NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY; 2010-1

“Where books are burnt, in the end people are also burnt.”
~ Heinrich Heine
Library Adds Electronic Products
As indicated in the previous two issues, this year’s materials acquisition budget has allowed the library to restore book purchases to the healthier level of a couple of years ago, to consider restoring some subscriptions we had canceled, and to contemplate new and highly desirable products. Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the following electronic resources:
· ABI/Inform Complete ~ “Featuring over 4,975 journals, ABI/INFORM Complete™ is the most comprehensive business database on the market today. The combination of products forms a business database package that offers more than 3,840 full-text titles covering business and economic conditions, corporate strategies, management techniques, as well as competitive and product information. Its international coverage gives researchers a complete picture of companies and business trends around the world. ABI/INFORM Complete is used at major business schools including Harvard, Michigan, Wharton, Northwestern, and Chicago.”
· America History & Life with Full Text, Historical Abstracts with Full Text ~ American History & Life and Historical Abstracts have long been the standard indexes to the journal literature of American history and non-U.S. history respectively. Ramsey Library has maintained subscriptions to these relatively expensive indexes for some time. We are very pleased to announce the addition of full text articles.
“America: History and Life™ with Full Text is the definitive database of literature covering the history and culture of the United States and Canada, from prehistory to the present. With selective indexing for 1,700 journals from 1964 to present, this database is without question the most important bibliographic reference tool for students and scholars of U.S. and Canadian history. America: History and Life with Full Text also provides full-text coverage of nearly 200 journals and over 90 books. The database also includes citations and links to book and media reviews. Strong English-language journal coverage is balanced by an international perspective on topics and events, including abstracts in English of articles published in more than 40 languages.”
“Historical Abstracts™ with Full Text is an exceptional resource that covers the history of the world (excluding the United States and Canada) from 1450 to the present, including world history, military history, women’s history, history of education, and much more. Historical Abstracts™ with Full Text is essential for libraries supporting upper-division and graduate research. This authoritative database provides selective indexing of historical articles from more than 1,800 journals in over 40 languages back to 1955. In addition, this database provides access to the full text of more than 300 journals and over 130 books. History and social science researchers have used Historical Abstracts to discover significant and groundbreaking work for more than 50 years. No other history research tool matches its scholarly standards or comprehensive coverage.
· Art Full Text ~ Ramsey Library has long offered an electronic version of Art Abstracts which providing citations and abstracts but lacked full text articles. This upgrade This offers full text plus abstracts and indexing of an international array of some 500 peer-selected publications with full text access to some 200 with expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism.
· Cambridge Companions Online ~ Cambridge Companions are lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. All are collections of specially commissioned essays, shaped and introduced to appeal to student readers. Together the chapters add up to a systematic critical account of, for example Plato, Luther, Jane Austen, Tom Stoppard or Stravinsky, the French Novel or Jewish American Literature, and each title is supported by reference features such as a chronology and guide to further reading. Addressing topics and figures as diverse as Gothic Fiction and Arabic Philosophy, WB Yeats and Martin Luther, the online collection contains over 3,000 downloadable essays, taken from 322 Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics (195 volumes) and Philosophy, Religion and Culture (127 volumes). 2 new Companions have been added as part of the September 2009 update.
· Cambridge Histories Online ~ The Cambridge Histories have become an established and essential component of the academic research library, and now, for the first time, over 250 of these well-known, used and trusted volumes are available online, adding immense value to the texts and enhancing any aspect of historical research. 3 new volumes have been added to Cambridge Histories Online as of May 2009, bringing the total number of volumes included in the collection to 258.
· CREDO Reference ~ “Credo Reference is a . . . general reference solution for learners and librarians. Its full-text, aggregated content covers every major subject from the world’s best publishers of reference (materials).” Includes more than 3,270,127 entries from 473 titles and 66 publishers.
· Encyclopedia Britannica ~ Restoring an old favorite that we had to let go due to the budget.
· JSTOR A&S VIII ~ This addition to our essential store of scholarly periodicals includes “. . . include a minimum of one hundred forty (140) titles when it is completed at the end of 2011. This collection extends JSTOR’s coverage in disciplines across the social sciences and humanities, with new and expanded focus on art & art history, classical studies, philosophy, language & literature, and music.”
· Literature Resource Center ~ Literature criticism, biographies, work and topic overviews, reviews, and full text of many literary works–all searchable at the same time and returned in lists organized according to the type of research needs they serve. According to our friends at the publisher ~ “Literature Resource Center is the world’s most current, comprehensive and reliable online literature database. Uniquely relevant to today’s curriculum, the resource’s rich critical, biographical and contextual materials support interdisciplinary approaches, information literacy, and the development of critical thinking skills. Researchers will find the information they need on authors and their works, from all time periods and from around the world.”
· LYNDA ~ Online training library containing over 3,000 video tutorials on all types of software. Provides comprehensive training in office software, audio, video, photography, graphic design, web and interactive design, business, and development from expert instructors.
· Oxford Scholarship Online ~ A large and rapidly expanding cross-searchable library which offers quick and easy access to the full text of 3,036 Oxford books in Economics, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Literature, Classics, History, Law, Business, Psychology, and Music with new and recently-published books are added each year.
· SAGE Premier ~ Electronic access to approximately 514 peer-reviewed SAGE journals comprising over 230,000 articles with access to the backfile of each journal, dating back to 1999. SAGE publishes journals across 40 disciplines in the business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine fields with 47% of content in the package is ranked in the Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports®. Provides SAGE Journal Email Alerts for tables of contents notifications, announcements, and keyword, author, and citation alerts. This electronic journal package represents one of the largest collections in the social sciences and now includes an extensive STM list. All SAGE journal content is peer-reviewed.
Keep an eye out for announcements on the following online products:

· American Chemical Society Publications

· Palgrave Dictionary of Economics

· Political Science Complete

· SocIndex with Full Text
A LOSS FOR UNC ASHEVILLE & RAMSEY LIBRARY
January 15 was Bryan Sinclair’s last day at UNC Asheville and as a valuable part of the Ramsey Library team. Bryan joined the library faculty in 1997 as the User Instruction Librarian, served as the Web & Electronic Resources Librarian, and for the last several years ably filled the role of Associate University Librarian for Public Services. During his tenure and across his several positions, Bryan made significant contributions to the University, especially in helping to integrate the use of library and information resources into the enhancement of undergraduate research. He will be sorely missed.
NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY wishes smooth seas and following winds in the big city of Atlanta as he brings his talents, professionalism, and commitment to the role of Associate University Librarian for Public Services at Georgia State University Library. The old guy behind the curtain misses him, too.