New Titles Added to Gale Virtual Reference Library

New publishing partners have been added to Gale Virtual Reference Library, including:

Brill Academic Publishers
Brill Dictionary of Religion
Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism
Encyclopedia of Judaism, 2 nd Edition
Encyclopedia of the Quran
Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Culture

Columbia University Press
Electric Sounds: Technological Change and the Rise of Corporate Mass Media
Managing Biodiversity in Agricultural Ecosystems
Between Ally and Partner: Korea-China Relations and the United States
Collaborating with Community-Based Organizations Through Consultation and Technical Assistance
Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims & Trauma, Second Edition
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
Food is Culture
George Gallup in Hollywood
Research Techniques for Clinical Social Workers
The Structural Approach to Direct Practice in Social Work: A Social Constructionist Perspective
The Tet Offensive: A Concise History
Hollywood and the Culture Elite: How the Movies Became American
The Bronx
The Columbia Companion to American History on Film
The Columbia History of Latinos in the United States Since 1960
The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Great Plains
The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Northeast
The Columbia Guide to American Indians of the Southeast

Indiana University Press
Encyclopedia of Women & Religion in North America
Latinas in the United States: A Historical Encyclopedia

Scarecrow Press
Eleven titles planned for eBook release include historical dictionaries of the Civil War, Afghanistan, Iraq, Arab Israeli Conflict as well as titles on airlines, television and the cinema, including The Great Pictorial History of World Crime

Rosen Reference
Seven titles include reference works in the areas of Religion, World Holidays, and Drugs and Alcohol.

Cambridge Journals Online Update

Some key new developments released in March include:
A refreshed site design, including specific sections for our distinct user groups.

New-look journal homepages with additional functionality, including links to the most-read articles.

Enriched content in the form of editorial blogs and multimedia companions.

A new, clearer advanced search interface and a new fielded cite search function for more specific bibliographic queries.

An improved range of email or RSS alerting options including notification when an article is published online ahead of print and announcements whenever an article is cited.
The provision of direct links to articles for authors and institutional repositories.

New Journal in Project Muse

The following five new journals went online in January and February 2007

*French Studies: A Quarterly Review
Publisher: Oxford University Press:
Vol. 60 No. 1

*English Literature in Transition, 1880-1920
Publisher: ELT Press
Vol. 50 No. 1

*Episteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press:
Vol. 3 Issue 1-2

*Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education, and Action
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Vol. 1 Issue 1

*Education and Treatment of Children
Publisher: West Virginia University Press:
Vol. 30 No. 1

*********
Labor Studies Journal
Not continuing in MUSE in 2007: acquired by a publisher that does not participate in MUSE.
Final issue in MUSE: Volume 31, 2006-2007 All issues previously published in MUSE will remain in the collections.

New LexisNexis Academic Service Beta Launches

The academic library community has been supporting the redesign of LexisNexis® Academic with thoughtful feedback even before the project officially started in January 2006. LexisNexis is very grateful for all the time and attention that the community has given to the new product.

To see the beta version just click on "Beta" when you go to LexisNexis Academic from the Randall Library Databases and Articles page. http://library.uncw.edu/web/research/databases/index.html

Vault Online Library update

new features and guides have been added to the Vault Undergraduate Online Library as of January 2007. This brings the total up to 92 downloadable guides (when the online library was created in 2002, there was only 20+ guides!). We will keep you posted with updates throughout the year as the Vault Online Library continues to expand.

New on the Vault Undergraduate Online Career Library:

NEW AND UPDATED UNDERGRADUATE GUIDES
Vault Career Guide to Nursing (New)
Vault Guide to Top Internships (Updated 2007 Edition)

NEW INDUSTRY CAREER ADVICE ARTICLES
Medical School Career Advice Articles

JSTOR Update

In response to ongoing feedback from researchers and librarians, JSTOR has modified the Advanced Search form. These revisions were previewed on the JSTOR Sandbox from July 2006 to November 2006. The Advanced Search form now includes four new fields for entering and combining full text, author, article title, abstract, and caption field search queries.

