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Public-Access Computer Systems News Volume 4 Number 12
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Public-Access Computer Systems News
Volume 4, Number 12 (1993) ISSN 1050-6004
Editors: Dana Rooks (LIBL@UHUPVM1) and Linda Thompson
(LIB1J@UHUPVM1).
Issued on an irregular basis by University Libraries, University of
Houston, Houston, TX 77204-2091.
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CONTENTS
Dynamic Information Drops Price on Some Documents for Delivery, 1
1994 OCLC On the Front Line Award Nominations Sought, 2
RLG Adds British Library's New Table-of-Contents Database to
CitaDel, 2
EPIC Prices Standardized, 3
The COOK Report on Internet, 4
OCLC Awards Three Research Grants, 5
Three Databases Added to FirstSearch and EPIC, 6
DYNAMIC INFORMATION DROPS PRICE ON SOME DOCUMENTS FOR DELIVERY
Dynamic Information, a document supplier for users of ArticleFirst
on OCLC's FirstSearch Catalog, has lowered its price from $12.50 to
$8 for some documents delivered by first-class mail. The price was
dropped on documents that have lower royalty fees. Most documents
supplied by Dynamic Information will be offered at the lower price.
Articles in JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association are
among those available for the $8 first-class mail delivery
charge. Other titles with the $8 pricing include Byte,
Transactions of the ASAE, Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America, and Maclean's.
The online document ordering option, part of the OCLC Dispatch
Service, gives library patrons using OCLC's FirstSearch Catalog
the ability to order serials articles found in a variety of
databases.
In addition to Dynamic Information, articles are being supplied
on ArticleFirst by UMI Article Clearinghouse. UMI also supplies
articles for Periodical Abstracts. Both document suppliers offer
delivery by fax and overnight mail in addition to first-class
mail. A link to PRISM/ILL is also available. More suppliers
will be added, allowing users to choose among several suppliers
offering the same article.
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For additional information, contact Daviess Menefee, 614-764-4358,
or Nita Dean 614-761-5002.
1994 OCLC ON THE FRONT LINE AWARD NOMINATIONS SOUGHT
Nominations are now being accepted for the 1994 OCLC On the Front
Line award. The OCLC On the Front Line award is presented each
year to an outstanding reference librarian who makes effective use
of electronic reference products in his or her daily work. The
winner must demonstrate knowledge, creativity, and good humor on
the job.
A check for $1,000 and a memento of the achievement will be
presented to the winner during the National Online Meeting in New
York City next spring.
For more information, or to receive a nomination application for
the 1994 OCLC On the Front Line award, write: OCLC, Reference
Services Division; MC 236; 6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, OH
43017-0702.
Deadline for nominations is March 1, 1994.
RLG ADDS BRITISH LIBRARY'S NEW TABLE-OF-CONTENTS DATABASE TO
CITADEL
The Research Libraries Group (RLG) has mounted the British
Library's new table-of-contents database on CitaDel, RLG's citation
and document delivery service. Called Inside Information, the new
database was launched by the British Library Document Supply Centre
(BLDSC) in the UK during July and has been available on CitaDel
since September 1.
Inside Information provides author, title, and journal citation
information for articles appearing in 10,000 of the most requested
titles in the BLDSC's collection of 50,000 of the world's principal
journals and magazines.
As of September 1, Inside Information contained approximately
900,000 citations from October 1992 onwards, with BLDSC estimating
that more than 1 million citations will be added to the file every
year. Daily updating is planned.
Full text of every article cited will be available by document
delivery through CitaDel. Delivery methods include air mail, fax,
and RLG's Ariel (document transmission software for the Internet).
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Inside Information will be available free to institutions
purchasing annual subscriptions to RLIN (the Research Libraries
Information Network). For institutions not purchasing RLIN
subscriptions, Inside Information will be available for a yearly
fee as a stand-alone CitaDel file. (RLG member institutions
automatically receive a 5% discount on all subscription fees.)
Institutions purchasing annual subscriptions to RLIN or Inside
Information will receive a free copy of the Ariel software.
