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NEW DIRECTIONS
Provost's Incentive Grants Strengthen Library Collections
3,000+ New Books, 50+ New Journals
The Library's book and journal collections will be significantly improved and updated as a result of $140,000 of new acquisitions made with funds received in three Incentive Grants awarded by the Provost. The grant money, awarded to the Library in addition to its regular operating budget, will enable the Library to purchase more than 3,000 new book titles and between 40 and 60 new journal subscriptions. Overall, this year the Library will add nearly 8,000 new books to its collection and expand the number of journal subscriptions to about 1,520 titles.
Unlike public libraries which must purchase books and magazines of interest to people in all walks of life, the William Paterson College Library specializes in adding materials needed by faculty and students in the course of their learning and research at the College. As the College prepares for university status, the improvement of the book and journal collections supporting the College's graduate programs became a priority. Approximately $65,000 of the Incentive funds for books and $30,000 for new subscriptions were earmarked for this purpose. A second area of priority is to update and expand the book collection in the area of international studies and $10,000 has been reserved for new books with a global focus. The remaining dollars will be spent on reference materials and books supporting several undergraduate programs of study.
This infusion of new materials will significantly deepen the Library's resources in many subject areas and particularly in those related to the College's graduate programs. Carefully selected for their quality and relevance to the curriculum, these materials will be important tools for the continuing research and scholarship of the WPC community.
NEW FACILITY FOR GRADUATE STUDY
In another move to enhance the Library as an advanced information center, the Provost has spearheaded the creation of a Graduate Research Center based in the Library beyond the Reserve Reading Room.
This quiet study area is comprised of 20 study carrels available to WPC graduate students on a first-come, first-served basis. These carrels are equipped with electrical and data connections enabling the user to access information available on the campus network with their own laptop computer.
Beginning March 3 graduate students will be able to reserve a carrel for periods of one month to one semester, and will be able to secure materials in lockable cabinets. A $25, fully refundable deposit is required to reserve a space. This facility is administered through the Library Administrative Offices, located on the second floor of the library. Reservations may be made by phone to 595-2113.
GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES
...new in Reference
Searching for information with an international focus has been made easier by the acquisition of several excellent new reference sources. These sources cover a wide-range of disciplines and pull together information that would have been difficult to locate in the past. A selected list of these titles follows.
Encyclopedia of Human Rights (Ref JC 571 .E67 1966).
Reviews materials about international, regional and national activities to promote human rights. Contains documents, biographical articles and country overviews.
Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage (Ref PE 3304 .D33 1996)
An informative and fun-to-read dictionary of Caribbean English language regionalisms from Anguilla to the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Goddesses in World Mythology (Ref BL 473.5 .A66 1995)
Identify goddesses by geographic region including Africa, the Far East, the Himalaya, Northern Europe, Oceania and others. Provides an alphabetical index as well as an index by attribute.
International Dictionary of Historic Places (Ref CC 135 .I585 1995)
Learn the history of the city of Herculaneum (Napoli, Italy), Guwahati (Assam, India) Yangon (Myanmar) and other historic places in this five-volume set.
Encyclopedia of Post-Colonial Literatures in English (Ref PR 9080 .A52 E63 1994)
A two-volume handbook with entries on genres and biographical sketches representing the English literature of Australia, Bangladesh, East Africa, Gibraltar, Hong Kong and other areas of the former British Commonwealth.
Illustrated Dictionary of Symbols in Eastern and Western Art ( Ref N 7440. H35 1994)
Examine symbols arranged in broad subject categories - abstract signs, animals,artifacts, earth and sky, Human body and dress and plants.
Conservation Atlas of Tropical Forests of the Americas (Ref G 1101 .K3 C6 1996)
Study the rain forest of the Caribbean, Central America and South America with maps detailing forest terrain.
Women’s Associations Worldwide (Ref HQ 1883.E53 1993)
Provides contact information for national and multinational organizations dealing with women’s issues.
Fundamental Analysis Worldwide (Ref HG 4538 .K463 1996)
Examine sample financial statements from the U.S, Canada and European countries.Future volumes will include other regions of the world.
STAFF NOTES
Jane Bambrick, longtime coordinator of online searching at the Library, was recently invited to teach a graduate course at the Rutgers School of Communication, Information and Library Studies. The course, entitled "Advanced Online Searching," will focus on all the major electronic sources, ranging from simple bibliographic databases such as PsycLit, Medline and Firstsearch through the more specialized sources, including Lexis-Nexis and Dialog. The relative advantages and disadvantages of online and CD-ROM access will be discussed. Part of the course will include visiting and utilizing vendor databases through their Worldwide Web sites.
Ms. Bambrick holds an MA degree in Cinema Studies from NYU as well as a Masters in Library Science from Rutgers University. She was one of the first online searchers in New Jersey nearly twenty years ago. She has published articles in Online, and was the 1992 recipient of OCLC's "On the Frontline" award, which honors the nation's leading online searcher each year. Ms. Bambrick can be reached at bambrick@frontier.wpunj.edu.
