CSU Library Newsletter
Bulletin of the Elihu Burritt Library, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT 06050
Vol. 5 Issue 2
Spring 2001
ISSN 1086-0339
Virtual Libraries for College Students?
contributed by Joan Packer
Will undergraduates soon be able to gain access to the great books and journals of the world for a
modest fee? New websites are appearing that may make this possible.
Questia (http://www.questia.com), which bills itself as the "world's largest digitization project", was
founded in Houston in 1998 and debuts January 2001. Questia is an online subscription-based research
service that will provide undergraduate college students with unlimited access to the full-text of thousands of
scholarly liberal arts books and journals. Included in the service are mark-up tools to highlight and annotate
text, automatic generation of footnotes, and bibliographies, hyperlinking of footnotes and bibliographies across
titles; and of course, "24/7" accessibility. The collection will eventually grow to over 250,000 books and
journals, larger than 80% of individual academic libraries across the United States. Therefore, users will have
easy access to titles they might otherwise have to request on Interlibrary Loan. This kind of service supports
distance learning and augments library collections. Questia's collections are being selected by an advisory
council of academic librarians, who support the "highest level of accuracy and integrity" in the digitized titles.
Any user can search Questia free, but in order to view the complete text of a book or journal online
and use the research tools, a subscription is necessary. It will be "affordable for college students." Over 100
publishers have signed up to participate, including well known university presses such as Stanford and Rutgers,
as well as Greenwood Press and Peter Lang. A method has been devised to enable the publishrs to receive
revenue each time a user accesses even a single page of a title.
Possible competitors are Ebrary (http://www.ebrary.com) and XanEdu (http://www.xanedu.com).
Random House and McGraw-Hill among others are investing in Ebrary. This service will offer books, journals,
maps, periodicals, and digitally archived materials. As with Questia, patrons will be able to copy or print text
for a fee. Participating publishers will determine the degree of access and costs associated with each of their
titles. We are currently awaiting the debut of Ebrary, which was scheduled for launch in June, 2000.
XanEdu is already available. It is a subset of the full-text databases published by Bell and Howell
including ABI/Inform and Periodicals Abstracts PlusText. XanEdu currently offers 1700 newspapers,
magazines and scholarly journals. Materials are in English, primarily from the U.S., Canada, U.K., and Australia
but with worldwide coverage. Updated daily, it provides PDF image text and costs $7.50 a month. For
faculty, XanEdu also offers "CoursePacks" allowing professors to create customized copyright-cleared
reading materials to supplement coursework or serve as core course resources. CoursePacks also include
teaching suggestions, discussion exercises, background information, references to related materials and relevant
Internet sites.
2
New CCSU Library Databases for History, Poetry, Education, and Business
n
From 1936 to 1938 the Works Projects Administration employed writers and journalists through its
Federal Writers Project to interview ex-slaves in the United States. The WPA Slave Narrative Collection,
which is over 10,000 typescript pages, was issued in 40 volumes by Greenwood Press after being assembled
by George Rawick in 1972. It was titled The American Slave: Composite Autobiography.
A Comprehensive Name Index was published in 1997. The CCSU Library recently added these resources
to the Databases & Full Text Resources page. The site also includes links to public discussion forums, private
"classrooms" with real-time chat, discussion boards and lesson plans, and links to other web sites.
n
A new business database recently added is FISOnline, which includes data formerly published by
Moodys Investor Service, now called Mergent. This site offers "Company Data Direct U.S." covering
10,000+ public companies and "Company Data Direct/International" with details on over 14,000 non-U.S.
companies. FIS provides links to company histories, products and services, EDGAR documents, financial
statements and annual reports.
n
For over 100 years Granger's Index to Poetry has been the definitive source for locating a poem in
anthologies on library shelves. It first began publication in 1904 at the Columbia University Press and is now in
its 11
th
edition. The electronic Granger's, now available on the Library's Databases & Full Text Resources
page, has many poems in full-text as well as commentaries by the editor William Harmon. He explains the
author's technique, the poems form and historical context, and includes a bibliography. This release also
provides biographies for leading poet; it has 13,000 poems in full-text and 250,000 location citations.
