- Find It! CUNY Libraries have added a new and powerful linking tool called Find it! that helps readers get more from their database searches. When students and faculty see the Find it! button or the words "Find it!" as they search a database for articles or other texts, they might see links to a complete article or other electronic text, a link to CUNY+ (is the article available in a CUNY library in print format?), a link to WorldCat (is the item available outside of CUNY?), or a link to the Library's complete list of full-text electronic journals. In the few months since Find It! was implemented, we already see spikes in e-journal usage. Johns Hopkins’ Project MUSE statistics for February, March, and April represent 47% of the total usage for the entire 04-05 academic year. Similarly, Jstor searches for the same three months corresponds to 54% of the total articles viewed in the 10 months of 2004/05.
- SCOPUS: E-resources for the sciences are notoriously costly. ISI's Web of Science is so expensive that we have never seriously looked at it. Faculty ask for it because (a) it is very well-known, and (b) until now, it has been the only thing that did citation searching. With Web of Science making inroads in CUNY, we began to anticipate “Why can’t we have it too?” questions from our faculty. CCNY bought this product last year with Student Tech Fee money; this year they added a back file, giving them 1996 to date. Queens also bought Web of Science–they can easily afford it, since they pay a pittance for Science Direct while we pay a small fortune. However, there is a new bright light on the horizon: stirring the pot a bit, Elsevier has introduced a new product called Scopus, designed to give Web of Science a run for its money and more reasonably priced. We were unable to resist a fantastic 3-year deal for this new product and will introduce it this summer.
- CUNY CCIP INITIATIVE: When the Community College Incentive Program debuted two years ago, the University decreed that some of these funds would be set aside to increase the number of centrally-funded library e-resources. We have now completed Year Two of this three-year commitment, and the titles that are purchased include:
Lexis/Nexis
Wilson Indexes
Communication and Mass Media Complete
Psyc Articles
Project MUSE
Duke University Press Journals
Jstor I, II, III
New York Times Historical
InfoShare
Jstor IV and Complement (Development Fee and Access Fee)
Opposing Viewpoints
JAMA - Site License for CUNY
New England Journal of Medicine - Site License for CUNY
LearnATest
Groves Art Online
Groves Music Online
Oxford Premium Reference
Encyclopedia Britannica
CQ Researcher
Of these titles, only the last six save us money (in that we were already subscribing and, whereas we once paid, now CUNY pays). All these titles are welcome additions to our collections. Were CUNY to cease funding them, the blow to our collections would be enormous. Certainly, we could not pick up these titles using our own funds.
- PUBLISHER PACKAGES: Through participation in intra-CUNY consortia, Brooklyn College gains access to three major publisher packages: Wiley Interscience, Science Direct (Elsevier), and the Kluwer (now Springer) journals. We have negotiated five-year contracts with both Wiley and Elsevier, each of which includes an opt-out clause in the event budgetary shortfalls prevent renewals. The benefit to these contracts is that they cap annual cost increases at 5% or less.
Wiley Interscience shows a growing clientele; both searches and full-text downloads increase annually. The journals cover many disciplines, including anthropology, biology, chemistry, education, health sciences, physical education, and psychology. Science Direct is chiefly used by students and faculty in chemistry, education, health sciences, psychology, and speech. Here again, usage rises annually. It is important to note that, if we did not subscribe to these packages, we would pay far more to obtain the downloaded articles from commercial document suppliers.
- SCIENCE DIRECT: Once again the University provided $35,000 to offset Science Direct’s total cost for three CUNY libraries (City, Brooklyn, and Queens).
- FEDERATED SEARCHING: The University is looking at MetaSearch (an Ex Libris product) for what is commonly called federated searching–the ability to search across multiple databases/journal packages at the same time. Some feel that this product or concept is too complex for many undergraduates, yet it is a logical extension of Find It!. Other companies (WebFeat and Serials Solutions) offer competing products which will be examined.
