+ Page 1 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Computer Systems News Volume 4, Number 12 (1993) ISSN 1050-6004 Editors: Dana Rooks (LIBL@UHUPVM1) and Linda Thompson (LIB1J@UHUPVM1). Issued on an irregular basis by University Libraries, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-2091. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS Dynamic Information Drops Price on Some Documents for Delivery, 1 1994 OCLC On the Front Line Award Nominations Sought, 2 RLG Adds British Library's New Table-of-Contents Database to CitaDel, 2 EPIC Prices Standardized, 3 The COOK Report on Internet, 4 OCLC Awards Three Research Grants, 5 Three Databases Added to FirstSearch and EPIC, 6 DYNAMIC INFORMATION DROPS PRICE ON SOME DOCUMENTS FOR DELIVERY Dynamic Information, a document supplier for users of ArticleFirst on OCLC's FirstSearch Catalog, has lowered its price from $12.50 to $8 for some documents delivered by first-class mail. The price was dropped on documents that have lower royalty fees. Most documents supplied by Dynamic Information will be offered at the lower price. Articles in JAMA, Journal of the American Medical Association are among those available for the $8 first-class mail delivery charge. Other titles with the $8 pricing include Byte, Transactions of the ASAE, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, and Maclean's. The online document ordering option, part of the OCLC Dispatch Service, gives library patrons using OCLC's FirstSearch Catalog the ability to order serials articles found in a variety of databases. In addition to Dynamic Information, articles are being supplied on ArticleFirst by UMI Article Clearinghouse. UMI also supplies articles for Periodical Abstracts. Both document suppliers offer delivery by fax and overnight mail in addition to first-class mail. A link to PRISM/ILL is also available. More suppliers will be added, allowing users to choose among several suppliers offering the same article. + Page 2 + For additional information, contact Daviess Menefee, 614-764-4358, or Nita Dean 614-761-5002. 1994 OCLC ON THE FRONT LINE AWARD NOMINATIONS SOUGHT Nominations are now being accepted for the 1994 OCLC On the Front Line award. The OCLC On the Front Line award is presented each year to an outstanding reference librarian who makes effective use of electronic reference products in his or her daily work. The winner must demonstrate knowledge, creativity, and good humor on the job. A check for $1,000 and a memento of the achievement will be presented to the winner during the National Online Meeting in New York City next spring. For more information, or to receive a nomination application for the 1994 OCLC On the Front Line award, write: OCLC, Reference Services Division; MC 236; 6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, OH 43017-0702. Deadline for nominations is March 1, 1994. RLG ADDS BRITISH LIBRARY'S NEW TABLE-OF-CONTENTS DATABASE TO CITADEL The Research Libraries Group (RLG) has mounted the British Library's new table-of-contents database on CitaDel, RLG's citation and document delivery service. Called Inside Information, the new database was launched by the British Library Document Supply Centre (BLDSC) in the UK during July and has been available on CitaDel since September 1. Inside Information provides author, title, and journal citation information for articles appearing in 10,000 of the most requested titles in the BLDSC's collection of 50,000 of the world's principal journals and magazines. As of September 1, Inside Information contained approximately 900,000 citations from October 1992 onwards, with BLDSC estimating that more than 1 million citations will be added to the file every year. Daily updating is planned. Full text of every article cited will be available by document delivery through CitaDel. Delivery methods include air mail, fax, and RLG's Ariel (document transmission software for the Internet). + Page 3 + Inside Information will be available free to institutions purchasing annual subscriptions to RLIN (the Research Libraries Information Network). For institutions not purchasing RLIN subscriptions, Inside Information will be available for a yearly fee as a stand-alone CitaDel file. (RLG member institutions automatically receive a 5% discount on all subscription fees.) Institutions purchasing annual subscriptions to RLIN or Inside Information will receive a free copy of the Ariel software. For more information, please contact the RLIN Information Center at 1-800-537-7546; email bl.ric@rlg.bitnet or bl.ric@rlg.stanford.edu (Internet); FAX 415-964-0943. EPIC PRICES STANDARDIZED As part of OCLC's overall pricing simplification plan, some connect-hour and display-format charges for the EPIC service changed as of July 1, 1993. The changes are being made primarily to allow libraries to more easily predict search costs and to remember prices across databases. Highlights of the changes: o database connect-hour charges are now multiples of 10: $30, $40, $50, etc. o record-display charges are now standardized across databases o online and offline record-display charges are now the same o practice database connect-hour prices are now all $10 per hour o display list is the free display format for browsing search results For most databases on EPIC, charges for connect time have either stayed the same or decreased. They were increased for 11 databases. Record-display prices, which varied widely, will increase somewhat for most databases. Prices for most databases added since January 1993 have followed the new pricing standard. Copies of the new EPIC price list are available from OCLC-affiliated regional networks or OCLC reference services. For additional information, contact Tam Dalrymple, 614-761-5054, or Nita Dean, 614-761-5002. + Page 4 + THE COOK REPORT ON INTERNET The COOK Report is a monthly newsletter focusing on the policy complexities of NREN, and National Information Infrastructure (NII) development as well as Internet commercialization. Published by the former Director of a US Congress Office of Technology assessment of the NREN, who is beholden to no federal agencies or private companies for funds, it contains views not generally found within the community of NREN and NII "boosters." The COOK Report helps subscribers: o to understand the so far, convoluted evolution of Federal Policy toward the commercialization and privatization of the Internet, the creation of an NREN and a National Information Infrastructure; o to understand the economic trends linking the development of multi-protocol routers and public network transport technologies from Federally sponsored testbeds to commercial implementation; o to understand whether commercial internet providers can satisfy corporate needs to link LANs over a wide area network; o to understand developments and issues affecting K-12 and library access to the network infrastructure; o to understand the commercialization's impact on the cooperative nature of the Internet and its standards process; o and to track changes in policy by the new administration. Subscriptions available for volume one at slightly reduced prices or starting with