Tag Archives: Serials

Philosophical Psychology {A new journal }

The Middlebury Libraries now have full access to Philosophical Psychology, an international journal devoted to philosophy and the psychological sciences. Our online holdings now include 1997 to the most current issues. From the journal’s website:

Emphasis is placed on articles concerned with cognitive and perceptual processes, models of psychological processing, including neural network and dynamical systems models, and relations between psychological theories and accounts of neural underpinnnings or environmental context. The journal also publishes theoretical articles concerned with the nature and history of psychology, the philosophy of science as applied to psychology, and explorations of the underlying issues — theoretical and ethical — in contemporary educational, clinical, occupational and health psychology.

Philosophical Psychology is fully indexed through 2000 via Summon (go/Summon) and also available through Proquest Psychology (1997-2000). The most recent issues are available directly through Taylor & Francis, the publisher of Philosophical Psychology (1997- current).

LIS Collection Management has a new name!

With the merger of Collection Management and portions of Academic Consulting Services, it became clear that the area needed a new name to reflect its expanded scope.

I’m therefore pleased to announce that the name for this area is now Research and Collection Services (RCS). While many portions of the website still reflect the old names — and it will take a while before we’ve eradicated all remnants of Collection Management/Academic Consulting Services from the website, email distribution lists, HR/Banner information, etc. — please consider the name to be effective immediately.  We’ll try to get the changes made expeditiously.

As a reminder, RCS includes:

  • Reference and Instruction Librarians
  • Special Collections
  • Vt. Collection
  • Government Documents
  • Inter-library Loan
  • Cataloging/Acquisitions/Serials
  • Preservation & Processing
  • Collection Development

Access to e-content: permanent or not?

We have online access to a large number of journals and newspapers.  The terms governing our access vary considerably, and can change with the passage of time.  One of the most important aspects of our access is the extent to which it is dependable and permanent.  Following is an attempt to illustrate the range of stability of our electronic offerings.

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. Continue reading →

How Many Journals Does The Library Subscribe To?

I was asked this today, and it seemed like such an innocuous question. So I decided to do some investigating. I was expecting, oh, I don’t know, maybe 5,000 or so. Was I ever wrong!

First, the definition of the question took some untangling. Does this mean current subscriptions? Does it mean individual subscriptions that we choose specifically to receive, or does it count the titles we receive as part of “big deals” from vendors like Elsevier? Does it mean stuff we pay cold hard cash for, or does it include freebies, such as the 4000+ open access journals that are readily accessible on the web (and which are all included in the library catalog)? Or does it mean just the print stuff we receive in hard copy?

After some hemming & hawing, I decided the most interesting questions were: 1) how many journal titles do we have access to altogether, both current & ceased? and 2) how many journal titles do we currently subscribe to, regardless of format, regardless of cost?

With help from the cataloging, acquisitions, and serials departments, I discovered that:
1) we currently have access to an astounding total of approximately 42,443 journal titles; and
2) of these, approximately 38,000 are current.

Furthermore, about 5,100+ are print titles (current & ceased) and we have free web access to about 4,300+ titles from the Directory of Open Access. Catalog records for all of these titles are in MIDCAT.

This is an incredible resource for our students and faculty (and staff!), and many thanks to all the people — acquisitions & collection development folks, catalogers, systems people, infrastructure people, librarian liaisons & selectors, etc. etc. — who have worked hard over the years to make this possible. And this is just one small part of the many many many services LIS provides. Really amazing.

MIIS Library Acquisitions & Serials Update

Submitted by Peter Liu

As part of the ongoing integration process with Middlebury, we have been looking at our respective internal work flows in technical services where need to be aligned.  

Since the fall of 2008, the MIIS Acquisitions Librarian, Erika Johnson (erika.johnson@miis.edu), has been using Blackwell and its Collection Manager as one of  the primary book vendors.  As a result, a majority of our recent book orders have being placed via Blackwell Library Services.

Beginning with the Spring 2009 semester, Erika  is also handling all of our serials responsibilities.  In addition to overseeing the purchasing, cancellation, invoicing, receipt, processing, and shelving of print periodicals and journals (including check-in, claiming, and binding), she now also manages the authentication, activation and maintenance of access to electronic journals through EBSCO’s A-to-Z list and electronic journals service (EJS).