For more information, please contact the RLIN Information Center at
1-800-537-7546; email bl.ric@rlg.bitnet or bl.ric@rlg.stanford.edu
(Internet); FAX 415-964-0943.
EPIC PRICES STANDARDIZED
As part of OCLC's overall pricing simplification plan, some
connect-hour and display-format charges for the EPIC service
changed as of July 1, 1993. The changes are being made primarily
to allow libraries to more easily predict search costs and to
remember prices across databases.
Highlights of the changes:
o database connect-hour charges are now multiples of 10:
$30, $40, $50, etc.
o record-display charges are now standardized across
databases
o online and offline record-display charges are now the
same
o practice database connect-hour prices are now all $10 per
hour
o display list is the free display format for browsing
search results
For most databases on EPIC, charges for connect time have either
stayed the same or decreased. They were increased for 11
databases. Record-display prices, which varied widely, will
increase somewhat for most databases. Prices for most databases
added since January 1993 have followed the new pricing standard.
Copies of the new EPIC price list are available from
OCLC-affiliated regional networks or OCLC reference services.
For additional information, contact Tam Dalrymple, 614-761-5054, or
Nita Dean, 614-761-5002.
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THE COOK REPORT ON INTERNET
The COOK Report is a monthly newsletter focusing on the policy
complexities of NREN, and National Information Infrastructure (NII)
development as well as Internet commercialization. Published by
the former Director of a US Congress Office of Technology
assessment of the NREN, who is beholden to no federal
agencies or private companies for funds, it contains views not
generally found within the community of NREN and NII "boosters."
The COOK Report helps subscribers:
o to understand the so far, convoluted evolution of Federal Policy
toward the commercialization and privatization of the
Internet, the creation of an NREN and a National Information
Infrastructure;
o to understand the economic trends linking the development of
multi-protocol routers and public network transport
technologies from Federally sponsored testbeds to commercial
implementation;
o to understand whether commercial internet providers can satisfy
corporate needs to link LANs over a wide area network;
o to understand developments and issues affecting K-12 and library
access to the network infrastructure;
o to understand the commercialization's impact on the cooperative
nature of the Internet and its standards process;
o and to track changes in policy by the new administration.
Subscriptions available for volume one at slightly reduced prices
or starting with volume two (April 1993).
Price List for one year subscription (effective April 1993)
Individual: $85
Non-Profit, Small Government Agency, or Corporation: $175
(Site License $300)
University or college library: $175 (subscriptions available
through Readmore and Faxon)
Corporate (revenues greater than $10 million a year) or
Cabinet Level Agency: $350
Corporate Site License (hardcopy and electronic with right to
redistribute within corporation): $500
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Foreign Subscriptions: add $50 in each category
Call, write or email: Gordon Cook, COOK Network Consultants,431
Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618; 609-882-2572; Internet:
cook@path.net
OCLC AWARDS THREE RESEARCH GRANTS
The OCLC office of research has awarded three Library and
Information Science Research Grants (LISRG) to university
researchers for 1993.
The grant recipients and their projects are:
o Carolyn O. Frost, Ph.D., associate dean, School of
Information and Library Studies, University of Michigan: "An
Empirical Test of Gopher Searching Using Three Organization
Schemes"
Gopher is an example of a commonly used protocol for
searching networked information. Although the use of
networked information is proliferating at an astounding
rate and is providing unprecedented access to
information, the organization of this information has
not kept up with its use. Likewise, there is need for a
greater understanding of information searching in order
to design better searching tools, organize networked
information more effectively, and assist information
providers in the mounting of networked sources. There
has been little research on how people use Gopher, or
its effectiveness as a searching tool. The proposed
project will study Gopher users' information searching
behavior, identify patterns and problems in the
searching behavior or with the information retrieval,
and recommend changes for improvement.
o Richard P. Smiraglia, Ph.D., associate professor, Palmer
School of Library and Information Science, Long Island
University: "Toward the Bibliographic Control of Works:
Derivative Bibliographic Relationships in the Online Union
Catalog"
The purpose of this project is to further the
bibliographic control of works by verifying the extent
of derivative bibliographic relationships in the OCLC
Online Union Catalog and by testing a conceptual model
for a database of bibliographic works. The methodology
employed will be descriptive survey research of a random
sample of bibliographic families from the Online Union
Catalog and qualitative examination of the most complex
families to assess the efficacy of the conceptual model.
