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Public-Access Computer Systems News Volume 4 Number 05
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Public-Access Computer Systems News
Volume 4, Number 5 (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
OCLC EXTENDS FIRSTSEARCH, EPIC, AND CURRENT CLINICAL TRIALS
HOURS, 1
ART INDEX AND ARTS & HUMANITIES SEARCH NOW ON FIRSTSEARCH AND
EPIC, 2
GUIDON INTERFACE IMPROVES INTERNET ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC
JOURNAL, 3
SPRINGER JOURNALS PREVIEW SERVICE, 3
DYNAMIC INFORMATION IS ADDED AS DOCUMENT SUPPLIER FOR
FIRSTSEARCH, 4
SPLICER FOR WINDOWS, 4
NEW BOOKLET ON OPEN SYSTEMS, 5
KNOWLEDGE INDEX MOVES TO COMPUSERVE, 5
LC SELECTS STAR, 5
VTLS OFFERS ADA-SUPPORT WORKSTATION, 6
OCLC EXTENDS FIRSTSEARCH, EPIC, AND CURRENT CLINICAL TRIALS HOURS
The FirstSearch Catalog and the EPIC service, OCLC's online
reference services, and the Online Journal of Current Clinical
Trials are now available Sunday through Friday until midnight and
on Saturday until 8 p.m. on both the OCLC Network and the
Internet.
The new hours are:
Monday-Friday 6 a.m.-midnight (Eastern Time)
Saturday 8 a.m.-8 p.m. (Eastern Time)
Sunday noon-midnight (Eastern Time)
Later this year, OCLC plans to make the systems available 24
hours a day.
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.
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EPIC, a full-featured online reference system that provides
subject access, and keyword and Boolean searching to a variety of
databases, is used mostly by librarians and experienced
searchers.
The Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials is a peer-reviewed
medical journal, edited by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science and distributed electronically by OCLC.
For additional information contact Tam Dalrymple 614-761-5054
or Nita Dean 614-761-5002.
ART INDEX AND ARTS & HUMANITIES SEARCH NOW ON FIRSTSEARCH AND
EPIC
Students and scholars in the arts and humanities now have two of
their most valuable resources available for online searching on
OCLC's FirstSearch Catalog and EPIC service.
Art Index, the H. W. Wilson database of 200 leading art
publications from around the world, and Arts & Humanities Search,
the online equivalent of the Institute for Scientific
Information's Arts and Humanities Citation Index, have
recently been added to FirstSearch and EPIC.
The online version of Art Index provides convenient and detailed
access to major periodicals, yearbooks, museum publications,
bibliographies, and reviews in various languages dating from
September 1984 to the present. It offers an international
perspective on the arts, ranging from archeology, architecture,
art history, computer graphics, crafts, industrial design,
interior design, and photography to sculpture, television,
textiles, and video. It also serves as a complete record of
reproductions of works of art that appear in the publications
indexed. It is updated monthly.
Arts & Humanities Search indexes articles from over 1,100 of the
world's leading arts and humanities journals and includes
relevant articles from some 5,000 journals in the physical and
social sciences. Its online coverage goes from 1980 to the
present. It is updated weekly.
Both FirstSearch and EPIC display the three-character OCLC
symbols for the libraries that own the publications cited in each
entry. The online citations in both Art Index and Arts &
Humanities Search have been linked to serials records that have
been authenticated by CONSER participants. The CONSER program
includes 19 OCLC member libraries, the Library of Congress, and
the National Library of Canada. The 500,000 authoritative CONSER
records represent the most widely held titles among libraries.
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For additional information contact Tam Dalrymple 614-761-5054 or
Nita Dean 614-761-5002.
GUIDON INTERFACE IMPROVES INTERNET ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC JOURNAL
With the release of GUIDON 1.1 software, subscribers to the
Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials can now access
the electronic journal's complete text and graphics through the
Internet.
GUIDON is a graphical user interface developed by OCLC for
electronic journals. With GUIDON, subscribers view the full-text
of articles with graphics and hypertext links to references,
figures, equations, and tables. GUIDON also supports
sophisticated Boolean searching and a document ordering
capability. OCLC plans future releases of GUIDON that will
support its searching and graphic capabilities on the X-Windows
and Macintosh platforms.
Two interfaces are available for viewing, displaying, and
printing Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials documents.
GUIDON, which is sent to all subscribers, runs in the Microsoft
Windows environment on an 80286 or higher PC and provides
typeset-quality displays and graphics. EPS, the OCLC Electronic
Publishing Service, is a command-oriented ASCII user interface
which runs on a terminal or PC with software emulating a VT100
terminal. Both interfaces are now available via the Internet,
the OCLC Network, and CompuServe.
For additional information contact Andrea Keyhani 614-764-6474
or Nita Dean 614-761-5002.
SPRINGER JOURNALS PREVIEW SERVICE
Springer-Verlag has announced that it will offer the tables of
contents and BiblioAbstracts of 30 scientific journals via e-mail
before publication of the new issue. This service is accessible
as of March 1, 1993. Tables of contents are free of charge and
BiblioAbstracts are available for an annual token fee.
The files supplied are in ASCII format, structured in accordance
with accepted standards. They can be read on any computer without
further processing and can easily be integrated into local data
bases.
