LexisNexis Congressional and United States Serial Set now available

Posted on by
Reply

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

Music Index Online!

Posted on by
Reply

For information, research, cultural enhancement, classroom enrichment, and study and research, Temple University Libraries are pleased to announce the addition of Music Index to our electronic resources. Indexing over 775 journals in music, Music Index provides the gateway to a vast amount of information in music. The Ebsco Interface is an easy-to-use and familiar format for searching for information. Full-text links to articles in JSTOR are supplied. This online version of Music Index covers journals from 1976 to the present, and is updated quarterly. Music Index provides indexing to a wide array of periodicals and subjects. International in scope, Music Index includes periodicals from over 40 countries in 22 languages. Every aspect of music is covered. There is indexing to classical music, composers, and performers. But, there is also indexing for book reviews, obituaries, new periodicals, and the music industry. In addition, Music Index is a fine resource for finding information in music education, music therapy, ethnomusicology, and jazz. For help using this service, questions, and/or feedback, contact Anne Harlow.

Early American Newspapers, Series I, 1690-1876

Posted on by
Reply

Temple Libraries on March 23 acquired Early American Newspapers, Series I (1690-1876), a third major component of the Archive of Americana. “In 1690, Benjamin Harris published Publick Occurrences, the first newspaper in America. The British colonial governor immediately suppressed it, and only one issue was ever published. However, beginning with the Boston News-Letter in 1704, the early American newspaper industry thrived, experiencing particularly strong growth following technological advances in the 19th century. Early American newspapers, published often by small-town printers, documented the daily life of hundreds of diverse American communities, supported different political parties and recorded both majority and minority views” (Readex). “Early American Newspapers, Series I, 1690-1876 offers fully searchable, cover-to-cover reproductions of more than one million pages from more than 650 historical American newspapers, focusing on titles published in the 18th century” (Readex). EAN, Series 1, is based on Clarence Brigham’s famous History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820. —David C. Murray

Paley’s New Leisure Reading Collection

Posted on by
7

Are you a mystery buff or a sci fi aficionado? Do you like to keep up with the latest bestsellers, both non-fiction and fiction? Do you love biographies? How about romances, self-help, and how-to books?

Or are you simply looking for a good book to read … to get away from it all? Paley Library”s new Leisure Reading Collection has it all!

Covers_resized.jpg
During National Library Week, April 3 – 9, Paley Library is introducing its new Leisure Reading Collection, located on the main floor of the library.

On opening day, the collection will offer approximately 1,300 titles, from New York Times bestsellers to Harry Potter. Within a few months, some 2,000 titles will be available. Thereafter, about 100 newly-published titles will be added each month.

“This is something that students, faculty, and staff have been asking about for many years,” says Larry Alford, Vice Provost for Libraries, “and I am delighted that we are now able to do it.” He adds, “We want to provide books for pleasure as well as for scholarship, and to be the Temple community’s home library in every sense of the word.”

Alford himself will be browsing the collection. “For myself,” he says, “I’m looking forward to keeping up with the latest mysteries.”

Keeping up will be easy. The collection is easy to locate on Paley’s main floor. The books have simple call numbers and are loosely grouped in fiction, non-fiction, and biography categories. They are also fully searchable in the online catalog.

The Leisure Reading books may be checked out for 4 weeks, with one renewal of 4 weeks.

— Carol Lang

FIAF International Film Archive

Posted on by
Reply

The libraries are pleased to announce our subscription to FIAF International Film Archive Database. Produced by the International Federation of Film Archives, the database includes indexing to over 300 international periodicals on film and television, selected bibliographies, and a directory of archives and research centers.

  • International Index to Film Periodicals 72-present
  • International Index to TV Periodicals 79-present
  • Treasures from the Film Archives – finding aid for archival film material worldwide
  • International Directory of Film/TV Documentation Collections
  • Bibliography of FIAF members’ publications

Tips: When in the database, choose the component that you want to search from the red arrow in the upper right, next to the label “change databases.” Please also note that the subscription allows for 4 Temple students, staff, or faculty to search the database at one time. This number can be increased should use warrant it. Please feel free to contact me with any questions about this resource. —Jenifer Lee Baldwin

New EBSCO Features

Posted on by
Reply

A number of new features have been added to our EBSCOhost databases, including Academic Search Premier, Business Source Premier, ERIC, MLA, PsychInfo, and ATLA. Here is a brief rundown on what’s new.