volume two (April 1993). Price List for one year subscription (effective April 1993) Individual: $85 Non-Profit, Small Government Agency, or Corporation: $175 (Site License $300) University or college library: $175 (subscriptions available through Readmore and Faxon) Corporate (revenues greater than $10 million a year) or Cabinet Level Agency: $350 Corporate Site License (hardcopy and electronic with right to redistribute within corporation): $500 + Page 5 + Foreign Subscriptions: add $50 in each category Call, write or email: Gordon Cook, COOK Network Consultants,431 Greenway Ave, Ewing, NJ 08618; 609-882-2572; Internet: cook@path.net OCLC AWARDS THREE RESEARCH GRANTS The OCLC office of research has awarded three Library and Information Science Research Grants (LISRG) to university researchers for 1993. The grant recipients and their projects are: o Carolyn O. Frost, Ph.D., associate dean, School of Information and Library Studies, University of Michigan: "An Empirical Test of Gopher Searching Using Three Organization Schemes" Gopher is an example of a commonly used protocol for searching networked information. Although the use of networked information is proliferating at an astounding rate and is providing unprecedented access to information, the organization of this information has not kept up with its use. Likewise, there is need for a greater understanding of information searching in order to design better searching tools, organize networked information more effectively, and assist information providers in the mounting of networked sources. There has been little research on how people use Gopher, or its effectiveness as a searching tool. The proposed project will study Gopher users' information searching behavior, identify patterns and problems in the searching behavior or with the information retrieval, and recommend changes for improvement. o Richard P. Smiraglia, Ph.D., associate professor, Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University: "Toward the Bibliographic Control of Works: Derivative Bibliographic Relationships in the Online Union Catalog" The purpose of this project is to further the bibliographic control of works by verifying the extent of derivative bibliographic relationships in the OCLC Online Union Catalog and by testing a conceptual model for a database of bibliographic works. The methodology employed will be descriptive survey research of a random sample of bibliographic families from the Online Union Catalog and qualitative examination of the most complex families to assess the efficacy of the conceptual model. + Page 6 + o James H. Sweetland, Ph.D., associate professor, and Judith J. Senkevitch, Ph.D., assistant professor, School of Library and Information Science, University of Wisconsin at Madison: "Evaluating Public Library Fiction Collections: Is There a Core List of Classics?" The project will address the following research questions: Is there a core of widely held adult fiction in the OCLC database which can be used as a list of classics? Does this core list relate to standard lists of recommended fiction supposedly relied upon by public libraries in selection and evaluation? Can one or more standard lists be recommended as those most likely to predict librarians' behavior? Is it feasible for OCLC to consider using the core list concept to develop a machine-readable product to assist public librarians in evaluating their fiction collections? The OCLC Library and Information Science Research Grant program awards grants of up to $10,000 to help foster quality research by faculty in schools of library and information science. Projects are generally completed within one year, and findings are published in the OCLC Annual Review of Research and in other scholarly communications. Application materials for 1994 will be available this November. For more information, contact the office of research. THREE DATABASES ADDED TO FIRSTSEARCH AND EPIC OCLC has recently added three databases to its online reference services, The FirstSearch Catalog and the EPIC service. MEDLINE, the well-known index for all areas of medicine; Education Index, covering all aspects of education; and Biological & Agricultural Index, which indexes journals ranging from the popular to the professional, bring the total number of databases available on FirstSearch to 36, and on EPIC to 40. MEDLINE, produced by the National Library of Medicine, indexes over 3,500 journals published in many countries. In addition to clinical and experimental medicine, MEDLINE provides citations, many with abstracts, to materials in dentistry, nursing, veterinary medicine, nutrition, pathology, psychology, and other health-related fields. Its coverage on FirstSearch and EPIC runs from 1985 to the present, and it is updated monthly on both services. + Page 7 + Education Index is the online version of the H.W. Wilson Co.'s printed database of the same name. It indexes articles from over 400 English-language periodicals and yearbooks as well as selected series and supplements. Education Index covers all levels and sectors of the education community from preschool and kindergarten to special education, high school, and college. Its coverage on FirstSearch and EPIC runs from June 1983 to the present, and it is updated monthly on both services. Biological & Agricultural Index is also an online version of a Wilson index. It cites articles from more than 240 periodicals published in the United States and elsewhere and also provides coverage of biographical sketches, reports of symposia and conferences, review articles, selected letters to the editor, special issues, and abstracts. Almost half of the citations relate to agriculture. The rest cover fields such as animal husbandry, botany, ecology, food science, forestry, horticulture, and zoology. Its coverage in FirstSearch and EPIC goes from 1985 to the present, and it is updated monthly on both services. The FirstSearch Catalog is designed for library patrons, with an end-user interface that allows patrons to move easily through the online search process in just a few simple steps, without training or online searching experience. EPIC, a full-featured online reference system that provides subject access, and keyword and Boolean searching to a variety of databases, is designed for librarians and experienced searchers. For additional information, contact Tam Dalrymple, 614-761-5054, or Nita Dean, 614-761-5002. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Computer Systems News is an electronic newsletter that is distributed on BITNET, Internet, and other computer networks. There is no subscription fee. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 (BITNET) or LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU (Internet) that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-P First Name Last Name. PACS-P subscribers also receive two other electronic serials: Current Cites and The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. Public-Access Computer Systems News is Copyright (C) 1993 by the University Libraries, University of Houston. All Rights Reserved. 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