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Action for Libraries

In Reference...

Edited by Brandie Baumann
Oxford Database Receives Accolades
Three core sources in Oxford's African American Studies Center (AASC) database have been recognized as outstanding publications.

  • Black Women in America received the 2006 RUSA Outstanding Reference, 2005 Booklist Best Reference/Editor's Choice and 2005 Choice Outstanding Academic Title awards.
  • Africana, The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, earned the 2005 Booklist Best Reference/Editor's Choice award and numerous congratulatory reviews from such publications as the School Library Journal, Starred Review; Booklist, Starred Review; Library Journal, Starred Review; and Choice.
  • The new Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895, From the Colonial Period to Frederick Douglass, has been lauded by Booklist, Starred Review, as "...highly recommended for all academic and large public libraries, and any library specializing in African-American studies."

To start a new subscription or for more information, contact BCR's Laura Chittivej (lchittiv@bcr.org). The BCR Oxford University Press (OUP) group subscription period for Oxford University Press databases is July 1 through June 30. Renewing libraries are encouraged to fill out the BCR Oxford order/renewal form (www.bcr.org/reference/OUP/OUP-Form.html) prior to the June 30 subscription deadline. Subscription pricing has increased an average of 5 percent.

OCLC FirstSearch Enhancements to WorldCat
Users of OCLC WorldCat may now add reviews, notes and tables of contents to WorldCat records through a new option that facilitates sharing among library users worldwide.

The user contribution option in WorldCat on the OCLC FirstSearch service extends a pilot program begun in late 2005 to enable contribution of content to WorldCat records in the Find in a Library interface of the Open WorldCat program. Content such as notes and tables of contents may be expanded or edited by other members of the viewing community. Personal reviews are visible to all WorldCat users, but may not be edited except by the original viewers.

A new tab labeled Add/View Comments in the full record display contains notes, reviews and tables of contents that have been contributed by WorldCat users. With the release of this new option, all content contributed through the Find in a Library interface will be visible. Content added through both Find in a Library and FirstSearch will be visible in all public views of the WorldCat database.

Users can immediately contribute content after registering a personal account. Guidelines for content contributions are provided; OCLC monitors all submissions. User- contributed content is associated with a WorldCat record, but is maintained separately and does not become part of the record's authoritative bibliographic information.

If you have questions, consult the online help or contact Regan Harper (rharper@bcr.org) at BCR.

OCLC FirstSearch Updates
The MLA International Bibliography retrospective content from 1926-1962 is now available at no additional cost to libraries already subscribing to the OCLC FirstSearch service. Drawn from 39 print volumes, all 160,000 records have been reviewed. Journal abbreviations and acronyms for close to 3,500 titles have been expanded, full journal names standardized and ISSNs attached. Almost 11,000 subject names and terms also have been standardized according to current practices.

OCLC has announced that three Pierian Press databases — Consumers Index, FactSearch and Media Review Digest — will be offered on a per-search basis only.

For additional information on FirstSearch, contact BCR's Karen Graham (kgraham@bcr.org).

COUNTER Statistics Measure FirstSearch Use
OCLC is now including a tab for COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) Release 2 reports on the www.stats.oclc.org/ Web page. Although no data will be available in these reports until June 10, it is necessary to have the data templates installed before OCLC begins loading data. Libraries will be able to see COUNTER report statistics for April 9-30, 2006, and all of May 2006 by June 10.

COUNTER statistics measure FirstSearch database and journal usage and are an enhancement to the statistics provided under the FirstSearch tab on OCLC's www.stats.oclc.org/ Web site. More information on the COUNTER statistics can be found at www.projectcounter.org/.

Wilson Adds Chronicle of Higher Education Full Text
Subscribers to WilsonWeb's Education Full Text database now have The Chronicle of Higher Education, a top news and career-information source for college and university faculty members, at their fingertips. Users of the Education Full Text database get comprehensive coverage to an international range of English-language periodicals, monographs and yearbooks, with cover-to-cover indexing, abstracts and full text of hundreds of journals.

To see a complete list of journals in the database, go to www.hwwilson.com/databases/educat.htm. For pricing and subscription information, contact Karen Graham (kgraham@bcr.org).