A c t i o n f o r L i b r a r i e s — D e c e m b e r 2 0 0 2

In Reference...

By Brandie Baumann

BCR and Encyclopædia Britannica Offer Free Preview of Databases
BCR and Encyclopædia Britannica are offering educational institutions a free preview of Britannica Online along with the new Britannica Online School Edition and Annals of American History Online. The free, institution-wide preview is available through December 31 at the following URLs:

Britannica Online: search.eb.com/storepassword
Britannica Online School Edition: school.eb.com/storepassword
Annals of American History Online: america.eb.com/storepassword

A username and password are required to view each site. Request them from Laura Chittivej (lchittiv@bcr.org). Once the username/password are stored, you can preview each site using the above URL's without entering the /storepassword portion.

Britannica Online and Britannica Online School Edition each now contain three databases Encyclopædia Britannica, Britannica Student Encyclopedia and Britannica Elementary Encyclopedia as well as 150 full-text periodicals and much more. Britannica Online School Edition offers high-quality online learning materials developed by teachers and curriculum experts, along with a dictionary, thesaurus, Internet guide, atlas and more. Annals of American History Online contains original source documents in U.S. history since 1493. Other online databases are also available.

Discounted consortial pricing is available. To subscribe to any of the databases, go to www.bcr.org/~ids/Reference/, and complete the BCR Online Order Form. For more information and pricing options, contact Laura Chittivej (lchittiv@bcr.org).

BCR Shared Collection Set II
The new BCR netLibrary Shared Collection Set II title list pricing and online order form are now available at www.bcr.org/~ids/Reference/Netlibrary/NL-Menu.html. This new collection of e-books from netLibrary focuses on books most used in academic libraries and consists of 1,076 titles. No titles are duplicated from either the first BCR Shared Collection, which is now closed to new participants, or the BCR Ready Reference Collection, currently accepting new members. Like the earlier netLibrary shared collections organized by BCR, the new Shared Collection Set II of e-books is a one-time purchase. This is not a subscription service.

Contact Laura Chittivej (lchittiv@bcr.org) with questions or for further information.

H. W. Wilson Offers Special Pricing
The H.W. Wilson Company is offering special promotional pricing on some of its electronic databases available on the new WilsonWeb. BCR libraries that subscribe to H.W. Wilson will find enhancements and discounted pricing on H.W. Wilson's Book Review Digest Plus, Short Story Index and Essay and General Literature Index. Libraries are offered the choice of a "three pack" purchase option discount as well as discounts on the individual databases.

Discount pricing and the three-pack option are also available to public, community college and school libraries for the following science full-text databases: Applied Science and Technology Full Text, Biological and Agricultural Index Plus and General Science Full Text. Discounts are also available for individual databases.

K-12 schools purchasing H.W. Wilson's Biography Reference Bank and Wilson Biographies Plus Illustrated are eligible for these discounts if they purchase the databases before December 31. In addition, academic libraries may take advantage of this special promotional pricing on full-text databases by purchasing either the Index to Legal Periodicals Full Text or Agricultural Index Plus databases.

For database descriptions and title lists for these databases, see H.W. Wilson's home page at www.hwwilson.com. For questions and to order, contact Karen Graham (kgraham@bcr.org) at BCR.

OCLC FirstSearch News
OCLC has completed a number of enhancements to netLibrary records in WorldCat in FirstSearch. Users will now be able to see all tables of contents that are available in netLibrary's collection of
e-books in detailed records in WorldCat regardless of whether their library has purchased these
e-books or not. This will help users evaluate the contents of netLibrary e-books they retrieve and help librarians evaluate new titles to see if they would like to add them to their collection. In addition, links have been added to the WorldCat records so the users linking to netLibrary resources will be able to tell easily whether they can view just a description or the full text of the e-book.

Users of the OCLC FirstSearch Sociological Abstracts database now have a Thesaurus of Sociological Indexing Terms available that allows them to perform more powerful searches and to increase the effectiveness and relevance of their searches. The thesaurus contains an alphabetical listing of Subject Heading descriptors used for indexing and searching the Sociological Abstracts database and printed index, beginning with the April 1986 issue. It also references discontinued headings from the former Descriptor Authority File.

Users of the OCLC FirstSearch ATLA Religion and ATLA Serials (ATLAS) databases will see a number of new enhancements. The number of titles indexed in the ATLA Religion database has increased to 1,553, and new bibliographic information has been added. In addition, OCLC is adding several new indexes in the Expert search mode and a new linking mechanism that allows users to quickly find related records from within a retrieved record. ATLAS subscribers also will be able to link to ATLAS remote full text from within serial and issue records.

For questions or to subscribe to any reference database, contact BCR's Rosario Garza (rgarza@bcr.org), Karen Graham (kgraham@bcr.org) or Laura Chittivej (lchittiv@bcr.org).

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