Libraries

Citation

Pearse, E. (2001), "Libraries", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918bab.001

Libraries

LibrariesEmma Pearse

Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)Agrees to Distribute Interlibrary Loan Software

OCLC now provides computer-based cataloguing, reference, resource-sharing and preservation services to 38,000 libraries worldwide, and last year alone nearly 6,000 libraries arranged over 8.6 million loans through the online Interlibrary Loan service. OCLC has recently negotiated an agreement with Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties and Atlas Systems which will mean that ILLiad software will be licensed and distributed by OCLC as OCLC ILLiad Resource Sharing Management Software. ILLiad is a model, which has been implemented in software, of the interlibrary loan process and it will continue to be developed and supported by Atlas Systems.

Susanne McNatt, Interlibrary Services Librarian for Princeton University Libraries, looks forward to the system's installation at Princeton and has said that "The potential for merging all streams of borrowing and lending activity is a strong selling point for us. We believe patrons will be pleased with the user interface, and we are certain that the functionality on the staff side will enable us to streamline request processing." The software automates routine borrowing and lending functions within a library's interlibrary loan department, it provides a Web interface that enables library end users to submit ILL requests and allows them to track the status of their requests at any time without staff intervention. It also provides comprehensive Web-based statistics on every aspect of each ILL request and includes interfaces with the OCLC ILL, the National Library of Medicine's DOCLINE service and other ILL services.

OCLC: c/o Tony Melvyn, Senior Consulting Product Support Specialist, 6565 Frantz Rd, Dublin, OH 43017-3395. Tel: (614) 761 5091; E-mail: tony_melvyn@oclc.org

NYLINKBecomes Emeraldplus Consortium Participant

Nylink, a membership organisation providing services to libraries throughout New York State and beyond, has reached a consortium agreement with MCB University Press to become an Emeraldplus consortium participant. Nylink membership comprises 350 institutions, representing more than 700 library systems, and this new agreement will give approximately a potential 250,000 online users access to the Emerald Intelligence + Fulltext database. Emerald, the Electronic Management Research Library Database, delivers multi-user access to over 130 journals in the full range of management and business disciplines. Nylink will now be able to take advantage of Emerald features such as weekly updating, PDF and HTML format availability and remote access for institution members.

Nylink: http://nylink.suny.edu/

UK National Health ServicePilots new Electronic Library

As part of its commitment to providing online health services, and to further the work of NHS Direct, the NHS has launched a full pilot version of the National electronic Library for Health. This new venture is initially aimed primarily at NHS staff and will give them instant access to resources that include a database of clinical guidelines, the Cochrane Library and news from the press. The library will also provide information to the public through NHS Direct Online, by means of public-friendly gateways to specific areas and through virtual branch libraries, online communities which will share information about specific topics with both the public and healthcare professionals.

The service is aimed to complement the work of existing NHS libraries and will provide new opportunities for librarians wanting to work in digital and hybrid libraries. It will also provide a national framework for subscriptions to electronic resources for NHS staff.

NHS Information Authority: http://www.nhs.uk/nelh; NHSnet http://nww.nhs.uk/nelh

IDEALReferenceWorksIncorporates Academic Press Encyclopaedia Collection

The International Digital Electronic Access Library (IDEAL), has now added eight more encyclopedias to its reference works aimed at librarians and scientists, which are available online. The specific topics covered by the new encyclopedias range widely from biodiversity to forensic science, and the online versions offer some additional features such as 3D images and animations. Researchers' needs are also met by the provision of searchable text features including hyperlinked cross-references and a searchable electronic index. Because purchase of the print editions of any of the encyclopedias includes free access to the online versions, this means that librarians are able to register all members of relevant institutions by Internet Protocol number for unlimited usage. Free 48-hour trials are available to all from www.idealibrary.com/idealreferenceworks.

Academic Press: c/o Daria DeCooman ddecooman@acad.com Tel: (619) 699 6362.

UK's Resource Discovery Network (RDN)Launches New Subject Hubs

A team of information specialists and subject experts based at the University of Nottingham Greenfield Medical Library, working with experts at other organisations throughout the UK, has created the BIOME hub. The service is designed specifically to meet the research needs of students, researchers, academics and practitioners and it is based at Nottingham University. The hub evolved from the Omni service and now provides expanded subject coverage and access to evaluated Internet resources in the health and life sciences. The five gateways it comprises focus individually on health and medicine, animal health, biological and biomedical sciences, the natural world and agriculture, food and forestry.