In addition to these changes to the Advanced Search Form, navigation options and help files for the Basic Search and Article Locator forms have been updated, and the Expert Search form has been removed.

Improved Article PDF Files
A new PDF format for downloading and printing articles has replaced the previous High Quality PDF format. This new format enables JSTOR users to "search" or "find" words and phrases within the PDF version of JSTOR articles, as well as copy and paste portions of text from them. In addition to these benefits, the new format facilitates the use of screen-reading software, such as JAWS for Windows. Moreover, PDF files in this new format are, on average, smaller in size than our current High Quality PDF files, which means that they can be downloaded more quickly and easily. We encourage you to try the new High Quality PDF files, especially if you have had printing or downloading difficulties in the past.

Search Term Highlighting
Search term highlighting is now available in JSTOR page images. When a user searches for a term and follows a link to an article from the results, the search terms will be highlighted in the article's page images. Along with the existing "Page of First Match" feature, this new highlighting allows users to see their search terms more easily within the context of the article text as they browse through the pages. If an individual prefers, search term highlighting may be “turned off” on the user preferences page.

Upcoming EBSCOhost enhancements

Key components of the new features include:

A new one-step Journal and Search Alert process, from the Journal Home Page and the Search History screen

A one-step creation of RSS feeds for personalized (logged in to a My EBSCOhost folder) users

The ability for users not signed in to a My EBSCOhost folder to create RSS feeds of alert content from EBSCOhost

Multiple database support for search alerts

Additional Alert usability enhancements

These enhancements should be available in the Spring.

Enhancements to Web of Knowledge

Distinct Author Identification System in Web of Science — This upgrade improves accessibility within the application interface for locating author sets. Distinct author set results are presented in a user-friendly tabular format, making it easier to locate the exact author you seek.

Link to view Distinct Author Sets is now immediately apparent on Author Search results page.
Author Sets or clusters are presented for each name, with multiple clusters indicating related groups of papers for that author name and name variants. Clusters also display the number of records, present, source journals, publications years, and subject areas.

The new Feedback form allows users to submit comments and requests for corrections to author clusters.

EndNote Web upgrades —
Cite While You Write(TM) feature is now available for Macintosh users. The Cite While You Write toolbar in Word® allows users to conveniently cite references and format the bibliography in over 2,300 publishing styles. EndNote users can cite references from both their Web and desktop libraries.

Firefox Browser Extension (Plug-in) — Use the Firefox browser for Windows and Mac to quickly capture web pages as bibliographic references in an EndNote Web library. Internet Explorer version already available.

One-click author searching from a folder or reference page — Click any author name in a folder list or reference page to retrieve references in a library by the same author instantly.
Improved export workflow— Exporting references in a data export format is now quicker and easier. Select from distinct "tagged" output formats used to exchange references with other bibliographic softwar and applications.

Enhanced action links:
Organized by task for easy selection
More actions are available in a single click — "Manage my Folders" takes you directly to the share folder setup
View reference counts for each folder
New "All My References" view

Full Text Links — Users will be able to see more full-text links – in all products on the ISI Web of Knowledge platform. Additional full-text links make it easier for users to access more primary source materials.

2,000 additional e-journals are now enabled for full-text links for authorized users of these journals. This brings our current links portfolio to over 12,500 titles. See the list of linking journals.

New links to over an additional 180 publishers and societies.
In addition, full-text links have been added for over 70 more Open Access journals, bringing the fully linked OA titles to over 200. These links will be automatically implemented for all customers. All customers with full text links also automatically receive our links to Open Access journals.

Updates to the ERIC (Ebsco) Database

Records marked by ERIC as “peer-reviewed” can be easily accessed via a new check-box limiter.

The thesaurus has been upgraded to include new terms and the database now contains more than 1,194,000 records and links to more than 100,000 full text documents from ERIC.

