Category Archives: Library News

JSTOR vs. ABC-CLIO

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JSTOR is the premier scholarly journal database. It is a full-text, interdisciplinary archive of only the most highly respected journal titles. By comparison, ABC-CLIO’s two scholarly databases — America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts— seem to be less frequently used, even by historians. There are several reasons for this, but perhaps the most important is that JSTOR provides direct access to the full-text, full-page image of all articles in the database. Consider, however, the following advantages of the ABC-CLIO databases:

1) America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts between them index over a thousand scholarly journals, including 65 of the 72 history titles available in JSTOR. A researcher using the ABC-CLIO databases will thus find nearly all citations to JSTOR articles and thousands of additional citations not available in JSTOR.

2) The Libraries’ new TUlink service enables two- or three-click access to the full-text of thousands of articles indexed by America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts. This means that JSTOR’s previous “full-text advantage,” described above, no longer holds.

3) Citations to articles in America: History & Life and Historical Abstracts contain human-generated subject headings; JSTOR’s article citations do not. Why does this make a difference? A researcher using the ABC-CLIO databases could perform a subject search for “Gates, Horatio,” easily finding all 34 citations to articles about the Revolutionary War general. This type of search simply cannot be done in JSTOR.

4) JCR Online assesses the impact of scholarly journals on various academic disciplines. The higher a journal’s “impact factor” the more important that journal is within its discipline. Between them, the two ABC-CLIO databases index all sixteen journals identified by JCR Online as having the highest impact factors in History. These journals are: Environmental History, American Historical Review,Journal of American History, Journal of Modern History, Social Science History,Past & Present, Journal of African History, Comparative Studies in Society & History, Journal of Social History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, History Workshop Journal, International Review of Social History, Ethnohistory, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Zeitgeschichte, and Mouvement Social. JSTOR indexes only twelve of these same sixteen “high impact” history journals.

It certainly is not my objective to sour anyone on the use of JSTOR, which by any measure is a stellar scholarly resource. The point of this post is rather to say that both databases have much to recommend them. The choice of which to use ultimately depends upon the individual needs and preferences of the researcher. A comprehensive history article search will likely require the use of both.

Do you have a favorite history database?

—David C. Murray

Islam and the Byzantines

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Index Islamicus is a great source for Islam, obviously, but it’s also good for all the lands and peoples that have come into contact with Islam, which is a pretty vast field. Look at the six citations I quickly retrieved from Index Islamicus and downloaded into Refworks.

  • Islam and the Byzantines (Take note of the TUlink icon on the far right of the citations that will lead you to options for obtaining the complete article or book.)

—Fred Rowland

Introducing: TUlink

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Have you encountered frustration in fetching the full text of an article when using the library’s research databases? We have some good news for you. We are pleased to announce the arrival of TUlink, a new service of the Temple University Libraries.

With TUlink, the research process is greatly streamlined. TUlink acts as a bridge between a citation in a database and the full-text of the article in a different database–removing a number of formerly necessary steps.

When the citation you find in a database doesn’t have the full-text immediately attached to it, look for the TUlink icon:

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Clicking on this icon will perform a search of our full-text resources and when possible give you an “Article” link directly to the full-text of the article. In other cases you will see a “Journal” link to the electronic copy of the journal in which your citation was published. TUlink can also get you to information on journals held in the library on paper.

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If no full-text is available you will be offered an interlibrary loan link to request the article from another library.

TUlink is a work in progress. Currently enabled databases include all the EBSCO databases (Academic Search Premier, ERIC, MLA, PsycInfo, etc) and CSA databases (Criminal Justice Abstracts, Sociological Abstracts, etc) and numerous others. Other databases will be enabled on an ongoing basis.

See more details on using TUlink.

—Derik A Badman, Digital Services Librarian

The Greatest Invention

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Has any human achievement topped the invention of writing? Without it History, defined as “all that is remembered of the past as preserved in writing,” couldn’t exist. And neither could libraries. As Margaret Atwood states in the first episode of the Writing Code, a new 3-part series about the evolution of writing now airing on WHYY: “Writing is a code. It is the making of marks. You then have to understand that these marks can be retranslated into speech.” Uniquely among the many different systems of visual signification, writing captures spoken language. Writing appears to have evolved independently in as many as five locations around the world: Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Indus Valley, China, and Mesoamerica. Early writing served several functions. Among the Sumerians writing developed as an accurate method of keeping accounts; for the Maya its primary purpose was to aggrandize the institution of kingship. No matter what its purpose, writing transformed every society that it touched. The following books tell the story of how three of the world’s earliest writing systems — Egyptian and Mayan hieroglyphics, as well as Sumerian cuneiform — were deciphered by modern scholars.