n
ERIC is the most comprehensive database in the field of education. It provides citations to over a
million research reports and journal articles dating back to 1966. The library has had a microfiche subscription
to the full-text of the research reports. Now the ERIC Document Reproduction Service is digitizing the
research reports, currently back to 1993. The library is subscribing to this service and terminating
our microfiche subscription. Users can search for these ERIC documents on the Library's Databases
& Full Text Resources page under the Education section. They can be printed or downloaded.
n
The Grove Dictionary of Music and its successors was founded by Sir George Grove, a man of many
interests, who also helped establish the Royal College of Music. Today, the New Grove Dictionary of Music
and Musicians is generally recognized to be the authority on all aspects of music. In 2001 the 2
nd
print edition
will be published; the electronic version is already available. It has been extensively revised to reflect the "meth-
odological concerns of contemporary ethnomusicology" and to include many new entries on musicians from
non-Western cultures and in the field of popular music. The online version features links to thousands of images,
digital sound, related sites, quarterly and annual updates.
Important: These new databases, as well as one-hundred other online resources are accessible from
the Databases & Full Text Resources link on the Elihu Burritt Library's home page at
http://wilson.ctstateu.edu/lib/. Off-campus users are reminded to look at the Frequently Asked Questions
at http://wilson.ctstateu.edu/lib/faq/ and http://wilson.ctstateu.edu/lib/offcampus/offcampus1.html --
assign yourself a library PIN and configure your Internet browser before trying to use the subscription databases
from off-campus.


3
CCSU Response to Academic Integrity and Plagiarism
The Senate Ad Hoc Committee on Academic Integrity is attempting to revise and develop a new statement on
Academic Integrity and Plagiarism for CCSU. The current policy on Academic Honesty located in the Student Handbook
doesn't address electronic resources, Internet term papers, procedures for faculty response when academic dishonesty is
suspected, etc. Presently the Committee is looking at this description, appropriate faculty response, student and faculty
education of the new policy, administration's responsibilities to support the policy, etc.
Currently the Elihu Burritt Library is updating its "Academic Integrity and Plagiarism" collection; this collection is
now housed in the Burritt Library Reserve Room. Faculty should send any other titles of new materials to Emily S. Chasse
(chasse@mail.ccsu.edu or x22063, or the discussion list); and the library will consider adding them to the collection.
As the Committee continues to work on the policy, we ask that faculty visit our Discussion List on ACADEMIC
INTEGRITY AND PLAGIARISM at http://burky.ccsu.edu/discus. We've posed several questions and look forward to
hearing faculty responses.
The Committee is also looking at similar policies at other Colleges and Universities via the WWW. Again, if faculty
know of any relevant sites, please alert the Committee through the Faculty Discussion List at
http://burky.ccsu.edu/discus
.
F.A.Q. "what do I do if the CCSU Library doesn't have the book/article I need?"
1)
Interlibrary Loan. The traditional way this is solved is by placing a written request for a loan of the book or article
you need. The CCSU Library has an Interlibrary Loan Department (on the Library's second floor) that will process
your request and get the material for you in an average time of two weeks (sometimes it takes longer, sometimes it
requires less time). To use Interlibrary Loan you need all the bibliographic information for the material you want to
borrow (author, title, title of article, publisher, page numbers, etc.). If you request a book, you will receive the book; if
you request an article, you will receive a copy of the article (not the entire journal). In certain cases, for example if the
book you need doesn't go out on loan at all, your request may go unfilled. You can use a printed (paper) form or go
to the Interlibrary Loan web page at http://wilson.ctstateu.edu/lib/ill/
(see option 5)
2.)
CONSULS. If you have performed a search for a book on CONSULS, and find that the title you require isn't at the
CCSU Library, but is at another CSU campus, you may place a request at the computer for the material
(click "Request Book" at the top of the page while you are on the screen of the book you want). You will then need
to provide some information to execute the request. Sorry-this doesn't work for journal articles; you need to
complete either a paper or electronic Interlibrary Loan form.
3.)