MEDIA SERVICES UPDATE
Krivin Honored
A dedication was held for Dr. Martin Krivin on February 11, 1997 in the Paterson Room. Media Services' Listening Room is now "The Martin Krivin Listening Room" which provides compact disc, audiocassette and record listening equipment. Marty was a faculty member of the Music Department from 1960 until 1992 when he retired. He was one of the founders of the Wayne Chamber Orchestra and served as their Executive Director until last year. Jeff Burr, a jazz music major provided music and President Speert presented Dr. Krivin with a plaque honoring his contribution to the campus and community.
New Media Acquisitions
A Video Guide to (Dis)ability Awareness - Profiles state and federal agencies and organizations which provide services and information for the handicapped.
Birthwrite: Growing up Hispanic - Takes a look at the work of several Hispanic-American writers and how their poems, short stories, and novels reflect what it means and what it is like to grow up Hispanic in America.
The Ad and the Ego: Truth and Consequences - Discusses how the market economy has grown to the point that commercialism invades the most intimate aspects of life. Leading media critics show how living in an
environment saturated with advertising creates a psychology of need. The history of advertising is traced from the 19th century through today.
Blue Eyed - Jane Elliott conducts a workshop where an arbitrarily selected group of individuals is targeted to experience prejudice and bigotry. Based on the blue eyed-grown eyed experiment.
International Foreign Film Series Continues
My Father's Glory - March 5
The White Balloon - March 19
Cinema Paradiso - April 2
All shows start at 7:00pm in the Library Auditorium. Each film will be introduced by a member of the WPC faculty.
Contact Media Services with questions or comments!
Alumna Enriches Women's Literature Collection
Angela Fiori (WPC, 1957) recently made a significant donation of books to the David & Lorraine Cheng Library. The gift, more than eighty titles, is comprised entirely of novels, memoirs and short stories by female writers or male novelists who portrayed strong female protagonists. The authors range in time from the Eighteenth Century to the present day.
While some of the authors represented are covered in all standard surveys of English Literature -- Fanny Burney, George Eliot, Louisa May Alcott and Sylvia Plath -- the greatest importance of Ms. Fiori's collection lies in two other directions. First, there are the writers who achieved some prominence during their lives, but whose work fell into obscurity soon after their deaths: Mary Webb, Henry (Henrietta) Handel Richardson, Mrs. Humphrey Ward (the only way she ever signed her work!), Charlotte Yonge, Radclyffe Hall and Vita Sackville-West. Most valuable, however, are numerous works, primarily novels, by women whose works are only now being given the critical analysis and gaining the broad readership that their fiction justly commands. Among this group are Mary Cholmondeley, Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress), May Sinclair, Emily Eden, Sibilla Aleramo, Antonia White, Angelina Weld Grimke, Amy Levy and E. H. Young.
Nearly all of Ms. Fiori's books represent a notable improvement in the Library's holdings of works by feminist authors. These books will prove to be invaluable to all students, especially those doing research -- or just reading for pleasure -- in English and American Literature, women's studies and to those interested in diversity issues.
Anne Ciliberti, Head of Collection Development, expressed the Library's thanks to Ms. Fiori in this way: "With tight budgets, it is difficult to fill in the gaps in our collection with works by lesser known, but worthy, writers. More than just saving money, gifts such as this enable the Library to provide access to books from publishers that are not readily available through the traditional academic channels, or to writers who are beyond the range of the typical survey course. Many of these books we would simply never have been able to add to our collection."
Ms. Fiori, herself, enjoyed a tour through the Library last semester. As she ran her fingers across the spines of some of her favorite authors' books she said that she was frankly "thrilled" to know that her books would soon be on the shelves, available to her alma mater's students. She is sure that these books will bring as much joy and satisfaction to today's readers as they have to her over the years.
LIBRARY WEB PAGE BRINGS INFORMATION AND RESOURCES
TO YOUR DESK
Over the past year the Library's WWW page has continued to offer increasing numbers of
Internet resources to the WPC community. If you have not yet done so, please
have a look at
these pages and the information now available to you, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, from your office or home, anywhere in the world.
New additions to the Library Pages include The Encyclopedia Britannica Online, Infotrac Searchbank 2000, Project Muse, and a trial of The Oxford English Dictionary
The Library Reference Page
provides multiple gateways to information on the Internet. One can access CNN or MSNBC news services, "new and noteworthy" reference sources, or our continually expanding array of subject-specific resources. Our goal is to provide access to Internet materials in support of WPC's variety of departments and programs.
Please feel free to contact the library's Internet Resources Committee with questions, comments, or ideas about these pages.
Project Muse bring full-text scholarly journals to your computer
Project Muse
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/
Accessible by WPC only via the Library Web Reference/Information page
If an Internet site can be said to be at the crest of the wave
that is the Worldwide Web, it is certainly Project Muse, a full-text
journal database of 40+ titles offered to subscribers by Johns Hopkins
University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library. Prototyped in the
fall of 1993, Project Muse was one of the first ventures of its kind, and
was designed to exploit the possibilities of NSCA's Mosaic client
software, then in Beta release. In a very real way Project Muse is a high
exemplar of the "text-hypertext" fundamental principal that is the
Worldwide Web.
