Friday, June 17, 2005

Updates to Oxford Dictionary of National Biography

The second update of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online is now live! This update adds 140 new biographies of men and women who left a mark on some aspect of the British past between the thirteenth and twentieth centuries, along with 18 new ready reference lists and eight feature articles for ready reference. http://www.oxforddnb.com/oxforddnb/info/news/

140 NEW LIVES ADDED
Building and extending on the Oxford DNB's coverage of people from all walks of life, this update adds biographies of 140 people in 132 articles. The earliest new entry is soldier and writer, Sir Roger Stanegrave (fl. 1276-1336), and the latest (by death date) is politician, Inga-Stina Robson, Baroness Robson of Kiddington (1919-1999). Of the new biographies 36 are of women.

FEATURED IN THIS UPDATE

Each update spotlights distinct groups of people with a shared identity or common link. This update examines three areas (90 biographies in total), all with an introductory essay:

* European exiles and visitors to Britain -- people who came to Britain as exiles or visitors from mainland Europe, including Georgi Markov (1929-1978), the Bulgarian dissident poisoned by assassins on Waterloo Bridge, London, and gunpowder manufacturer, Francis Grueber (c.1657-1730; whose premises exploded with spectacular effect in 1703).

* Women in politics -- women active in political life from the seventeenth century onward, with notables from Jacobean courtier Mary Villiers, countess of Buckingham (c.1570-1632), to Rotha Lintorn-Orman (1895-1935), who founded the British Fascisti in 1923 intending to protect the nation from communism. This update also includes coverage of all (deceased) female British MPs

* Household names -- entrepreneurs from cocktail inventor James Pimm (1798-1866) to John Lea (1791-1874) and William Perrins (1793-1867), inventors of a savory sauce that originated with a barrel of inedible condiment they later re-opened by chance.

Our remaining biographies are of men and women who left their mark in the arts, diplomacy, the military, trade, religion, and education.

NEW LISTS AND ESSAYS

Ranging from "Rulers of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms" to "Captains of the English cricket team," the 18 new ready reference lists included in this update are sure to provide new avenues into the Dictionary.

The eight new topical essays include a look at eighteenth-century India from P.J. Marshall, an exploration of twentieth-century English music from Stephen Banfield, and an examination of medieval science from John D. North.

CORRECTIONS AND AMENDMENTS
Corrections and amendments to articles consist of known factual errors-verified by the research staff and, where necessary, contributors or external reviewers, and the addition of new material (for example, family life dates) submitted by readers or derived from recent publications. Articles are identified in the citation at the foot of the entry, and previous versions are available for consultation on the website.

JSTOR new titles--including anthropology titles back to 1848

Dear JSTOR Participant:
We are pleased to announce that thirteen new titles have been added to the JSTOR archive.

British Journal of Sociology of Education
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 22 (1980-2001)

Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
New Content: Nos. 1 – 324 (1919-2001)
Feminist Review
New Content: Nos. 1 – 63 (1979-1999)

International Statistical Review / Revue Internationale de Statistique
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 67 (1933-1999)
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 38 (1961-1999)

Journal of Agricultural, Biological, and Environmental Statistics
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 4 (1996-1999)

Journal of Business & Economic Statistics
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 17 (1983-1999)

Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 8 (1992-1999)

Journal of Law and Society
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 26 (1974-1999)

Law and Human Behavior
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 23 (1977-1999)
Philosophy East and West
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 51 (1951-2001)

Sociological Perspectives
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 44 (1958-2001)

Wicazo Sa Review
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 16 (1985-2001)

By publisher request, JSTOR is reducing the moving walls for two titles:
Harvard Studies in Classical Philology
New Content: None. (No volumes were published in 2001 or 2002.)
Moving Wall: 3 years (previously 4 years)

Phoenix
New Content: Vol. 54 – Vol. 55 (2000-2001)
Moving Wall: 3 years (previously 5 years)

Seven previous titles to journals archived in JSTOR are now available. The Arts & Sciences I Collection will now include this previous content related to the current title, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
The Anthropological Review
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 8 (1863-1870)

Journal of the Anthropological Society of London
New Content: Vol. 2 – Vol. 8 (1864-1871)

The Journal of Anthropology
New Content: Vol. 1 (1870-1871)

The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1848-1856)
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 4 (1848-1856)

The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869-1870)
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 2 (1869-1870)

Transactions of the Anthropological Society of London
New Content: Vol. 1 (1863)

Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London
New Content: Vol. 1 – Vol. 7 (1861-1869)

The complex title relationship between these previous titles and the current title is as follows: The Journal of Anthropology and The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London (1869-1870) merged to form The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, which is continued by The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, which in turn, is absorbed by Man. Man is continued by The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.