FIRSTSEARCH. If you have found an item through a FirstSearch database (i.e., WorldCat, ArticleFirst, etc.) check to
see if CCSU has the item by looking at the options on the screen. If the CCSU library does not own the item, you may
place a request while you are connected to FirstSearch (click ILL while you are on the screen of the book you
want, and provide the required information). The book or journal article will be located for you by the Interlibrary
Loan Department. Note -- not all, FirstSearch databases will present the ILL option.
4.)
OVID DATABASES (BIOSIS, MEDLINE, MLA, PsycINFO). While connected to OVID, check to see if CCSU has
the item by clicking "Library Holdings" while looking at the record. If the CCSU Library does not own the item, you
may place a request for the item by checking the citation, going to the bottom of the page and using
Citation Manager to submit an Order . The order will then be sent to the CCSU Library's Interlibrary Loan Depart-
ment for processing.
5.)
Electronic Interlibrary Loan Form. If you have the bibliographic information for an item, and you have checked
CONSULS and are sure the item is not at the CCSU Library, you may complete an Interlibrary Loan request form
online through the CCSU Library's World Wide Web Home Page. Using a computer connected to the World Wide
Web go to the address
http://wilson.ctstateu.edu/lib
and follow the required steps. This procedure will electronically
send your request to the Interlibrary Loan department.
contributed by Emily Chasse
4
Many of the databases to which the Library subscribes allow searchers to expand or focus retrieval by the use
of special characters. Here is some useful information concerning Truncation symbols, Wildcard symbols, and
proximity operators for the major databases at the Elihu Burritt Library.
Definitions:
*
Truncation and Wildcard symbols may be used to find variant spellings of words, the stem of a word
followed by unknown characters, and plurals of words.
*
Proximity searching refers to searching for exact phrases, searching for concept x and concept y in a
specified order, or within a specified number of words.
Database or
Database
Vendor
Truncation
Wildcard
Proximity
ABC - CLIO
*
?
use quotation marks to find phrases
(history databases)
arm* = armor, army
fr?nc? = france, french
CONSULS
**
no internal wildcard
keyword search defaults to phrase
(library catalog)
invit** = invite, invited,
(default is adjacency)
invites, invitations
Ebsco
*
?
defaults to phrase
medic* = medicine,
ne?t = neat, nest, next n# = concept x NEAR2 concept y
medical, medicinal, etc.
in any order and within the range
of words specified
FirstSearch
* arm* = armor, army #
to search for a phrase use w
+ (plurals)
b#t = bat, bet, bi
between words. You may also use
teacher+ = teachers
n# to find search terms in any order
and within the range of words
specified
Be a Savvy
Searcher --
Use Special Characters
to do a Better Search!
contributed by Nick Tomaiuolo
5
savvy searching (continued)
Database or
Database
Vendor
Truncation
Wildcard
Proximity
Lexis - Nexis
!
*
defaults to phrase
stock! = stockroom
b*t = bat, bet, bit
w/s = words in same sentence
stocked, stocking
w/n finds search terms in any order
and within the range of words
specified
Pre/n finds search terms in the
order specified and within the range
of words specified
Ovid
$
#
defaults to phrase
(CINAHL, MLA,
rat$ = rate, rational
rat# = rate, rats
adj# finds search terms in any
PsycINFO,
wom#m = woman,
order and within the range of words
BIOSIS, etc.)
women
specified
ProQuest
?
*
defaults to phrase
(newspapers)
educat? = education, educat** = educated, w/n finds search terms in any order
educator
wom*n = woman,
and within the range of words
women
specified
Pre/n finds search terms in the
order specified and within the range
of words specified
Gale Research
*
?
