LIBRARY NEWS, number 8, October 1999. An electronic newsletter published by The University of Texas at Austin General Libraries to share news about library collections and services.
THIS ISSUE
DIGITAL DISSERTATIONS
Over 2,100 UT-Austin dissertations are available full-text over the web via
UT Library Online. Through the continuing cooperation of over 1,000 American
and European universities, information on 1.5 million dissertations is currently
available in one place, including full-texts of over 100,000 online dissertations
in PDF format.
To access this information, or download a UT dissertation, go to "Dissertation Abstracts" on the UT Library Online Indexes, Abstracts, and Full-Text page. When you search for a recent UT dissertation a "free!" link will be displayed. To retrieve the dissertation click on this link, enter your e-mail address, and then use the assigned PIN to retrieve the free digital copy. Since digital dissertations are rather large, this downloading is best done on an ethernet or cable modem connection. "Dissertation Abstracts" currently receives 55,000 dissertations a year from the country's universities in both digital and paper formats. When they are sent a paper dissertation they convert it to a digital edition. They have been converting UT dissertations to digital format since 1997. Records in UTNetCAT and UTCAT are being updated to include links to the digital copies of all UT dissertations.
E-JOURNAL SURVEY RESULTS
Last May we asked readers of this newsletter for their responses to the question:
If the library had to choose between print journals or e-journals, which would they prefer?
Responses received included
|
• Print- But really we need both. I am a data builder and archivist and am worried about the lack of permanence of digital records, digital ephemera. • E-Journal - It makes it easier and faster to access and it won't be checked out, or lost and I don't have to have money to copy it and I know that the copy will be legible. • *Print - I can sit and read a newspaper in any available chair. Electronic news means I have to be at a terminal, which may already be in use. • Both - I would like to see the library subscribe to whichever is cheaper, in order to spread our available funds over the largest possible number of journals.. • E-Journal - I've been on sabbatical this semester, and have found it unusually helpful to be able to access journals electronically. I see no advantages for the paper version as long as the electronic version is available. I wouldn't mind if the paper journals would quietly "go away", as long as I can access an electronic counterpart. • E-Journal - E-journal retrieval is excellent. Just not available in many of the topics I need. *Print - I would choose paper only because the type of research I tend to do involves access to current and old materials. I am concerned that if UT is forced to cancel periodical subscriptions the back issues will no longer be available. • E- Journal - Although I love sitting down with a "good book," when I'm involved with a research project I want EVERYTHING at my finger tips! And Thank You for asking. |
The results of the survey:
55% prefer electronic journals
34% prefer paper journals
11% wanted the library to buy whichever
was cheapest.
We did not have enough responses to make this result statistically valid, but
the results echo a valid survey we did among the students two years ago. The
readers of this newsletter are 95% faculty.
E-JOURNAL PUBLISHERS
In 1991 there were 26 e-journals; as of the latest count in 1999, there are
8,900. The largest publishers of e-journals are Elsevier with ScienceDirect
with 1100 titles (UT has access to approximately 750), Springer-Verlag with
300, Academic Press IDEAL with 175, and Johns Hopkins Project MUSE with 112.
E-journals from all of these major publishers are currently available on UT
Library Online.
THE WEB: How big is it? How much scholarly information
is publicly available?
4,882,000 web sites
3,649,000 unique web sites, the others are duplicate sites
44% - the number of 1998 web sites that are no longer available in 1999.
2,229,000 - public web sites 1,031,000 - half-finished, meaningless or trivial
web sites
389,000 - web sites that you cannot access without authorization or payment.*
*Statistical information from: http://www.oclc.org/oclc/research/projects/webstats/
HUNDRED MILLION WEB PAGES WITH
SCHOLARLY CONTENT
None of the licensed web resources on UT Library Online are publicly
available over the web. For example, just two of the 200 databases on UT Library
Online: Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe and Dow Jones Interactive, contain approximately
a hundred million pages of information between them, or roughly one third of
the 288,221,000 pages in the entire public web.
Providing access to the millions of pages of scholarly information on UT Library Online requires:
1. Money - Two library web resources added this summer required over a million dollars in System-wide university funds each. Prices are commonly calculated based on the number of faculty and students using the resource. Quality information cost money.
2. Contract - every e-journal and database requires a legal contract between the University and the vendor. This sometimes takes years to negotiate.
3. Staff time - insuring that these resources are available 24 hours a day, requires a staff with both sophisticated technical expertise, and the ability to discuss emergency situations in detail with hundreds of different vendors.
When you use make casual use of one of the web's many search engines, remember
you are searching public web pages, which constitute only a small part of the
universe of available information. The publicly available web does not include
web-based licensed scholarly resources. If you want to separate the wheat from
the chaff, the gold from the dross, or vetted reliable sources from web trivia
- you will want to use the over a hundred million carefully selected, edited,
and vetted pages of web information available from UT Library Online.
PROXY SERVICES
ACCESS FOR LIBRARY WEB RESOURCES:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/proxy.html
On July 1, the General Libraries began offering enhanced off campus access to
UT Library Online databases and electronic journal collections with a proxy
service. With this change, UT Austin students, faculty, and staff are now able
to access these services from off campus regardless of the Internet service
provider used.
Because these web services are only available to UT students, staff and faculty because of library contracts, every user is required to be authorized to use these services during the login process. The new proxy services insure that you can be authorized to use library web services, no matter where you are in the world or what Internet service provider you are using.