For details send an e-mail message containing the word "help" to
svjps@dhdspri6.bitnet or contact Springer-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG,
New Technologies/Product Development, P.O. Box 10 52 80, W-6900
Heidelberg, Germany; e-mail: springer@dhdspri6.bitnet; fax: +49
6221 487 648
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DYNAMIC INFORMATION IS ADDED AS DOCUMENT SUPPLIER FOR FIRSTSEARCH
Dynamic Information, based in Burlingame, Calif., has joined UMI
Article Clearinghouse as a document supplier for users of the
OCLC FirstSearch Catalog. This second FirstSearch Document
Ordering supplier initially will provide access to serial
articles found in the ArticleFirst database, which contains
bibliographic citations from the table of contents page of more
than 11,000 journals in science, technology, medicine, social
science, business, the humanities, and popular culture. The
document ordering option will later be expanded to include
other FirstSearch databases. According to Dynamic Information,
97 percent of the titles contained in the ArticleFirst database
will be available.
Documents may be delivered by regular mail, overnight mail, or
fax. Users can use existing deposit accounts or set up accounts
for document purchases, or they can use credit cards. Prices
displayed on the online order form are set by the supplier and
include processing, delivery, and copyright and royalty fees.
OCLC's document ordering system features a help screen
to guide users. The help screen includes information about
suppliers and toll-free telephone numbers to call for more
information. Also, ArticleFirst displays libraries' holdings so
users can check to make sure they don't purchase information
already housed in their home libraries.
For additional information contact Nita Dean 614-761-5002 or
Daviess Menefee 614-764-4358.
SPLICER FOR WINDOWS
Research Information Systems introduces Splicer for Windows, the
first of its products for Microsoft Windows. Splicer for Windows
is a true Windows implementation of the retrieval portion of
Reference Manager bibliographic management software. Splicer for
Windows allows the user to access Reference Manager, search for
references and "cut and paste" the reference identifiers into the
text of a Windows word processing document. Splicer for Windows
uses a new GUI and is compatible with any Reference Manager
version 5.0 database. With the introduction of Splicer for
Windows, users now have the flexibility of using a true Windows
interface with their Windows word processor.
For additional information contact Research Information Systems,
2355 Camino Vida Roble, Carlsbad CA 92009; 800-722-1227 or 619-
438-5526; fax: 619-438-5573.
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NEW BOOKLET ON OPEN SYSTEMS
A new booklet, "Open Systems and Your Library", provides a brief,
but thorough, overview of emerging technologies and standards
such as client/server architecture and the Z39.50 protocol, and
illustrates how they can expand patron usage and streamline
library activities.
Available free from NOTIS Systems, Inc., the booklet was written
by Gary Lee Phillips. To obtain a copy of the booklet, contact
NOTIS, 1007 Church St., Evanston IL 60201; 708-866-0150.
KNOWLEDGE INDEX MOVES TO COMPUSERVE
Dialog Information Services, Inc. has announced a strategic
partnership between Dialog and CompuServe, Inc. This new
alliance includes a transfer of the Knowledge Index service to
the CompuServe Information Service, effective April 1, 1993.
CompuServe will provide customer support for Knowledge Index,
while Dialog will continue to provide technical maintenance.
Knowledge Index includes over 100 Dialog databases. As part of
the CompuServe Information Service, Knowledge Index will continue
to provide reduced price after-hours access to some of the most
popular databases. In addition, existing Knowledge Index users
will have access to CompuServe's more than 1,700 services.
For additional information, contact Sales Dept., Dialog
Information Services, Inc., 3460 Hillview, Palo Alto CA 94304;
800-334-2564 or 415-858-3785; fax: 415-858-7069; or CompuServe
Information Service, Inc., 800-438-3690.
LC SELECTS STAR
The Library of Congress has awarded a $134,950 contract to Cuadra
Associates for a new integrated library system to be used in its
Congressional Research Service (CRS). The system will be based
on Cuadra/STAR software a product of the company. STAR was
selected for the integrated library system through a competitive
procurement process in which offers were solicited from 64
vendors of library systems and software. As part of the
contract, Cuadra Associates will convert 97,000 records presently
in several formats. These and other records currently in manual
form only will be merged to establish the basic catalog database
for the CRS integrated library system.
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CRS will use STAR in an environment consisting of multi-vendor
IBM PC-AT and Compaq/386 compatible machines, all of which will
be connected to a token ring network. The STAR software will run
on a UNIX multiprocessor that may eventually support up to 130
simultaneous users. STAR is scheduled to be installed in early
1993.
For additional information, contact Carlos A. Cuadra or Judith
Wanger, Cuadra Associates, Inc., 11835 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite
855, Los Angeles CA 90064; 310-478-0066; fax: 310-477-1078.
VTLS OFFERS ADA-SUPPORT WORKSTATION
To help libraries comply with Title III of the Americans with
Disabilities Act (ADA), VTLS Inc. has developed an option that
gives users who are visually impaired equal access to the VTLS
integrated library system. Configured with special VGA and voice
synthesizer boards, the ADA-support workstation permits screen
enlargement as well as voice output.
The ADA-support interface works with any data communications
package, but looks best when used with the VTLS Intelligent
Workstation. The interface comes with a mouse which can be used
to choose one of three modes of screen enlargement: full screen,
in place, single line (ruler view), and single line at the bottom
of the screen (dual view). Further enlargement or reduction is
possible with another click of the mouse. One click of all three
mouse buttons together reverses the polarity of white letters
against a black background to black letters against a white
background. For users who are totally blind, the interface
features a voice board that has been customized to read aloud
specific parts of the screen.
For additional information, contact Gail Gulbenkian, 703-231-
3605.
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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.
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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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