Online Resources Continue to Grow

During the 2006-2007 Academic year the Weinberg Memorial Library continued to add to its growing list of electronic resources available to current University of Scranton students, faculty and staff, both on and off-campus. All of the databases mentioned in this article are available from the Library's home page by moving your mouse over "Find Journals Articles & Newspapers" and clicking on the "A-Z List of Databases" link.

 

In June 2006, the Weinberg Memorial Library was accepted as a member of the Access Pennsylvania Database. The access Pennsylvania Database is a statewide library union catalog combining the holdings of more than 2,900 school, public, academic and special libraries within Pennsylvania. By agreeing to participate in this group, the Weinberg Memorial Library was able to secure access for its users to 10 databases. In addition to these databases, the Library also acquired over 12,000 netLibrary e-books that are now available to users through the Library's online catalog.

 

Here are brief descriptions of the databases that the University of Scranton campus community now has access to as a result:

 

Book Index with Reviews (BIR)
The Book Index with Reviews database was developed as a collaborative effort between three major vendors in the publishing & book industry: EBSCO Publishing, Baker & Taylor, and NoveList. The database provides information on over 3.8 million book titles in a variety of formats, including large print books, audiobooks, fiction, nonfiction, etc. The reviews are full-text.

 

Gale's Contemporary Authors
The Contemporary Author's Online database offers current biographical and bibliographic information on over 120,000 authors in an easy, searchable format.  The database is updated continuously with approximately 3,000 new entries added annually. The Contemporary Author's Online database complements the Library's subscription to the print version of the Contemporary Authors and  Contemporary Authors New Revision Series.

 

Wired.MD -Consumer Health & Patient Education Video Database
The wired.MD database uses the streaMed products to deliver its consumer health products which include: online videos, handouts which can be read online or printed, animations of various medical procedures, as well as links to credible web health sites. The site includes over 365 multimedia videos and 1385 associated printable handouts.

 

The following databases are searchable through the familiar EBSCOhost interface. The Library already subscribes to a number of EBSCO databases. However, by joining Access Pennsylvania, the Library has been able to provide access to seven more. In addition to the six EBSCO databases described below, the Library also has access to EBSCO's version of the ERIC (Education Resource Information Center) database.

 

Book Collection: Nonfiction
This EBSCO database contains full-text summaries and abstracts for over 3,600 popular nonfiction books. The database was developed for school and public libraries but contains content spanning a wide range of core subject areas, including: careers, health, sports, technology, etc.

 

History Reference Center
EBSCO's History Reference Center database includes full-text articles from more than 2,000 reference books, encyclopedias, and non-fiction books as well as over 59,600 historical documents, more than 49,600 biographies, more than 110,200 historical photos and maps and more than 80 hours of historical video. The database also includes full-text articles from more than 120 history journals.

 

Professional Development Collection
This EBSCO database contains more than 200 full-text educational reports and over 500 full-text (including approximately 350 peer-reviewed) education journals. The database was developed to aid professional educators in their research. Full text information in this database dates back as far as 1965.

 

EBSCO also provides the following three databases; however, each has a different, user-friendly, interface.

 

Consumer Health Complete
EBSCO's Consumer Health Complete database, helps provide consumer-oriented health information on a variety of health and wellness topics. Over 4,100 full-text health reports are available for searching as well as full-text consumer health pamphlets and leaflets from health organizations, evidence-based reports, and numerous encyclopedias and reference works. Full-text articles from health-related periodicals are also available.

 

NoveList
EBSCO's NoveList database was designed to help readers locate fiction books by subject, author, or title. Readers who want similar books to those they enjoy reading can locate them through the "Find Similar Books" button.

 

NoveList K-8
The focus of this EBSCO database is fiction for children. It provides resources for teachers, such as, book lists, booktalk materials and teaching guides for picture books and children's fiction.

 

In addition to the electronic resources provided by Access Pennsylvania, the Weinberg Memorial Library has added the following three databases to its collection.

 

JSTOR Arts & Sciences Collection II
JSTOR Arts & Sciences Collection II adds another 125 full-text journals (see http://www.jstor.org/about/asII.list.html for a listing of titles) with archival rights to the Library's ejournal holdings. The disciplines covered in this collection include economics, history, Latin American, Middle Eastern, and Slavic studies, to name a few. JSTOR maintains a "moving wall" which ranges from zero to ten years. This is the time period between the last issue available in JSTOR and the most recently published issue of a journal.

 

Standard & Poor's NetAdvantage Database
NetAdvantage takes many of Standard & Poor's highly valued business research publications and moves them into the online environment for easier, faster, more convenient access. Publication standards such as: Register of Corporations, Directors, and Executives; The Outlook, Industry Surveys, Stock Reports, and more, are now easily searchable and available 24/7 through the Library's home page.

 

Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Hosted by the University of Toronto, Iter (a Latin word meaning "a journey or path") is an online bibliographic database containing more than 862,000 records of articles, essays, books, dissertation abstracts, encyclopedia entries and reviews, collected from almost 6,000 publications, including 1,500 journals. While the citations in Iter are not linked to full-text sources, this unique database is a valuable resource for scholars and others as it cross searches a wide variety of materials on the Middle Ages through the Renaissance.

 

An online edition of Paul Oskar Kristeller's Iter Italicum, developed by Brill in conjunction with Iter, is also available for searching. This database provides researchers with the most comprehensive finding list available of previously uncatalogued or incompletely catalogued Renaissance humanistic manuscripts found in libraries and collections all over the world.