New Resources Available

a. 10 Proquest Databases

The databases included in this package from ProQuest have long been high priorities for UC campus subject selectors. EEBO, in particular, was repeatedly requested by English literature, Women’s Studies, and Performing Arts librarians. The Joint Steering Committee (JSC) has recommended this rich, full-image collection as a systemwide resource for several years, but the cost to make it available system-wide was prohibitive.  After considerable negotiation, the CDL was able to arrive at acceptable license fees and improved terms.  The CDL purchased the EEBO images and the campuses will co-invest in the annual web access fees beginning in 2005.  UC campuses will also co-invest in one complete archival copy of the microfilm.

The JSC received many requests for the other resources in this package, which were equally desired.  Some, like the Gerritsen Women’s Collection, the APS, and PCI full text, were previously negotiated by campus selectors or the CDL, but when price negotiations reached an impasse, the UC Collection Development Committee and the JSC recommended negotiating them all as a package to achieve the best value for the University. The CDL is pleased to announce that it has purchased all the content and that they are all now accessible via the web.

EEBO (John Novak, UCI)
Early English Books Online (EEBO) [http://uclibs.org/PID/9282] is a database that provides access to over 125,000 volumes of early works printed in England or in English between 1473 and 1700. These works constitute a significant portion of items included in the English Short Title Catalogue.  More specifically, EEBO contains most of the works indexed in Pollard & Redgrave’s Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640), Wing’s Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection.  Each work in EEBO is the full-text page facsimile of the original.  No longer will patrons be required to read these historical documents on microfiche; instead, they will be able to read, print, or download high quality page images from their computers.

Researchers of English history (particularly the English Civil War), literature, philosophy, linguistics, the fine arts, theater and drama from 1473-1600 will find EEBO an invaluable research tool.  Patrons will also use EEBO to obtain primary source material from this period.  As a special feature, EEBO offers an illustration search that enables users to find printed portraits, maps, printer’s marks, coat of arms, and much more.  This database also allows one to search under author, title, subject, and current physical location of the original work.

American Periodicals Series Online
American Periodicals Series Online, 1740-1900 [http://uclibs.org/PID/16610 ] includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from colonial days to the dawn of the 20th century. Published between 1741 and 1900, the more than 1,000 titles include Benjamin Franklin’s General Magazine, the first American professional journals, and several popular magazines still in publication, such as Vanity Fair, Harper’s, and Ladies’ Home Journal.  Users can trace America’s transition from colony to world power, or conduct in-depth research. Topics include: Revolution and independence; Slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow; Opening and settling the frontier; The changing role of women; The short story as an emerging genre; Advances in medicine and technology; Trends in politics, science, and religion.

Gerritsen Collection, Women’s History Online
Gerritsen Collection, Women’s History Online, 1543-1945 [ http://uclibs.org/PID/9286 ] contains women’s history in the world from 1543 to 1945. 4,700 publications from Europe, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Canada, and New Zealand, tracing the evolution of feminism within a single country, as well as the impact of one country’s movement on those of the others.

Acta Sanctorum
Acta Sanctorum [ http://acta.chadwyck.com ] is a collection of documents examining the lives of saints, organized according to each saint’s feast day, and runs from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940.

Patrologia Latina Database
Patrologia Latina Database [http://pld.chadwyck.com ] is an electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne’s Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855, and the four volumes of indexes published between 1862 and 1865.  The Patrologia Latina comprises the works of the Church Fathers from Tertullian in 200 AD to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216.  The Patrologia Latina Database contains the complete Patrologia Latina, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indexes. Migne’s column numbers, essential references for scholars, are also included.

PCI Full Text
PCI Full Text [http://pcift.chadwyck.com ] contains full images of articles for 200 complete journal runs in the humanities and social sciences from 1770 to 1995.

20th Century English Poetry
20th Century English Poetry [ http://collections.chadwyck.com/20enpo/htxview?template=basic.htx&content=frameset.htx ] is a collection of 598 volumes of poetry by 283 poets from 1900 to the present day, including W. B. Yeats, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Graves, A. E. Housman, John Betjeman, Fleur Adcock, Tony Harrison, Benjamin Zephaniah and Carol Ann Duffy, and incorporating the poets in The Faber Poetry Library.

