by payment to The British Library using the FirstSearch Online Ordering Service.
PAST MASTERS - The largest collection of electronic texts in philosophy in the world. Currently access is provided to the following nine databases: The Complete Works of Aristotle, British Philosophy 1600-1900, The Complete Works and Selected Correspondence of David Hume, The Philosophical Works and Selected Correspondence of John Locke, Nietzsches Werke: Historich-kritische Ausgabe, The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Political Philosophy: Machiavelli to Mill, The Continental Rationalists: Descartes, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Benedict de Spinoza, and The Works of George Santayana.
PERIODICAL CONTENTS INDEX (PCI Web) - Indexes over eight million articles in 2,006 journals from approximately 1770 to 1990-91. The scope is international, including journals in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and other Western languages.
POLICY FILE - An electronic database indexing research and publication abstracts in the field of public policy research and analysis. Includes public policy think tanks, university research programs, research organizations and publishers. Where available, access to home pages, electronic mail addresses and full-text are made available within individual abstracts.
PROCEEDINGS FIRST - Provides tables of contents of papers presented at conferences worldwide. Each record contains a list of the papers presented at each conference. Like its companion, PapersFirst, ProceedingsFirst provides access to The British Library Document Supply Centre's vast collection of conference proceedings and is updated on a biweekly basis. Many of these papers are available through Inter-library Services, or by payment to The British Library using the FirstSearch Online Ordering Service.
SCIPIO - Consists of records for auction sales catalogs from all major North American and European auction houses as well as important private sales dating from 1599 to currently scheduled auctions that have not yet been held. Records contain information on dates and places of sale, catalog title, the auction house, sellers, institutional holdings, and other information.
WORLD ALMANAC - This full-text database includes information from four almanacs: The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1997, The World Almanac of the U.S.A., The World Almanac of U.S. Politics, and The World Almanac for Kids; and is updated annually.
LIBRARY NEWS is published by the General Libraries on an occasional basis and distributed via 13 separate mailing lists to the faculty in each of the colleges at the University of Texas at Austin.
More complete news items about the library may be found on the library web site (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/) under "News."
For more information about "Library News: the electronic newsletter of the General Libraries," see the Library News Archives.
To subscribe or unsubscribe to one of these 13 mailing lists, send a message with the name of the list appropriate for your college to the campus listprocessor. Instructions are below.
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