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

In Reference...

WilsonWeb Enhancements
WilsonWeb subscribers to Children's Catalog, Public Library Catalog, Fiction Catalog, Senior High School Library Catalog and Middle & Junior High School Library Catalog should have begun receiving quarterly updates giving them more timely information on new books and CD-ROMs. A new 16th Edition of the Senior High School Library Catalog is coming this fall.

Book Review Digest has been expanded to the new Book Review Digest Plus. This enhanced database widens its scope from its former base of 109 periodicals to providing entries from thousands of periodicals. Users are now able to retrieve book summaries, bibliographic data, full-text reviews, review excerpts or basic citations from more than 800,000 reviews covering more than 350,000 books, including fiction, nonfiction, reference works, children's books and more.

Biography Reference Bank now can retrieve data from the full line of WilsonWeb databases. Articles about any individuals on any WilsonWeb resource be it biographical profile, feature article, interview, essay, book review, performance review, speech, poem or obituary are now accessible via the database. Users have access to coverage of the names in Wilson's ever-growing name authority file with more than 308,000 searchable names.

Erlbaum Quits ECO Print Subscriber Program
Lawrence Erlbaum has notified OCLC that it will no longer participate in the Electronic Collections Online Print Subscriber Program starting in 2003. Users instead may wish to purchase either an online only subscription or a print only subscription when its comes time for renewal. If, however, an institution purchases the 2003 print only subscription and then wishes to upgrade to online access, the publisher will charge an additional 12 percent to 15 percent for the online access (excluding the OCLC access/archive fee). The publisher will also sell a combined print plus online subscription, which will have a higher price than a print or online only subscription.

OCLC FirstSearch News
The Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia, formerly titled the World Almanac Knowledge Source, is now available in the World Almanacs database in OCLC FirstSearch. The Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia contains several thousand articles on a wide array of topics including science and medicine, country profiles, current social issues and biographies of important historical figures, along with current facts and statistics.

The CINAHL Thesaurus, another valuable resource available on the OCLC FirstSearch service, is now accessible to users searching the CINAHL database. The CINAHL Thesaurus contains all index terms currently used to provide subject access in the CINAHL database. It displays subject headings, preferred subject headings with associated alternate headings, scope notes that give a brief definition of a term and broader, related and narrower search terms that let users perform more relevant and comprehensive searches in the database.

Ovid Discontinues POLN and MEAB Databases
Ovid Technologies is retiring the POLN (Polling the Nations) and MEAB (Mechanical Engineering Abstracts) databases. POLN will not be offered after July 2003, and new orders are not being accepted. Current subscribers have been offered the opportunity to examine three alternative databases on a trial basis Wilson Omni File Full Text Select, A Matter of Fact and Periodical Abstracts. Current customers should have received notification by mail.

The Mechanical Engineering Abstracts (MEAB) database is being retired on December 31, 2002. No new orders are being taken, and all users with subscriptions running into 2003 will be compensated on a pro-rata basis. Users should look for a letter from Ovid detailing the change and alternative database products available through Ovid.

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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