Breaking the Maya Code by Michael D. Coe, c1992
The Invention of Cuneiform: Writing in Sumer by Jean-Jacque Glassner, c2003
The Story of Writing by Andrew Robinson, c1995

The next time you find yourself struggling through 200 pages of assigned reading for an Anthro, History, Poly Sci, Psych, or other college course, remember those long-ago geniuses who invented writing, without whom none of it would be possible!

—David C. Murray

Luciano Pavarotti, 1935-2007

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On September 6th, 2007, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti, arguably the most amazing tenor since Caruso, died at age 71 of pancreatic cancer at his home in Modena, Italy. Pavarotti had a voice that was immediately recognizable; tender, expressive, and yet brilliant and clear at the same time. Born in Modena, his father an amateur singer and baker and his mother a worker in a cigar factory, Pavarotti transcended his modest beginnings and had a persona that was in many ways larger than life. He broke barriers between the frequently perceived high-brow culture of opera and, through his gregarious personality and exquisite voice, opened up the art form to be enjoyed by non-expert listeners everywhere. To accomplish this, Pavarotti, much to the chagrin of classical critics, performed in large stadiums, combined popular songs with serious operatic arias in concerts such as the series of “The Three Tenors”, and performed with the Spice Girls, Sting, Elmo on Sesame Street, and on Saturday Night Live with Vanessa Williams. He constantly reached out to bring the public into the concert hall. Pavarotti’s efforts were so successful that he enjoyed the popularity and celebrity normally associated only with rock stars. Music lovers around the world joined together to mourn and to commemorate this much-beloved musician, who will be greatly missed.

In Philadelphia, Pavarotti established the Pavarotti International Voice Competition in the 1980’s. Young singers competed in cities around the world and winners traveled to Philadelphia to participate in final rounds. Winners received financial rewards, concert contracts, and a role singing alongside Pavarotti in upcoming Opera Company of Philadelphia performances. One such performance, the 1982 performance of La Bohème, won an Emmy for the “best classical program in the performing arts”.

In addition to his work to encourage young talent, Pavarotti was also a great humanitarian. He worked tirelessly to provide funds for victims of wars in Bosnia, Guatemala, Kosovo, and Iraq. With Diana, Princess of Wales, he helped raise funds to eliminate land mines. His humanitarian efforts won him numerous awards including the Freedom of London Award, the Red Cross Award for Services to Humanity, and the Nansen Medal from the UN High Commission for Refugees.

Although Pavarotti is no longer here physically, his voice continues to live through countless sound recordings and videorecordings of his performances, widely available commercially and in libraries. Pavarotti was careful that nearly all of his performances were recorded in some fashion, leaving behind a legacy for listeners to continue to enjoy.

Paley Library has books about the great maestro, in addition to recordings of his performances on discs, and DVD’s. Streaming audio to some of his recordings is provided in the databases Classical Music Library (Verdi Requiem) and Naxos Music Library.

For more information see

Obituaries
BBC
(London )Times
New York Times
Philadelphia Inquirer
Washington Post

-Anne Harlow

RefWorks with Attachments

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RefWorks, the online citation manager, is a valuable and easy-to-use tool for all kinds of researchers from students to faculty. A brand new feature makes it even more useful.

Every RefWorks user now has 100MB of storage space to attach files to their citations. This means that not only can you store citations but also the full-text of articles, songs, images, or short videos. Files are limited to 5MB each, which should be sufficient for most uses.

With files stored in RefWorks you’ll never misplace that article you need for quoting in a paper or have to deal with a usb drive filled with unorganized files. RefWorks can keep them sorted in folders and searchable.

In case you missed it, we also added the RefShare module to RefWorks over the summer. For more information see this post on our blog. Also: see shared bibliographies from Temple on RefShare.

Questions? Contact Fred Rowland or Derik Badman.

