What WAS New at OSU Libraries - 2001

What WAS New Archives | What's New

What WAS New: July - December 2001

Pauling Virtual Exhibit site honored

"Linus Pauling: A Centenary Exhibit," a website constructed by the staff of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, received notice of having been honored as one of "Ten Cool Websites" for education excellence. The award is granted monthly by the Exploratorium, a hands-on science museum located in San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts.

12/14/2001

New Bound Journal Loan Policy

Beginning in January 2002, borrowing privileges for bound journals will be extended to OSU undergraduates and staff. The loan period will be 24 hours as it now is for faculty and graduate students. There will be no holds, recalls or renewals.

An assessment of this new policy will be conducted during the first six months of its implementation.

Faculty are advised to place on Reserve those individual journal volumes that are expected to be in high demand. Click on Faculty Information for a description of the process.

Reasons for implementing this policy include: 1) an increasing participation in agreements for sharing resources within and between Oregon academic libraries, 2) a proliferation of requests to take materials out of the library to use in developing multi-media presentations, and 3) an effort to reduce the unfortunate and alarming rate of mutilation of the journal collection.

Richard Brumley
Head of Collection Development

Lorraine Borchers
Head of Access Services

12/12/2001

Alumna Donates Early Books

The Valley Library's Special Collections recently received a donation of three incunabula (books printed before 1501) from Oregon State alumnus Mary Louise Gilfillan Simon. Simon, the daughter of former OSU dean, Francois Gilfillan, presented the books to Cliff Mead, head of Special Collections, during Alumni Weekend June 1, 2001.

Of the three books donated, Lilium medicinae, by Bernard de Gordon, (ca.1260-ca.1318) is by far the scarcest item in the donation. This is the first French edition and it had widespread circulation among European physicians due to the comprehensiveness of its subject matter, the orderly arrangement of its topics, lucid style, and, above all, by its practical usefulness to its readers (medical books being the most practical of books for the time period). It is one of only three known copies to exist in the United States, the other two being held at Yale University's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library and the Philadelphia College of Physicians library.

Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae (Venice, 1491) was written by one of the most popular and widely read thinkers of the medieval period. This book was considered the second most popular text next to the Vulgate Bible during the middle ages. It was translated into Old English by King Alfred, into Old French by Jean de Meun, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer and into Elizabethan English by Queen Elizabeth I.

Werner Rolevinck's Fasciculus temporum (Venice, Erhard Ratdolt, 1480) is a well-known illustrated book of the 15th century and one of the most read world chronicles of its time. It is also the earliest chronological work to be printed. The demand for the book was so strong it appeared in at least 33 editions and was translated into German, French and Dutch. In fact, the Fasciculus temporum could be called the world's first "best seller". The various editions were amended in the localities that they were printed at to bring them up to date or to add items of local interest or history. This edition ends with an account of the siege of the city of Rhodes by the Turks in 1480.

7/13/2001

Circ to Issue Date Due Receipts

The Valley Library Circulation Unit will begin providing date due receipts on June 29, 2001. Instead of staff stamping the due date on a slip at the back of a book at check out, patrons will receive a printed list of titles with due dates. In addition to reducing the time and materials needed to process books, the receipt provides an accurate list of items to which patrons can later refer. The date due receipt will also have the library web address at which people can view their own circulation record and renew items.

At the Guin Library, patrons continue to use the self checkout system. This will now generate data due receipts when they complete their transaction.

7/13/2001

Pauling Centenary Exhibit on the Web

Linus Pauling: A Centenary Exhibit can now be viewed online. The exhibit was prepared by the staff of Special Collections and University Archives units of the Oregon State University Libraries. Materials are from the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers held by Special Collections and various photographic collections in the University Archives. This exhibit was originally on display in the Memorial Union at Oregon State University from January 22 to March 5, 2001.

6/11/2001

The Messenger Now Online

Our biannual newsletter, The Messsenger, is now available for you on our website. The Messenger is our way of communicating with our donors and other friends of the library. It features articles on library events and personalities both current and historical. The newsletter also has some articles on general library trends and other topical pieces. We try to keep it fun and informative. If you are already familiar with The Messenger, you will notice that we have changed its look recently. Please peruse the publication at your leisure. We would love to hear any comments or suggestions you have.