As gopher-based resources became popular in 1993, Susan Lewis of
the Johns Hopkins University Press and Todd Kelley of the Milton S.
Eisenhower Library began to devise a system for offering the tables of
contents of the JHUP journals online. Kelley was thinking ahead and
steered the effort in the direction of full-text and the nascent web
browser technology that was becoming available. From its inception, Muse
included subject indexing for each article, searching by single journal or
multiple journals and graphics options. It has kept pace with the
explosion of WWW technology and is offered to the user in a clean, simple
format that will never be out of style, yet at the same time has no need
of every HTML innovation, splashy graphics, or frenetic animation or
Java-powered information overload. Its look and functionality are in
harmony with scholarly nature of its content.
The journals that are the content of Project Muse are indeed
high-caliber, research-quality representatives of the Humanities,
Literature, and Mathematics. As of the end of 1996, 40 titles were
available with two slated for debut in early 1997. Offerings include:
American Imago: Studies in Psychoanalysis and Culture,
American Jewish History,
American Journal of Mathematics,
Callaloo,
Diacritics,
Eighteenth-century Life,
Journal of Early Christian Studies,
Modern Fiction Studies,
Philosophy and Literature,
Postmodern Culture,
Reviews in American History.
Using the Project Muse online journals is the apotheosis of the Worldwide
Web experience. A very intuitive WAIS searching utility called SWISH
(Simple Web Indexing System for Humans) allows Boolean searching in single
issues, volumes, or across all 40+ titles. Where footnotes exist in
articles, the footnote number is a hyperlink to the article's bibliography
or notes section. The subject of pagination in e-journals is handled in a
straightforward manner by inserting [End Page xx] at the proper place.
Muse is a pleasure to use.
Project Muse is taking a leadership role in addressing some issues
at the forefront of discussion of electronic resources for libraries.
Subscription to Muse includes unlimited personal access and use including
printing and saving to disk and multiple users at a single institution.
Muse administrators also offer advice on cataloging their electronic
"holdings" and linking to them via the subscriber's online catalog.
Obviously, the online availability of journals has collection development
implications. The print versions are still considered to be the "edition
of record" although the online edition's contents are the same. Muse
administrators advise not to cancel print equivalents of the JHUP titles,
as the subscription rate structure offers an incentive to retain both
formats.
Muse's subscription rates are tailored to different institutions
and levels of use, ranging from an annual $2500 for unlimited university
library use (any number of simultaneous users) to the $300-$400 range for
smaller school or public library subscriptions with a limited number of
users. Individual (personal) subscriptions are not yet available. Single
titles from Project Muse are available at 10% off the print subscription
price, while the complete print and electronic subscription cost is only
30% more than the print price alone. Ellen Meserow Sauer, Project Muse
Manager, says that certain costs and operations of the print and online
versions are shared, such as editorial costs, marketing, composition, and
rights/permissions. At the same time the costs of the two versions differ
in when and where the costs are expended: the print has high printing,
warehousing and distribution costs whereas the online's costs are focused
on equipment and software, file conversions, scanning, technical support
and computer expertise.
Although Project Muse is still considered an experiment, with 350
subscribers, it is full of promise and potential. In the search for
Internet resources of quality, scholarly content, reputation and stable
provenance, the Muse database must not be overlooked.
Kurt W. Wagner
wagnerk@wpunj.edu
ON DISPLAY
Exhibits in the Library, Spring and Summer, 1997:
Lobby Case:
Feb.3-Mar.7:Celebrating African Heritage Month
Mar.10-Apr.10: Women Athletes
Apr.10-Apr.30: Faculty Publications
Apr.30-June 6: Thomas Jefferson as Commander- in-chief
June 6-July 10: The Jersey Shore
July 10-Aug.28: The Paterson History Database
Curio Case:
Feb: African dolls
Mar: Women politicians
Apr: Inventions: from the ridiculous to reality
May: Graduation
Jun-Aug: Our nation's independence
Historical/literary/artistic/musical case:
Feb: Marion Anderson
Mar: Highlighting Irish-American women
Apr: National Poetry Month
May: Asian Pacific heritage month
June-Aug: Summer music festivals in the Northeastern U.S/
Curriculum Materials case:
Feb: African American young adult poets
Mar: Women in education
Apr: National Mathematics Education Month
May: Holocaust Remembrance
Summer: Weather
Celebration of Christmas, Hannukah, and Kwanza in the Curriculum Materials display case, December 1996.
Commemorating Kristallnacht , November 1996, with the "Teaching the Holocaust" Exhibit, in the Curriculum Materials display case.
Photos by Ya'aqov Ziso
Librarians host Montclair at social
On January 8, 1997, the David & Lorraine Cheng Librarians played host to Montclair State University Librarians in the Library's Paterson Room. Over refreshments the group shared information and learned that both libraries face similar objectives and opportunities. Both staffs agreed that more of these meetings would prove beneficial.
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