- GOOGLE SCHOLAR: The Brooklyn College Library is exploring the potential of a new tool, Google Scholar, and its "institutional access" option. Opinions about Google Scholar, both here and in the world at large, vary greatly. Some schools have placed Google Scholar front and center on their library Web sites, while other institutions are steering clear of it. To date, librarians at Brooklyn College see Google Scholar as a wonderful but imperfect tool, useful in the research process, but not to be relied upon too heavily. (Presently we link to this tool from our alphabetical databases list.)
Most searches at Google Scholar return an assortment of citations, links to abstracts, and links to full text. Since we have yet to make a decision about registering for “institutional access,” the search engine does not know what e-resources Brooklyn subscribes to, and users are often prompted to buy an article they could actually get free of charge. (Occasionally however, the publisher site knows our IP address and sends the reader right to the full text.) When the result of a search is a book citation, students and faculty can launch a "Library Search" in OCLC’s WorldCat, identifying nearby libraries that have the book.
Although Google Scholar ostensibly covers all scholarly disciplines, its database is still quite limited, especially in the arts and humanities. Additionally, Google will not disclose exactly what's in the Google Scholar database: neither users nor librarians know with which publishers it's cooperating or the date ranges of its coverage. Also, Google Scholar's search options are not as sophisticated as they should be, to be truly effective for scholarly research. For example, there is no way to limit searches to peer-reviewed journals.
Were Brooklyn College to activate Google Scholar with the "institutional access" capability, we could opt to have ”Find it!” links appear in the results. Such links would say something like "Find It @ Brooklyn College." However, we would have to supply Google with a list of our electronic holdings, something we are presently disinclined to do: it seems likely that in the foreseeable future, Google will begin charging for this service. With Google Scholar, the jury is still out.
- ELECTRONIC BOOKS: The Library offers access to several collections of e-books, some “circulating,” the others “reference.” The New York Online Virtual Electronic Library (NOVEL) has added Gale’s Virtual Reference Books to our stable, and we also offer e-reference books from Oxford University Press. Because circulating e-books have yet to take off as the library community hoped they would, it seems that reference sources are the best use of our dollars for now. (That having been said, the netLibrary circulating collections we purchased some three years ago continue to be used, with 1,950 circulations/accesses in 04/05.) We await feedback about another collection, Safari Books, from Professor David Arnow (Computer and Information Science).
- ELECTRONIC RESOURCES ADVISORY COMMITTEE: Associate Librarian for Collection Development Susan Vaughn chairs the CUNY Electronic Resources Advisory Committee (ERAC). This year ERAC has been very active with a variety of projects. For the fifth year, the committee compiled a list of all the electronic products available CUNY-wide, from the central office, CCIP money, and the individual campuses. The 04-05 survey showed that CUNY and its campuses spend about $5,614,675 on electronic resources. Of this sum, CUNY (through the central office budget and the Community College Incentive) provided $2,897,770, or 52% of all the expenditures. Student Technology Fee money accounted for another $1,235,274, or 35% of campus spending for e-materials.
This year CUNY libraries enjoyed trials of a number of new products; these include the ProQuest databases, Paratext, Polling of the Nation, Alexander Street Press, Naxos, History E-books, and UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. ERAC is currently in the process of evaluating EBSCO’s new Sociology Index Full Text (SI) which might replace CSA’s Sociological Abstracts and Social Service Index. Both vendors are courting CUNY.
Professor Vaughn’s greatest coup, however, was convincing Sage to reduce the price for two of its new collections, Education and Psychology, from $238,000 to $120,000!!
- PROXY ACCESS: Off-campus access to e-resources remains a serious issue. The bottom line is, it is extremely difficult to get to our e-resources from off campus. Either (a) student and faculty cannot follow the convoluted instructions Brooklyn"s proxy access requires, or (b) owing to security concerns, ITS has closed the port that gives access to proxy. (After the security issue is resolved, staff often forget to reopen the port.) About 40% of the time, users find that the proxy server is unavailable. The costs in faculty and student productivity are incredible, not to mention the money we are paying for these resources, accessible as a "sometime kinda thing."