Update to Hein Online content (not just for law, good for history and polisci as well)

A total of 203,571 pages have now been added to HeinOnline with this latest release of new material -- our second consecutive release of more than 200,000 pages!

We are also proud to announce that this latest update includes our first release of Code of Federal Regulations material, which includes the 1938 edition through the 1947 supplements. As mentioned previously, future releases will include greatly expanded CFR coverage.

Here is detailed information on this latest HeinOnline content release ...

New Journals
Human Rights (ABA)
North Dakota Law Review
Saskatchewan Law Review
UMKC Law Review

U.S. Reports Library Update
11 new Slip Opinions have been included with this latest release.

Treaties and Agreements Library Update
Current Treaty Index
Eds. 1-25 (1982-1999)

Treaties in Force
1932 Vol.

Federal Register Library -- New Addition
Code of Federal Regulation
1938-1947 supplements

Upcoming Changes to Silverplatter Interface

Upgrades are coming in Mid-July

The Preview Site represents a “live environment” where you and your users can log in and see your subscribed content in the new WebSPIRS interface. As well as an updated look and cleaner display of limits and indexes, you will discover three new features to support end users:

I had to cobble together the link for the preview site so I've only done one for Social Work Abstracts. You can navigate to the other databases from this link.

New Features include:

Direct Export
Export citations to RefWorks®, EndNote® and ProCite® - and soon Reference Manager

Find Citation
Quickly locate the citation you need using reference information, even if it'’s incomplete

Find Similar
Identify articles that are similar in coverage

The Resource Center is your main source for all related information including a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs), training schedules and materials, screen shots, announcements, and much more. As new materials become available, they will be posted to this site meaning you'll be the first to access the new online tutorial, quick reference cards, and end-user guides.

Monday, June 13, 2005

ebrary Ships New Reader

ebrary Ships New Reader

I've installed it although I don't see much difference.

Friday, June 03, 2005

Upcoming ProQuest enhancements

To preview these enhancements, please visit our website at:

Dear ProQuest Customer,

The next ProQuest release is scheduled for June 11th . This release will have exciting new enhancements including:

Enhancements to our "More like this" feature making it easier to find and use.

*­The feature will be displayed automatically at the bottom of the article page and will always be open
* link to More like this will be added to the top of the full text article page to further promote this feature

Author Profiles Enhancement - Profiles that include dissertations will be hyperlinked to the best available format for that dissertation.
Two new citations styles will be available: Harvard and Vancouver.

* Harvard is an author-date style similar to Chicago/Turabian
* Vancouver will be listed as a new option

To enhance support for our customers outside of the United States, ProQuest will add four new interface languages

* Italian
* ­Russian
* Polish
* Norwegian

As well as ten new article translation languages bringing the total number of languages to twelve

*­Spanish
*­Portuguese
*­French
*­German
*Italian
*­Russian
*Polish
* Chinese-simplified
* Chinese-traditional
* Japanese
* Korean
* Turkish

My Research Summary and the Marked List page will be combined into a single feature called My Research. The tab at the top of every page will be updated to display a single selection. The search results page has also been updated so the My Research options (Email/Cite/Export) will be added above the first result.

ProQuest now offers RSS feeds

ProQuest :: RSS Feeds

Includes an overview of how RSS feeds could be implemented library pages, faculty pages, and course syllabi.

Thursday, June 02, 2005

Social Bookmarking, Scholars Boxes--the emerging need for centralized information management

At Calgary we are currently testing an internet based citation management tool. It has many great features for saving references for bibliographies, but I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't have many of the features I enjoy with FURL.

FURL is a social bookmarking tool that allows me to capture links to web pages, articles and other online content.

Like many others, I've become used to finding almost all my information online, and having to collate a blizzard of print-outs if I want to organize information for long term work is increasingly frustrating.

What I need is to be able to seamlessly

* capture information for online storage and later decide what is worth reading or keeping
* annotate my links and add whatever metadata suits me and my projects
* see who else has linked to the same information or chose to keep my links private
* create "reading clubs" to share information with people who's interests overlap with mine
* allow other people to collaborate with me on my documents or in annotating links
* clip quotes as I'm reading, add annotations and put them into new documents or folders
* search the full text of my stored information
* send information to my colleagues or students via email
* organize the material in folders
* keep it for as long as I want, even if I leave this university (heaven forfend) and go somewhere else
* access this "personal portfolio" from any computer with an internet connection

Technology and applications exist to make this all possible, but we need a product that brings this all together in one package.

After a little online digging I find I'm not alone in longing for a better solution to the information management problem. Here are some links I've come across:

'Towards Library Groupware with Personalised Link Routing', Ariadne Issue 40

Scholar's Box

and an interesting exchange on the Making Links blog


If anyone else has some references or projects to add to this list let me know and I'll post them.