Free resources for Black History Month

http://www.gale.com/free_resources/bhm/

New item in JSTOR sandbox

A new prototype has been added to the JSTOR Sandbox. The "Enhanced PDF" prototype will allow JSTOR users to try printing and downloading a new version of the PDF-formatted articles. This Enhanced PDF format provides new functionality and in many cases should make printing and downloading articles faster.

New features and functionality include:
The ability to use search/find capabilities to locate words or phrases within the PDF file.
The ability to copy and paste text.
The ability to use JSTOR PDF files with screen readers, such as JAWS for Windows.
On average, smaller file sizes which are quicker and easier to download.

The Enhanced PDF option will appear in the prototype when the JSTOR "Print" or "Download" options are selected.

We are very eager to hear about your experiences with this new PDF option, and we encourage you to submit your feedback via the "Comment on this feature" link at the top of each Sandbox page.

Please note that only a subset of content from the JSTOR collections is available for testing the Enhanced PDFs. Also, within this prototype other printing and downloading functionality has been disabled or removed. These changes are intended to focus attention on the Enhanced PDFs and may not reflect the actual design of the final version.

JSTOR User Services

Blackwell Synergy Relaunch Announcement

This redesign provides easier navigation, faster loading times, and improved access to tools for researchers. The main visible changes, other than the colour change, are the movement of the major functions to the left-hand menu, the grouping together of tools at each level of the website, tabs being replaced by left-menu listings and a cleaner and more modern look and feel. In addition, the new website meets the latest accessibility standards (ADA section 508 and W3C’s WAI-AA).

The new Blackwell Synergy still includes all the essential benefits for researchers, librarians and journal editors including strong journal branding at all levels. In addition to a new look, features have been repositioned to highlight options more clearly to users and enable them to make best use of the suite of tools available, such as most-read and most-cited articles, citation alerts, download to reference manager software, and reference links. The new design has been developed with feedback from researchers and librarians who have provided input during the development and testing phases.

As you know, Blackwell Synergy holds the full-text articles for over 850 online journals from Blackwell Publishing, many published on behalf of the world’s leading scholarly societies. We're happy to also tell you that this month we will be loading the One Millionth article to the site! Every month we’re also adding the backfiles for journals, digitized back to Volume 1, Issue 1.

New look for ReferenceUSA

At the end of December ReferenceUSA released a new look and feel for searching their products. The home page now offers search tips and outlines new features.


http://www.nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?rsrc=215

New Enhancements Now Active for Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life

For Researchers

Tagged search result records are now maintained across multiple searches within a session

“Untag all” functionality is now available on the results page

A single-term search may now be conducted from within a browseable index

The use of ANDing/ORing logic is now an option for subject terms in a displayed record

Search results are now pre-sorted based on publication date and, secondarily, on chronology scope

Search pre-processing now handles commonly misspelled words and those with American, British, and Canadian spelling variations

The “No Results Found” page now provides additional search assistance for the user, including single-click re-search of individual terms from the original query

NewsBank’s new Special Report: People in the News – Gerald Ford

This Special Report provides current and background research and biographical information on the life of the 38th President of the United States.
Included is coverage of Gerald Ford’s
• early life
• political career
• path to becoming President
• actions while in this office
• life after the White House

This Special Report is available on our NewsBank America's Newspapers subscription. Simply choose "Special Reports" accessible from the left side bar.

NewsBank’s new Special Report, "The Year in Review - 2006,"

"The Year in Review - 2006" takes a look back at the most important events and issues that occurred during the year.

Stories include the most important issues and events in the Arts, Business, Science, Health, Government, Crime, and other areas including people who made the news. Also are pictures of the major events and people, maps of areas that were in the news, and suggested search terms to use in NewsBank products.

This Special Report is available on our NewsBank America's Newspapers subscription. Simply choose "Special Reports" to locate the "Year in Review" reports.

Coming in early 2007: EBSCOhost Enhancements

Users who select multiple databases with see a list of databases being searched.

Terms entered in the Find field will be retained when users move among screens.

Advanced Guided Style Search Screen users will have the option, if enabled, to add a (Find field) row to the existing three rows.