NEW FULL-TEXT WEB RESOURCES:
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/indexes/Online.html
Amico (Art Museum Image Consortium)
Provides digital multimedia documentation of art works in museums and includes
the following genres: painting, sculpture, photography, print, drawing, ceramic,
textiles, metalwork, furniture, books and scrolls, architecture, and archeological
finds. Nearly 50,000 works of art are currently represented in this database.
This database is in test during the 1999/2000 school year.
Child Abuse and Neglect (1965 to date)
Provides a bibliographic resource on the maltreatment of children. Includes
citations and abstracts to books, journal articles, final reports from federally-funded
grants, conference papers, unpublished papers, reports on completed on continuing
research, as well as descriptions of service programs and prevention and treatment
strategies.
Discovering Authors
Biographical, bibliographical, and critical information on 1,260 of the most
studied authors from ancient times to the present.
Dow Jones Interactive
A global information resource, providing full text access to over 6,000 top
national and international newspapers (including the Wall Street Journal), newswires,
business journals, general magazines, market research reports, financial analysts
reports and web sites. Comparable in many way to LEXIS-NEXIS Academic Universe.
Electric Library (1987 to date)
Contains over 5 million full-text documents with an archive of up to 12 years.
Provides materials from six separate media types: newspapers and news wires,
periodicals, TV & radio program transcripts, literature and reference books,
photos, and maps.
ENGnetBASE
A compilation of essential engineering information from CRC press corresponding
in part to the printed CRC Handbook of Engineering series.
Evidence Based Medicine Reviews (1991 to date)
Reflects the current practice in medicine to base clinical decisions on accumulated
evidence from the primary medical literature. Provides content from two premier
sources; the" Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews," and "Best Evidence."
Gale's Ready Reference Shelf
Integrates 14 of the most popular reference directories. It contains more than
320,000 listings for associations, research centers, publishers, publications
(ranging from newspapers and newsletters to periodicals and directories), databases,
television and radio stations, and more.
International Index to the Performing Arts (1864 to date)
Covers nearly all aspects of the world of performing art, including current
content from more than 130 international performing arts periodicals and some
full text content.
Nursing Collection II (1996 to date)
Provides full-text access, including all graphics, tables, figures and photographs,
to 15 nursing journals. It complements the Nursing Journal Collection I which
also provides access to 15 nursing journals. Both collections are accessible
from the e-journals page of UT Library Online: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/ejour/
A SAMPLING OF RECENT & ONGOING
DIGITAL LIBRARY PROJECTS
Library computer staff, operating under contract to TexShare, have been providing
a variety of databases to 146 public, private, and community colleges and universities
in the state for several years -- serving scholarly resources 24 hours a day
to over a million students and 43,000 faculty from El Paso to Texarkana.
Texas County Highway Maps: http://txdot.lib.utexas.edu
A joint project of the UT Austin Department of Geography and The General Libraries.
The digitization of the full Texas counties collection was made possible by
a TexShare Access to Local Holdings Grant awarded to The General Libraries in
1998.
TILT: http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu
An information literacy tutorial developed by staff of the General Libraries
Digital Information Literacy Office (DILO), which won national recognition as
a "gentle tutorial which instructs you on finding information on the Internet."
The Robert Runyon Photograph Collection of the South Texas Border Area:
http://runyon.lib.utexas.edu
A collection of over 8,000 items documenting the Lower Rio Grande Valley during
the early 1900s. The digitization and presentation of these materials by the
General Libraries at The University of Texas at Austin were supported by an
award from the Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition.
The source materials for this collection are housed at the Center for American
History at UT.
General Libraries librarians are also working:
• with the Telecommunications Infrastructure
Fund Board, in an attempt to secure funding to bring detailed finding information
about the major scholarly manuscripts and special collections throughout the
state to the web;
• to digitize historic drawings of
San Antonio missions and photographs of Texas vernacular architecture;
• on a grant-funded project studying
web-usability and design;
• on seed projects involving digitization
of several university-related publications and other materials;
• on providing improved web access
to some specific large numeric datasets;
• advising on improved authorization
and proxy schemes for university and college libraries throughout the state;
• and in other words, doing the usual
job of Digital Librarians with a backlog of projects that will take years to
complete, but with benefits that will extend years into the future. Of course,
even our digital librarians, still work with printed books and regularly talk
with scholars about traditional library matters.
NEW WEB-BASED INDEXES
Absees Online (1990 to date)
The American Bibliography of Slavic and East European Studies (ABSEES) covers
North American scholarship on Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet
Union.
Alternative Press Index (1991 to date)
Corresponds to the print index of the same name, providing citations from over
250 alternative, radical, and leftist publications.
Poole's Plus
Corresponds in part to the print Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, 1802-1903,
a pioneer index for periodical literature of the 19th century. Provides indexing
for approximately 479 American and English periodicals.
Women's Resources International (1972 to date)
Provides bibliographic information drawn from a variety of women's studies databases,
covering topics such as feminist theory & history, family planning, law, employment,
literary criticism, racial/ethnic studies and international feminism.
NEW FACULTY
If there are new faculty in your department, please forward them a copy of this
newsletter so they have a chance to subscribe if they desire. Subscription instructions
are at the bottom of this e-mail.
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