6/8/2001

What WAS New: January 2001 - June 2001

Transition from UnCover to ingenta

The UnCover service is combining with ingenta to offer a new and improved database of journals.

As a result, OSU's UnCover service will no longer be available after noon on Friday, May 18. The new ingenta service will continue to offer document delivery (self requested copies of journal articles not available in OSU Libraries) and the Reveal Research Alerts service (journal tables-of-content delivered to your e-mail)to OSU faculty and students. If you have an exisiting UnCover profile, you will be automatically transferred to the new service.

OSU's current UnCover users will notice several improvements made available by ingenta including:

  • Access to a combined ingenta/UnCover integrated database - 11 million citations from over 20,000 scholarly journals
  • Electronic (PDF and/or HTML), Ariel and fax delivery
  • Reveal Research Alerts will draw from the combined UnCover and ingenta databases
  • Streamlined, easy to use interface with faster and more advanced searching methods
  • Links from Reveal alerts to the Web site

The ingenta gateway will not be available until further notice.

5/15/01

BioOne Journals Available Online

Oregon State University Libraries now have access to the BioOne package of electronic journals. Coverage is from 2000 to the present. Full text is available in HTML and PDF format.

BioOne is the product of an innovative collaboration between scientific societies, libraries, academe and the private sector. BioOne brings to the Web a uniquely valuable aggregation of the full-texts of high-impact bioscience research journals. Most of these titles are published by small societies and non-commercial publishers, and, until now, have been available only in printed form.

5/4/2001

Northwest Art Collection Docents Program

Art lovers should be sure to look at the new Art Docents program at the Valley Library. The first meeting is Wednesday, April 18 at 9:30.

4/5/2001

Search CRC Engineering Handbooks Online

Oregon State University Libraries now has a subscription to ENGnetBASE, an online collection of 50 engineering handbooks published by CRC Press.

3/26/2001

JSTOR Journal Archive Added to OSU Libraries Collection

The Oregon State University Libraries now have a subscription to the journal archive JSTOR. This provides full-text electronic access to a number of journals. JSTOR is an archival collection of journal articles. The collection includes over 140 titles in the humanities, social sciences and sciences. It does not provide access to the most current issues of the journals. JSTOR's agreements with publishers include a gap between the most recently published issue and the date of the most recent issues available in JSTOR ranging, in most cases, from 2 to 5 years.

3/14/2001

Library Receives New Endowed Chair

A recent donation of $2 million dollars has established a new endowed chair at Oregon State University Libraries. The chair will be called the Gray Family Chair for Innovative Library Services. The focus of the position is fourfold:

  • to identify innovative means for accessing and improving the delivery of information
  • to anticipate trends in technology relevant to Library Services
  • to develop and implement a strategy for making print and digitized information more easily accessible
  • to form and coordinate project teams of librarians, researchers, and graduate students who will develop methods for adapting advances in information technology to meet the needs of researchers, students and the citizens of Oregon

1/18/2001

New ILL Article Delivery

Beginning Wednesday, January 17, 2001, articles that are requested through InterLibrary Loan will be delivered via the Web! When a requested article arrives, you will receive an e-mail with information about how to retrieve your article. The e-mail will provide a web address (URL) for you to go to as well as your assigned user name and a password. From this web page, you will be required to log in to retrieve your article. Each article is available for an unlimited number of viewings for two weeks.

Articles are posted in PDF format and require the Adobe Acrobat reader (included on the ORSTware CD available at the Technical Assistance Desk in the library and on the web site) to be viewed.

To expedite receipt of articles you request, please be sure to include your e-mail address in your request.

1/12/2001

netLibrary Electronic Books

The Oregon State University Libraries have acquired a collection of online books (ebooks) through netLibrary. The Libraries currently own 1,215 netLibrary books, including reference books, computer science books (including the O'Reilly and Associates titles), and books on the Pacific Northwest.

The netLibrary titles are cataloged in Oasis. To see what books are available through netLibrary, you can do an Author search in Oasis for netLibrary. Clicking on the link in an individual Oasis record for a title will direct your browser to the netLibrary page for that book. Clicking on Preview will allow you to read the book, if it is not currently being used by another reader. The Checkout option allows you exclusive access to the title for a 12-hour period.

Accessing these titles from off-campus requires the establishment of a personal account. This must be done from a campus computer or by going through the OSU modem pool or the Library's proxy server.

1/18/2001