The Sign in (to My EBSCOhost) and New Search links will swap positions on the interface.

New Look for Blackwell Synergy

Blackwell Synergy, the online journals platform from Blackwell Publishing, will soon be relaunched with a brand new design.

This redesign provides easier navigation, faster loading times, and improved access to tools for researchers. In addition, the new website will meet the latest accessibility standards (ADA section 508 and W3C's WAI-AA). The main visible changes are the moving of the major functions to the left-hand menu, the grouping together of tools at each level of the website, tabs being replaced by left-menu listings and a cleaner look and feel.

To preview the new site and to see what's new, what's changing, and what's moving visit:
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/synergyredesign/

New Features And Enhancements for EBSCO's Medical Databases

New EBSCOhost Features for Medical Databases that will benefit researchers include:

* In CINAHL, and MEDLINE, the subject authority (thesaurus) screen has been improved to include a combination of requested changes to search options, more intuitive use of thesaurus terms, and smoother navigation requiring fewer clicks.

* The Search History layout on the Advanced Search Screen has been streamlined, with fewer columns and a more efficient layout, while saved searches are now appended to a user's search history.

* An Export option is now included with Email and Save delivery options, bringing the feature more to the forefront, and eliminating the need for additional clicks.

* The Find field on the Advanced, Guided Style Search Screen will dynamically expand (once a search has been executed) to show complete search strings for queries that are longer than the initial search box allows.

* An "Ask-A-Librarian" link has been added within EBSCOhost (enabled at the library administrator's discretion) to allow users to send an email inquiry directly to their librarian (or any other designated recipient). Users sending an email request through this feature can elect to also include applicable search history to better illustrate their inquiry.

For more information regarding these new features or to provide additional feedback, please contact customer support at eptech@epnet.com.

Anthropological Literature is moving in June

Eureka (AL is a Eureka database) will be moving to FirstSearch in June.

For information about some of the plans for migrating the Eureka databases to FirstSearch. It is available here http://www.oclc.org/services/reference/rlg/default.htm.

As more information becomes available, we will send out further notices and continue to post information on the Current Transitions page http://www.oclc.org/community/rlg/transitions/default.htm

Thank you for using our online services.

Sincerely,

Wesley M. Taoka
OCLC, RLG Service Center

ReferenceUSA enhancements

Beginning November 1st, ReferenceUSA added some enhancements to its product:

* 2.5 million company photos
* 125,000 company descriptions
* 5000 annual reports in PDF format
* UCC Filings
* Local Content - which gives the current weather and local news
* Hours of Operation and credit cards accepted
* An Executive Gender Search

All presented in a new detailed listings layout. This new layout
presents an easier to read format.

New Web Site Debuts at www.eric.ed.gov

On September 17, 2006, ERIC released a new streamlined and restructured Web site. With a more powerful search engine, faster-loading pages, and an updated home page design including up-front links to ERIC features and information, the new site reflects ERIC-user feedback as well as technology changes.

The list of journals indexed in ERIC has been reformatted and now shows years of coverage and the total number of records in ERIC. The About ERIC page and some Help text has been rewritten for improved readability. Other areas will be similarly improved in the coming months. The addition of a dynamic "In the Spotlight" area on the home page will offer a rotating collection of ERIC news, facts, and highlights.


Search Engine is Capstone of Redesigned Site

Searching the ERIC collection is now faster and easier than ever, thanks to the updated site design and new search technology. The cross-platform search engine offers the user community the following improvements to enhance their ERIC experience:

Faster searches and document retrieval
Search terms highlighted in each results-record
New relevance-weighting standards to improve the quality of the search-results display
Addition of three options for sorting search results - author, source, and publication date.
Removal of the stemming feature, which means that quotes are no longer needed for exact matching of individual words or acronyms. The asterisk (*) wildcard provides stemming-like functionality (sometimes referred to as truncation), if needed.
Enhanced author searches permitting inclusion of first or middle initials (e.g., "Doe, C. John" or "Doe, John C.")
Underpinning ERIC's "new face" is the same core commitment to dissemination of education research and information. ERIC welcomes your input and invites you to contact us at ericfeedback@csc.com.

