]]> http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/2013/03/07/new-library-collection-illustrated-london-news-1842-2003/feed/ 0 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MiddLibraryInformationServices/~3/ho1Y69rDRsc/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MiddLibraryInformationServices/~3/ho1Y69rDRsc/#comments Thu, 15 Mar 2012 18:07:31 +0000 Arabella Holzapfel http://sites.middlebury.edu/lis/?p=28476 Continue reading → Continue reading →]]> We now have trial access to over 45,000 Spanish language books, research papers, and doctoral thesis, all in full-text, via e-libro. Access e-libro here or visit our New & Trials page for a list of additional library resources.

The trial runs through April 12th. Please send comments to Rebekah Irwin (rirwin@middlebury.edu) or your library liaison.

Current content from the Journal of Assessment and Institutional Effectiveness, a publication of the New England Educational Assessment Network, is newly available on Project MUSE. Topics explored in this journal include:

• How do institutions learn about emerging trends in assessment?
• What pressing questions do all institutions face when it comes to assessing the quality and effectiveness of student learning?
•  What are the best practices in promoting institutional effectiveness in the educational enterprise?

As of today, you can find this journal by browsing go/journals, and soon you will be able to find it cataloged in Midcat, and article results when you search Summon. (And no need to alert the Office of Assessment and Planning about this – they’re already aware.)

Solar panels from Self Reliance

Middlebury currently provides access to the following E&E publications:

Environment & Energy Daily, E&E Daily (A daily news service focused on environmental and energy issues in Congress)
Greenwire (Daily stories energy and environmental policy)
Land Letter (A weekly natural resources report)
E&ENews PM (A late afternoon roundup providing coverage of policy news around the country and the world)
E&ETV (Featuring in-depth interviews and analysis with energy and environmental policy leaders)

All of these publications are available through E&E’s website,  and on our New & Trial Resources page (go/trials).

Please send comments to Rebekah Irwin (rirwin@middlebury.edu) or your library liaison.

http://tburmeister.wordpress.com/

Visit Proquest Digital Microfilm or the New & Trial Resources Research Guide (go/newresources).

Currently, our access includes The Burlington Free Press (2010-forward), Boston Globe (Jan 2008-forward) and The New York Times, East Coast late edition (Jan 2008-forward).

• Project MUSE is one example, and that one was significant enough to be worthy of its own post.
• The Gale Virtual Reference Library, home of 81 of our subscribed reference sources, including Beacham’s Guide to the Endangered Species of North America, International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security
• Brill, home of the Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics to name one Brill resource, rolled out brillonline.com (formerly brillonline.nl)
• Accessible Archives, home of primary source material from 18th and 19th century publications, unveiled its new website and new domain name, accessible-archives.com
• Oxford University Press recently released a public beta version of Oxford Index. Additionally, in “the first half of 2012″, OUP plans to combine what are now separately accessed Oxford Reference Online and Oxford Digital Reference Shelf into the single “Oxford Reference.” We’ll announce that change when we hear more.
• Last Fall, ProQuest did a major renovation of their platform, which hosts 34 of our subscribed databases.
• Also last Fall, Taylor & Francis moved from its previous InformaWorld platform to tandfonline.com

We do our best to ensure that when these platform changes happen, all you will see is a new look, not a broken link. If you do encounter problems with these or any other online resources, please let us know at eaccess-admin@middlebury.edu.

Most of our efforts from September into early November go toward making sure our subscriptions, for both print and online journals, continue uninterrupted from one year to the next. Of the nearly 2,000 subscriptions we have, there are always a few that somehow fail to get renewed despite our best efforts. For example, we might discover in March that we have not received any recent issues of Veja, a weekly magazine published in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Occasionally, we can fill the gaps of a lapsed subscription, but not always.

There is usually a mountain of mail awaiting us in the new year: books, newspapers, magazines, and journals from all over the world and bills for these books, newspapers, and magazines from around the world. If we spend the last few days of the previous year ensuring access to our library collections after December 31st, we spend the first few days of the new year digging ourselves out of the mail room, looking for those lost issues from the previous year and for bills to pay.

Especially in the new year, but any other time too, please let us know if you cannot find something online or in print that you know was there before. Our email: eaccess-admin@middlebury.edu. Happy new year!

U.S. National Archives Constitution Day page
Also see their electronic version of the Constitution of the United States

NewsBank (publisher of the library database Archive  of Americana) Special Reports: The U.S. Constitution page

Find addtional library databases on the library subject guides.

The most stable and permanent situation is when we have a subscription with the publisher to a specific journal or packaged group of journals (e.g. Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Taylor & Francis).  In this case we have guaranteed permanent access to all material published during the years of our subscription.  Often we will also have access to a backfile of material published before our subscription started.  In some cases we are assured continuing access to this backfile, while in other cases ongoing access to any material dating from before the start of our subscription is not guaranteed.

We have deals with some of our larger commercial publishers (e.g. Elsevier Science Direct, Sage Premier, Springer SpringerLink), generally with contract periods of two to four years, under which we maintain electronic subscriptions to the journals we used to subscribe to in print, and we are allowed access to a large group of additional journals for a very low package price. We have the same guaranteed permanent access for our subscribed titles as for any other subscriptions.  We do not, however, acquire permanent access rights to titles in the low-cost “bonus” package; we have access to these titles only for the duration of the package deal.  These deals are commonly renewed for subsequent terms, so we will usually retain access to the bonus titles for an extended period.  However, sometimes the roster of journals in the package will change somewhat upon renewal of the deal, so we will gain access to new titles, but we may lose access to some titles we formerly had.  Occasionally a title in the bonus package will vanish in the middle of the term, but we have no recourse since there are no guarantees of access for the individual non-subscribed titles.

Our access to many journals and newspapers is not directly with the publishers, but rather through subscriptions to aggregated full-text databases (e.g. Academic OneFile, Ethnic NewsWatch, Lexis-Nexis Academic).  The vendors of the aggregations license content from the publishers, and these arrangements sometimes change; new titles are added from time to time, but others are deleted.  So, we may find that a title or titles we have counted on, or that portions of the content of a title, have suddenly vanished.  Since we have no direct relationship with the publishers of the original material, we acquire no ownership rights, and if something is pulled from the database, we are simply out of luck.  And in the most drastic situation, if we cancel our subscription to one of these databases, no matter how long we have subscribed our access to everything ends immediately,  One exception to the impermanence of aggregated content is archival databases (e.g. British Periodicals Collection, JSTOR, ProQuest Historical Newspapers), for which we have purchased perpetual access to material covering a certain period of time.

In addition to the resources we pay for, we facilitate access to many free and open-access publications, as a service to our users.  Obviously, since the providers are furnishing this material to all at no cost, there are no guarantees of availability or permanence.  We have no standing with the providers, so we are not in a position to request that problems be resolved.