African-American Poetry, 1750-1900
African-American Poetry, 1750-1900 [http://collections.chadwyck.com/daap/htxview?template=basic.htx&content=frameset.htx ] contains approximately 3,000 poems written by African-American poets in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

American Poetry, 1600-1900
American Poetry, 1600-1900 [http://collections.chadwyck.com/ampo/htxview?template=basic.htx&content=frameset.htx ] contains over 40,000 poems by more than 200 American poets from the Colonial Period to the early twentieth century

b. MLA Directory of Periodicals on OVID (Rob Melton, UCSD)

The MLA Directory of Periodicals [http://uclibs.org/PID/9818 ] is available to all UC campuses.  The companion to the MLA International Bibliography, the Directory contains detailed bibliographical data on over 3,700 serials—journals and monographic series—in the fields of literature, language, linguistics, folklore, composition and rhetoric, with more selective listings in the fields of theater and film and the rather amorphous field of cultural studies.

Detailed Description of Functionality

For each serial title in the directory, the following pieces of information are available (if applicable): title, acronym, publication type, accession number, ISSN, publisher, country of publication, editor(s), editorial address/phone/fax/e-mail, year first published, frequency, media type, electronic comment, subscription address, price, scope, descriptors, language(s), circulation, types of articles included (i.e., short notes, book reviews, etc.), whether advertising is accepted and rates, sponsoring organization, submission restrictions, submission fee, page charges, suggested article length, style manual preferred, microform distributor, copyright ownership, number of manuscript readers, number of articles submitted/published per year, processing time, disposition of rejected manuscripts, and the date the information was last verified.  Each piece of information has a two-letter code that can be used in search statements.

As users of the print version of the Directory know, the vast majority of searches for this database are made in order to obtain information about particular serials—researchers to learn submission policies and editorial contacts, librarians to ascertain subscription prices and addresses.  Online searching capability, however, will more easily allow users to make new queries, i.e. to compile lists of titles that meet certain criteria.  Scholars with a very succinct research discovery, for example, may get a list of journals that focus on the Renaissance, that do publish short notes, and that don’t have a submission fee. Librarians who are weak in the medieval period can determine which English-language journals in that field publish book reviews.   When limiting by subject, I recommend searching both the Descriptor [.de] and Scope [.sc] fields.) Making a potential serial cancellation list targeting a particular expensive or unfriendly publisher is also possible.

Some other potentially useful searches are problematic due to inconsistent terminology used within the data fields. For example, it is not easy to limit to journals that allow authors to maintain their copyrights because other words besides “author” and “publisher” are sometimes used; for example, the use of the phrase “author assigns to publisher” means the title will show up whether you search the copyright field by either author or publisher.  It is also not possible to get lists of journals that cost more than, or less than, a particular amount; you can get a list of titles that cost 100 (although it may be dollars, pounds, marks, yen, and francs), but not one of titles that cost $100 or more.  Trying to limit a search to journals published in California, for example, won’t be precise because “CA,” “Calif.,” and California are all used in the publisher address field and because CA is also used for Canada. As with the MLAIB itself, a more rigorous thesaurus and consistent usage by the publisher could improve search results considerably.

The default search—i.e., typing in words without following them with a specific two-letter field code— in either the Basic or Advanced mode—searches for terms in only the descriptor field.  This is logical in most A&I databases, in which users are likely to be searching by subject, but it is perhaps counterintuitive in a ready-reference source such as a directory, in which one is usually seeking data on a specific, known item.  For example, in either the Basic or Advanced mode, you can’t type in just “PMLA” in the search box to get the bibliographic and subscription information for that journal.  Instead, you must either specify the two-letter code for the title field or (if it has one) title acronym (e.g., Shakespeare Quarterly.tp or PMLA.ta) or use the “Search Fields” icon on the Advanced search screen.  The default search is best used to identify periodicals that publish on a particular topic, e.g. “modern language” or “Shakespeare,” although (as noted above) such a search should also include the Scope (.sc) field for best results.

Finally, in the initial results page, periodical titles are always preceded by the editors’ names.  Since this piece of information is one of the most likely to be out of date and is not usually one of the key pieces of information desired, a different display format would be more useful.

Despite these caveats, it is exciting to have this resource in an electronic format, particularly for the benefit of researchers and librarians who need to identify humanities serials that match certain criteria.

c. ASM International Journals

Five journals published by ASM International, the society for materials engineers and scientists, have been activated for access on the ScienceDirect platform.  The ASM journals provide the latest research in metals and materials and offer practical solutions for engineering problems.  ASM International is one of the “third-party publishers” who use the ScienceDirect platform and supplemental licensing is required.

The ASM journals are available to all campuses:

Journal of Materials Engineering and Performance
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10599495

Journal of Phase Equilibria
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10549714

Journal of Thermal Spray Technology
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10599630

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions. A, Physical metallurgy and materials science
(Co-published with TMS, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10735623

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions. B, Process metallurgy and materials processing science
(Co-published with TMS, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/10735615