1) A dropdown list on the search screen enables users to change databases easily.

2) Results “clustering”:When your search results come up, you will see a column on the left side of the screen that lists the top ten subjects of your results. These links allow you to narrow your search to a more specific set of results. See the screenshot below for an example. A search in Academic Search Premier on (“economics” and “america”) brings up these results. Clicking on any of these will narrow the results to items that fit the original search criteria and are also categorized by the subject clicked. This is a quick way to narrow down your results to something more specific.

ebscocluster.gif

3) Search Alerts in RSS: EBSCO’s MyEBSCO features allows users to create accounts and receive search alerts, that is, notification when new articles or citations fitting the user’s search criteria are entered into the database. Traditionally done by email, these results are now available as an RSS feed. An orange icon link appears on the MyEBSCO “Search Alerts” part of the “Folder” (see screenshot). (For more on RSS see this article.)

ebscoalerts.gif

4) Visual Search:A visual search groups results in nested circles according to subjects. It is an alternate way to search and navigate results (rather than a list). It’s hard to explain but easy to play around with. Just click on the “Visual Search” tab (it’s blue) at the top of any EBSCO database screen. The screen shot below shows a search on “economics” narrowed to “economic forecasting.”

ebscovisual.gif

5) Citation Output: When emailing or saving citations you can now have them in a few standard formats such as AMA, APA, MLA, and Chicago/Turabian–a time-saving way to add that citation or bibliography entry to a paper. If you have any questions about these features or would like more information or assistance, feel free to contact me.

—Derik A Badman

ArchiveGrid = NUCMC Improved

Posted on by
Reply

Manuscript catalogs connect advanced history researchers with important primary documents housed in obscure and not-so-obscure collections all over the country. Generations of scholars have turned to the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) to track down collections critical to historical research.

ArchiveGrid is a new database from the Research Libraries Group (RLG) that also allows researchers to locate relevant manuscript collections. “Thousands of libraries, museums, and archives have contributed nearly a million collection descriptions to ArchiveGrid. Researchers searching ArchiveGrid can learn about the many items in each of these collections, contact archives to arrange a visit to examine materials, and order copies” (ArchiveGrid). RLG is providing free access to ArchiveGrid through May 31, 2006. After this date ArchiveGrid will remain free if RLG receives additional funding to continue the project. If funds are not found, ArchiveGrid will be made available to institutions as a subscription.

All records in the NUCMC catalog are said to be available in ArchiveGrid. Given that ArchiveGrid is a brand new resource, researchers should consult both databases for the sake of completeness. Graduate students and senior scholars should cross-check online search results against the print version of NUCMC.

—David C. Murray

Postscript: History researchers might also wish to consult Ready, Net, Go!, an index/guide to archival research on the web created by the Special Collections Division of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University.

More JSTOR Journals

Posted on by
Reply

Two new collections of full-text journals have been added to our JSTOR content: Arts & Sciences Complement “The Arts & Sciences Complement is intended to offer participants a method to seamlessly add journals related to the core Arts & Sciences I, II, III, and IV Collections. For the Arts & Sciences Complement, journals may be focused in any of the more than thirty arts, humanities, and social sciences disciplines covered by JSTOR. Our aim is to introduce important titles that we were unable to include in earlier collections and to capture journals that cross discipline boundaries. A minimum of 150 titles will be included by the end of 2008.” Biological Sciences “The Biological Sciences Collection will include at least 100 titles when it is completed in 2007. This collection brings together the twenty-nine journals available in our existing Ecology & Botany Collection with more than seventy titles new to JSTOR. Coverage in this collection offers greater depth in fields such as biodiversity, conservation, paleontology, and plant science, in addition to introducing new areas such as cell biology and zoology.” Both collections currently including dozens of journals, some going back to the beginning the of the twentieth century. See the complete list at the links above. –Derik A Badman