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o James H. Sweetland, Ph.D., associate professor, and Judith J.
Senkevitch, Ph.D., assistant professor, School of Library and
Information Science, University of Wisconsin at Madison:
"Evaluating Public Library Fiction Collections: Is There a
Core List of Classics?"
The project will address the following research
questions: Is there a core of widely held adult fiction
in the OCLC database which can be used as a list of
classics? Does this core list relate to standard lists
of recommended fiction supposedly relied upon by public
libraries in selection and evaluation? Can one or more
standard lists be recommended as those most likely to
predict librarians' behavior? Is it feasible for OCLC
to consider using the core list concept to develop a
machine-readable product to assist public librarians in
evaluating their fiction collections?
The OCLC Library and Information Science Research Grant program
awards grants of up to $10,000 to help foster quality research by
faculty in schools of library and information science. Projects
are generally completed within one year, and findings are published
in the OCLC Annual Review of Research and in other scholarly
communications. Application materials for 1994 will be available
this November. For more information, contact the office of
research.
THREE DATABASES ADDED TO FIRSTSEARCH AND EPIC
OCLC has recently added three databases to its online reference
services, The FirstSearch Catalog and the EPIC service.
MEDLINE, the well-known index for all areas of medicine; Education
Index, covering all aspects of education; and Biological &
Agricultural Index, which indexes journals ranging from the popular
to the professional, bring the total number of databases available
on FirstSearch to 36, and on EPIC to 40.
MEDLINE, produced by the National Library of Medicine, indexes over
3,500 journals published in many countries. In addition to
clinical and experimental medicine, MEDLINE provides citations,
many with abstracts, to materials in dentistry, nursing, veterinary
medicine, nutrition, pathology, psychology, and other
health-related fields. Its coverage on FirstSearch and EPIC runs
from 1985 to the present, and it is updated monthly on both
services.
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Education Index is the online version of the H.W. Wilson Co.'s
printed database of the same name. It indexes articles from over
400 English-language periodicals and yearbooks as well as selected
series and supplements. Education Index covers all levels and
sectors of the education community from preschool and kindergarten
to special education, high school, and college. Its coverage on
FirstSearch and EPIC runs from June 1983 to the present, and it is
updated monthly on both services.
Biological & Agricultural Index is also an online version of a
Wilson index. It cites articles from more than 240 periodicals
published in the United States and elsewhere and also provides
coverage of biographical sketches, reports of symposia and
conferences, review articles, selected letters to the editor,
special issues, and abstracts. Almost half of the citations relate
to agriculture. The rest cover fields such as animal husbandry,
botany, ecology, food science, forestry, horticulture, and zoology.
Its coverage in FirstSearch and EPIC goes from 1985 to the present,
and it is updated monthly on both services.
The FirstSearch Catalog is designed for library patrons, with an
end-user interface that allows patrons to move easily through the
online search process in just a few simple steps, without training
or online searching experience.
EPIC, a full-featured online reference system that provides subject
access, and keyword and Boolean searching to a variety of
databases, is designed for librarians and experienced searchers.
For additional information, contact Tam Dalrymple, 614-761-5054, or
Nita Dean, 614-761-5002.
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Public-Access Computer Systems News is an electronic newsletter
that is distributed on BITNET, Internet, and other computer
networks. There is no subscription fee.
To subscribe, send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 (BITNET)
or LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU (Internet) that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-P
First Name Last Name. PACS-P subscribers also receive two other
electronic serials: Current Cites and The Public-Access Computer
Systems Review.
Public-Access Computer Systems News is Copyright (C) 1993 by the
University Libraries, University of Houston. All Rights Reserved.
Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by academic computer
centers, computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries.
Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in
electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear
on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission.
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