Paley Library has purchased the combined LexisNexis Congressional and United States Serial Set research databases. LexisNexis Congressional is the most comprehensive electronic index currently available for United States legislative information. Congressional publications comprise an extremely wide variety of information that reflects the needs and concerns of an evolving nation. They impact virtually every aspect of the curriculum and are particularly important for the Departments or Schools of Business Administration, History, Economics, Law, Political Science, Social Administration, Communications, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Education, Geography and Urban Studies, Journalism, American Studies and, African American studies. The LexisNexis Congressional interface allows users to simultaneously search the Congressional reports and documents that comprise the Serial Set as well as prints, bills, the Congressional Record, selected testimony in hearings before Congress, Public Laws, Statutes at Large, the United States Code Service, the Federal Register, and the National Journal. It also provides information about Congressional Committees, Congressional biographies, recent legislative activities, and public policy issues such as voting records, financial data, and regulatory information. Much of the material is linked to full text. Congressional publications from as early as1789 are available in their entirety as are the text and status of proposed current legislation and recently signed laws. Additional resources offered by LexisNexis Congressional includes a keyword searchable Code of Federal Regulations, and the full text of the Washington Post’s Section A from 1977 to the present. LexisNexis Congressional’s legislative publications online and Paley Library’s collection of legislative publications combine to provide the Paley Library community with a complete set of the official congressional publications. The link to this resource is now available via the library electronic resources web pages. Here’s the A-Z database list. We hope you will find this resource useful. If you have any questions about its content or if you have any difficulty using it, please contact me or one of my colleagues in Reference and Instructional Services at Paley library. —Susan J. Golding

Great News! We now have the Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd edition online as part of the Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Containing over 450 new articles and over 1000 biographical entries, this is an update of the Encyclopedia of Philosophy edited by Edwards nearly 40 years ago. In some cases 1st edition entries have been simply republished, like H.B. Acton’s entry on “Idealism”. In other cases entries have been entirely rewritten and in others the 1st edition entries have been supplemented by additional entries. As an example of the latter, the 1st edition entry on John Dewey remains, but there is a new article entitled “Dewey, John [Addendum]”. Among the many topics covered are African, Islamic, Jewish, Russian, Chinese, and Buddhist philosophies; bioethics and biomedical ethics; art and aesthetics; epistemology; metaphysics; peace and war; social and political philosophy; the Holocaust; feminist thought; and much more. This is a great place to begin your research on individual philosophers or a specific topic area. The articles on individuals usually have bibliographies that include primary and secondary sources. You can do a Basic Search which searches the article record and full-text, or you can limit your search in different ways using the Advanced Search.

–Fred Rowland

Oxford Reference Online Premium Collection provides the Temple community with access to a first-class collection of reference sources. Reference sources–such as specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias– ideally serve as repositories for the most accepted facts and opinions about a topic, and also serve through references as springboards to further research. The best sources are written by experts and are very carefully edited. This is exactly what we get from the Oxford University Press, the publishers of the sources and this service.

The range of the collection is impressive. It contains over 100 dictionary, language reference, and subject reference works published by Oxford University Press. (See a list) It is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database of these books, giving Temple unprecedented access to a comprehensive information resource.

The Collection contains titles from the Oxford Companions Series that provide coverage of specialized areas, for instance: The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization , The Oxford Companion to the Body, or The Oxford Companion to English Literature. The Collection also has a growing collection of Maps and Illustrations and subject Timelines beginning in the Twentieth Century, which links to entries and articles in the sources. All entries and articles include details about how to cite them.

Temple Libraries have long been buyers of almost all of these highly-regarded sources in print. Bringing them together online in a cross-searchable platform extends not only the physical range of the sources to anywhere a Temple person might have access to a computer–but also extends the range of the sources in print and online by suggesting, in response to searches on keywords, areas and titles one might not think of looking in.

Rick Lezenby
Paley Library Reference Librarian

The library has recently subscribed to the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS) Archive.

This resource is aimed primarily at undergraduate students but also relevant for interested faculty and graduate students. It consists of the contents of the three popular magazines from the Biblical Archaeology Society (Biblical Archaeology Review; Bible Review; and Archaeology Odyssey), five online books (Ancient Israel; Aspects of Monotheism; Feminist Approaches to the Bible; The Rise of Ancient Israel; and The Search for Jesus), and over 10,000 downloadable images that can be freely used in slideshows and powerpoint presentations. Archaeology Odyssey, covering classical archaeology, is the only publication in this collection that does not address biblical themes. Currently, the coverage goes from the start of each magazine through December 2003. Subscription year 2004 will be added within a few months. The founder and editor-in-chief of the Biblical Archaeology Society, Hershel Shanks, is widely credited with bringing the biblical world to a popular audience. The magazines feature many scholars and authorities in their respective fields. This is a good place to go for overviews of current biblical and classical archaeological issues and discoveries and for articles on the ancient Near East and Mediterranean worlds. Check it out today.

–Fred Rowland