RDN is also now also seeking proposals from UK higher and further education institutions who want to lead the development of two new subject hubs. The new hubs will cover the areas of arts and creative industries and sport, tourism and leisure, and the call for proposals can be found at http://www.rdn.ac.uk/calls/.

Resource Discovery Network Centre: c/o Simon Jennings, RDNC Service Manager, Kings College London, 3rd Floor, Strand Bridge House, 138-142 The Strand, London WC2R 1HH. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7848 2934; Fax: +44 (0) 207 848 2939; E-mail: simon.jennings@rdn.ac.uk

InfotrieveLaunches New Virtual Library Platform

The new Virtual Library platform from Infotrieve allows users to search "The Article Store", one of the world's largest libraries of article and journal content, for free, and then pay for the full-text of articles which can be delivered by a number of methods, including e-mail, fax and courier. Further developments, scheduled for the first quarter of 2001, include the incorporation of the search tool Article Finder, a bibliographic database containing over 22 million citations and 10 million abstracts from more than 35,000 scholarly journals, and a collection of over 500 electronic journals with pay-per article selection which is expected to expand to several thousand journals later in 2001. Benefits to users include a free user account management system, a method of customising visuals and search parameters and a free table of contents alerting service to articles from pre-selected journals.

Infotrieve: http://www3.infotrieve.com info@infotrieve.com

World Health Organization (WHO) and SilverPlatterProvide Research Resources for Developing Countries

Teachers and students at leading research institutions in Armenia, Ghana, Mali, Mongolia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Uganda and Uzbekistan will have digital access to some of the highest quality international scientific information under the pilot phase of a joint venture between SilverPlatter, the WHO and the Open Society Institute (OSI). The programme will be rolled out over five years and it is hoped that 30 to 40 countries will be participating by the end of the second year. SilverPlatter has provided five bibliographic products and has partnered with publishers to provide three databases. It is thought that one of the main benefits will be for health and medical research in the developing world, as researchers will have access to the same journals, databases, discussion groups and grant opportunities as their colleagues in wealthier countries.

SilverPlatter: c/o Sue Velilla pr@silverplatter.com Tel: (800) 343 0064 ext 294; WHO http://who.org

SwetsnetNavigatorIncreases Medical and Health Coverage

The electronic journal service SwetsnetNavigator doubled its title list in the last six months of last year, and Swets Blackwell have recently added 53 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) titles to this service. The journals concerned will enhance the amount of medical and health science information available to users and will be particularly useful to physicians, nurses, clinicians and students. LWW feel that the additional access and ease of use that this partnership will bring will be a great benefit to their users. Seventy-six publishers of scholarly information are now involved in SwetsnetNavigator, which offers online access to over one million full-text articles, as well as abstracts and tables of contents from 16,000 journals.

SwetsnetNavigator: http://www.swetsnavigator.com LWW: http://www.lww.com

ingentaReaches New Reference Linking Agreements

Building on its partnership with Silver Platter Information and numerous subscription agencies, ingenta has announced that it will collaborate with Ex Libris to integrate its electronic journals service with Ex Libris's linking software, as both companies will adopt the OpenURL standard and jointly implement the SFX framework of open linking. This means that ingenta's library customers who currently host an SFX server will have additional points of access to the electronic journals they subscribe to, and users will have extended linking capabilities, for instance from a record in an abstracting and indexing database to the electronic full text in ingenta, which is free to subscribers.

ingenta have also extended the reach of the research content they make available through an agreement with Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA), whereby users of CSA's 70-plus bibliographic databases will be able to link directly to full-text articles in ingenta.

FIZ Karlsruhe and TIB HannoverCreate GetInfo

FIZ Karlsruhe, a German non-profit organisation which provides information services for research and development in academia and industry and TIB Hannover, the German Central Special Library for Technology and Science, have allied to create a new Web resource for full-text literature in science and technology. The project, which is being supported by the German Ministry of Education, will be available online in spring 2001. GetInfo aims to supply a service to authors, publishers and readers alike by providing a full-text server for electronic documents and metadata. It will also supply authors and publishers with digtization and archiving of their documents, references in databases, marketing services and customer administration and billing. It will be a central access point for electronic publications from specialist publishers and grey literature not currently available through commercial book channels. Any documents that are not available electronically can be ordered using the two organisations' systems, TIBOrder and FIZ AutoDoc, which will be integrated in GetInfo.

FIZ Karlsruhe: http://www.fiz-karlsruhe.de GetInfo: http://www.getinfo-doc.de