NewsBank’s WORLD CUP 2006 Special Report Site

The World Cup 2006 soccer/football games are bringing together top teams from around the world.
Follow the events, teams, games, and other related news in NewsBank’s new Special Report Site devoted to the World Cup.
This Special Report contains information on all countries related to:
* daily events and news
* player and coach profiles
* the games
* top athletes by country
* past games

Many other Reports are also available. All NewsBank Special Report Sites are located on the main NewsBank page. You can find NewsBank on our Databases and Articles page http://library.uncw.edu/web/research/databases/index.html by clicking on the letter "N". Once connected to NewsBank click on "reports" on the right side of the page to find reports on the World Cup, National Service, World Health, Natural Disasters Around the World, and Science and Health in the News.

The Kissinger Transcripts

Randall Library has purchased a new collection for the Digital National Security Archive, The Kissinger Transcripts: A Verbatim Record of U.S. Diplomacy, 1969–1977.

You can access this database by pasting this link into your browser: http://0-nsarchive.chadwyck.com.uncclc.coast.uncwil.edu/

or by going to the Randall Library "Article and Research Databases" page http://library.uncw.edu/web/research/databases-np/index.html and clicking on the letter D.

EBSCOhost Search Alerts & Journal Alerts Available via RSS Feeds

Did you know that you can set up search and journal alerts as RSS feeds? For
more information on using this EBSCOhost feature, please visit the following
URL: http://support.ebsco.com/knowledge_base/detail.php?id=2485

New Enhancements Coming this June for Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life

Dear Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life subscriber,

As part of a 50-year anniversary celebration in 2005, ABC-CLIO embarked on a multiyear program to upgrade and enhance both Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life. A new version of the databases, with a redesigned interface and many new features, was introduced in January 2006.

Now, based on feedback from customers, we're pleased to announce another upgrade to the databases. These new features will become active on June 22, 2006, with the release of version 4.1.

Version 4.1 features will include:

Cross-database searching between Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life
Faster, smarter searching, including:
suggested terms for searches that return no results

inverted author names

punctuation alternatives

dynamic search tips

Ability for users to save search histories to a personal profile

Enhanced search capability for time period searches that includes individual years and spans of years

Ability for users to build a set of tagged records across multiple searches

A display option for expanding all of a user's search result records at once

Addition of a "print-this-entry" option for each record in a search results display

Ability to easily limit searches to English language entries only

OpenURL-support for book entries in the Historical Abstracts database

ABC-CLIO is committed to building upon its legacy of producing landmark history resources, and we think you—and your patrons—will be pleased with the enhanced research capabilities of both databases. As always, your comments and feedback are welcome.

Two new special reports are available in Newsbank

Two new Special Reports are now available.

* National Service Programs provides information on many volunteer programs available to everyone. The site also supports the 2006-2007 High School Debate Topic.
* Mental Health with coverage to raise awareness of issues and research being done on this topic. The site supports Mental Health month.

National Service Programs covers:

* Americorps
* Peace Corps
* Citizen and Senior Corps
* Habitat for Humanity
* Military Service
* and other service and volunteer programs

Mental Health covers:

* studies and research
* current trends and care programs
* disorders
* global issues
* government involvement

Both Sites include current and background articles, related images, links to related web sites, maps, and suggested search terms to use in your NewsBank products to find out even more about these topics.

Upcoming Downtime for EJS, A-to-Z, and LinkSource

On Sunday, 7 May 2006, all EAMS services (EJS, A-to-Z, and LinkSource) will be temporarily unavailable due to electrical upgrades for disaster-preparedness at EBSCO International Headquarters. This downtime is scheduled to begin at 5 A.M. Central Time and should last approximately four hours.

Searchable Cited References in EBSCO

Did you know that EBSCO provides searchable cited references for
thousands of journals as part of several databases?

For more information on this feature, please visit the following
URL: http://www.epnet.com/thisTopic.php?topicID=313&marketID=1