–Derik A Badman

More Scholarly Communications Outreach Is Needed

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A recent study by the University of California’s Office of Scholarly Communicationprovides interesting insights into faculty perspectives and behavior on a range of issues within the scholarly communications arena. The study examines UC faculty members’ sense of the overall health of scholarly communication systems and their perspectives on tenure and promotion processes, copyright, alternative forms of publication, and key services that the University does or could supply (including those of eScholarship publishing). With 1,118 respondents the study is one of the largest surveys of faculty attitudes and behaviors regarding scholarly communication.

Some key findings from the report include:

*Faculty are strongly interested in issues related to scholarly communication.

*Faculty generally conform to conventional behavior in scholarly publication, albeit with significant progress on several fronts.

*The current tenure and promotion system impedes changes in faculty behavior.

*Faculty tend to see scholarly communication problems as affecting others but not themselves.

*The disconnect between attitude and behavior is acute with regard to copyright.

*Scholars are aware of alternative forms of dissemination but are concerned about preserving their current publishing outlet.

*Scholars are concerned that changes in the system might undermine the quality of scholarship.

*Outreach on scholarly communications issues and services has not yet reached the majority of faculty.

While the librarians at the Temple University Libraries acknowledge all these listed issues as important findings, we are particularly interested in the final one that concerns outreach on scholarly communications. As the study indicates, we need to do more to create awareness about these issues. The study found a striking lack of faculty knowledge about the potential for change in the scholarly communications system. One of our priorities is to create greater awareness about these issues among the Temple University faculty and the larger campus community. To that end we will be working to share information about challenges and change in the scholarly communications system, and promote activities and initiatives that we can undertake as an institution to create change.

Read the report and get more information about it.

—Steven J. Bell
Associate University Librarian for Research and Instructional Services

Current Periodicals Moved to Paley First Floor

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Paley Library’s entire collection of 2,300 current print scholarly journals, newspapers, and popular magazines has moved from Paley’s ground floor to new shelving on the first floor.

Overall, the University Libraries subscribe to more than 20,000 journals and magazines with the latest in cutting edge research, scholarship and opinion. A large number of these subscriptions are now exclusively online with no print equivalent received.

However, there are many fine journals and magazines available only in print. Bringing these 2,300 periodicals to the well-lit and comfortable first floor of Paley Library will not only convenience readers, but will help to build awareness that print resources continue to be invaluable even in the age of online information.

An additional 200 current print journals in scientific fields, architecture and engineering are held in SEAL, the Science, Engineering & Architecture Library on main campus.

During Fall 2007 we will partially renovate and re-equip the ground floor space formerly occupied by the current periodicals collection to form a new Media Services Department offering audio and video collections as well as playback equipment configured for individual and group listening and viewing.

Look for progress reports on Media Services during the fall semester!

Jonathan LeBreton
Senior Associate University Librarian

Dr. Diane Turner is New Curator of Blockson Collection

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Today Dr. Diane D. Turner joins the Temple University Libraries as curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection.

Please see an announcement from the university’s Office of Communications for more details about her appointment.

I welcome Dr. Turner to our staff, and I greatly look forward to working with her.

Larry P. Alford, Dean of University Libraries

New Library Database! Theatre in Video!

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Temple University Libraries is pleased to announce the addition of Theatre in Video to its online resources. Theatre in Video is an entirely different kind of database, offering streaming video of entire plays. Included in the repertoire are the BBC’s productions of the entire works of Shakespeare, as well as plays from antiquity to modernity, unlimited by geographic origin. In addition to plays,Theatre in Video contains documentaries about notable playwrights and directors such as August Wilson, Bertolt Brecht, Henrik Ibsen, Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Konstantin Stanislavsky, Tennessee Williams, and many more. Productions range in date from 1936 to 2005.

Theatre in Video is easy to access and to use. Viewers can do a general search for a particular play, performer, playwright, or director, or browse lists of productions, documentaries, people, genres, companies, theatres, and dates. Students and professors can make personal playlists of clips which can be shared.

Theatre in Video is an exciting new kind of database, opening a new dimension in online offerings from Temple University Libraries, useful for instruction in many disciplines, as well as for enjoyment.

If you have any questions concerning Theatre in Video, feel free to contact me, Anne Harlow, aharlow@temple.edu.