As you can see, the library website has a new design! What do you think? Leave a comment below or e-mail us!

[Edited to add: we have been getting a lot of attempts from spammers to post comments on this entry, so comments are now closed. If you have any additional comments or questions, please feel free to e-mail me - Laura Harris - at harlaura [at] gvsu.edu.]

American History in Video is a video collection put together by Alexander Street Press. Alexander Street Press is also responsible for Dance in Video, Opera in Video, and Theatre in Video, which the library subscribes to and you may be familiar with. They are making American History in Video freely available until November 15. From their e-mail to librarians:

Since launching in April, American History in Video has grown to include more than 1,500 titles and 500 hours. It will continue to grow to include more than 5,000 complete titles and 2,000 hours of rare newsreels and important documentaries from leading producers such as PBS, The History Channel®, Bullfrog Films, and California Newsreel.

Bring your over due books in by July 13 and the fines will be waived.*

Take advantage of this opportunity and enjoy the rest of your summer!

(* This offer does not include Interlibrary Loan fines, which involve payment to other libraries)

This post comes from librarian Laurel Balkema…

I was very excited to see that one of my favorite and heavily used interdisciplinary Reference Books was selected as the Best Reference Book for 2005 by BOOKLIST, the review journal of the American Library Association.

The new 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Religion is a 15 volume set covering all religions, their leaders, and their histories as well as their relationships to history, culture, nature, and science. It is available at Allendale and Holland, Call # REF BL 31 .E46 2005. Over 600 new entries include information about medicine and healing; women, sexuality, and gender; ecology; and the study of religion in non-Western cultures. One entry I have used in particular is under ECOLOGY AND RELIGION and describes how each religion views nature and ecology, an assignment in several classes with which I have worked. It is an especially useful resource for Medieval/Middle Ages studies as well.

Want to learn more about this title? Check out the review from Booklist or stop by the Zumberge or Holland libraries and take a look for yourself.

If you’ve been using the library’s subscription databases recently, you may have noticed the full-text finder has a new look. The library is switching to different software to provide this service. The end result will be more accurate results when you click on the Check for Full Text link, but with software from a different company comes a different look.

Even with the new look, though, the process you follow to access full-text articles will continue to be the same. To check for full text click on the Full Text? icon or the link provided by the database. On the new page that loads, you will want to:

1. Click on the article or journal link (if the article is not available online, you will get a message stating this).
2. If clicking on this link does not bring you to the full text, you should then click on the name of the database to search for the article title in that database. When full text is available from certain databases, like ones FirstSearch and LexisNexis, it will never bring you right to the full text. That does not mean the article is not online, it just means that you have to do a little more work to get to the article.
3. If you do not find the full text of the article click on the links to search by journal title or by ISSN. This will perform a search in the catalog to determine whether we have that article on paper or film. Remember, we have many, many journals that are not available online!
4. If you determine we do not have the article online or in the library, you can click on the Submit an Interlibrary Loan Request link. This currently takes you to a page that will connect you with your online library account to make the request. Eventually, you should be connected right to a form that you can fill out, as is the case with our old software.

We realize it can be frustrating when things you are used to change, but we think that you will be very happy with the better results this new full-text finder will provide. If you have any questions, you can always contact a reference librarian for more assistance.

JSTOR is a cooperative program dedicated to providing a trusted full-text electronic archive of scholarly journals. GVSU participates in JSTOR and provides access to all JSTOR titles via the “Databases” link on the library homepage, via the “ejournals” link on the library homepage, and by individual records for each title in the online library catalog, including links to full-text content.

JSTOR does not include coverage of current issues, but, by definition, archives of past issues. The full run of each issue is included, up to three or five years ago, depending on the wishes of the publisher of each journal. As the new year rolled around to 2006, another year of coverage for most journals was added (this is called the moving wall, because each year another retrospective year is added).

Please contact Bob Schoofs (331-2636) if you have any questions.

The History E-Book Project is one of our newest resources for the humanities. Additions are already being made as Cambridge University Press announced they will produce new XML titles.

The History E-Book Project of the American Council of Learned Societies is pleased to announce that Cambridge University Press, long an important publisher in the Project’s title list, has joined its partnership to produce new XML titles, becoming the ACLS’s tenth participating university press for XML development. According to HEB Project directors Eileen Gardiner and Ron Musto, “Cambridge’s participation comes at an important time, as the ACLS project has achieved self-sustainability and is focused on completing R&D on its suite of XML features and capabilities. These have allowed electronic publishing in History to move from experimental
and individual efforts toward replicable and scalable workflows and publication standards. Cambridge’s excellent History list will help us achieve these goals.”