use quotation marks to find phrases
(literary and
politi* = politics,
wom?n = woman,
w# finds search terms in any order
reference
politicians
women
and within the range of words data-
bases)
specified
n# finds search terms in the order
specified and within the range of
words specified
for more searching assistance, see the HELP / INFO / FAQ / or SEARCH TIPS at


6
While the promise of a complete catalog of electronic books awaits fulfillment, the computer
user can still access a portion of the world's fiction and non-fiction works through the
Internet. Sites that allow downloads in HTML, ASCII, Portable Document Viewer (PDF), or
word-processing formats are the most easily dealt with. Other electronic publishers are
distributing versions that require separate "reader" hardware. Among the conspicuous sites
abundant with monographs are the Internet Public Library at http://www.ipl.org/reading/
books/ (with over 13,000 titles) and Project Gutenburg (PG) at http://promo.net/pg/ (2,700 non-
copyrighted titles). All PG electronic texts are in "Plain Vanilla ASCII," making them easy to
search through and easy to read. Of course, the offerings are eclectic, but one will find
Cervantes' Don Quixote, Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Hugo's Les Miserables, Rostand's
Cyrano de Bergerac, Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Willa Cather's My Antonia, Darwin's
Origin of Species, Dumas' Count of Monte Cristo, and John Fiske's Myths and Myth-makers:
Old Tales and Superstitions. Bartleby.com claims to be the publisher of the "first classic book
on the Web" (Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1994). Some of the nice aspects about the site
that individuals may appreciate in addition to Bartleby's 200,000 fully searchable pages, 22,000
quotations, and 4,765 poems, is the site's mission to provide free, 24 hour a day/365 a year access requiring no registration or
personal information from the user.
Rocket eBook
None of the sites that offer these offer electronic texts should be considered exclusive; the catalogs often overlap.
More books will be found on the "On-Line Books Page" (with over 11,000 documents) at http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/
books/ and "Online Great Books" at http://books.mirror.org/gb.home.html (another eclectic list but weighted toward philoso-
phy and classical literature). NetLibrary, a commercial venture, at http://www.netlibrary.com/free_reading_room.asp has a
catalog of 4,000 free electronic books including Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and Homer's The Odyssey. "The English
Server" demonstrates the breadth of the Web's electronic texts sites at http://eserver.org/, which offers both classic and
contemporary texts in Art/Architecture, Cultural Theory, Cyber Tech/Culture, Drama, Early Modern Culture, Eighteenth
Century, Feminism, Fiction, Film & Television, Poetry, and Race. Adobe (the software creator) also distributes free electronic
books at http://www.adobe.com/epaper/ebooks/ebookslib.html.
Besides sites that feature either non-copyrighted works or works that have been submitted for free viewing, readers
and established writers are begin to delve into electronic publishing. But only a handful of authors, led by the prolific Stephen
King and including Frank McCourt, L. Ron Hubbard, Mario Puzo, and Robert Ludlum, have begun to sell their works in
downloadable format on amazon.com, bn.com, and bookbooters.com. The e-publishers at Fatbrain and Mightywords at http://
www.mightywords.com have a respectable starter catalog that features not only fiction, but also sociology, health, biography,
science, cookbooks, and business. Some of the Mightywords catalog is available for free viewing, but the majority is available
Now
Computer users may easily locate major repositories of electronic books, including free/fee contemporary editions at
http://dir.yahoo.com/Arts/Humanities/Literature/Electronic_Literature/
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Shopping_and_Services/Books/Booksellers/Electronic_Books
http://dir.yahoo.com/Business_and_Economy/Business_to_Business/Publishing/Production_Services/
Electronic_Publishing/.
Google lists sites for electronic texts at
http://directory.google.com/Top/Business/Industries/Publishing/Publishers/Electronic
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Literature/Electronic_Text_Archives
Then
books chained to desks
in a medieval monastery
contributed by Nick Tomaiuolo
7
Faculty and Students: Need Even More Articles
than the Library's Databases Offer?
Try:
FindArticles is a specialized search engine designed to help searchers quickly and easily locate published articles on
a variety of topics. The database has hundreds of thousands of full text articles from more than 300 magazines and journals,
dating back to 1998. FindArticles even brings some print-only publications to the Web for the first time. The title list includes
Discover, the Lancet, Sky & Telescope, the College Student Journal, the Journal of Special Education, the Journal of
Learning Disabilities, Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, the Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders, Academy of
Management Review, Sloan Management Review, Film Quarterly, Dance Magazine, and the Journal of Popular Film and
Television. While researching, it makes sense to expand your options. Although the Elihu Burritt Library's Databases and
Full Text Resources page offers plenty of places to try your search, knowing about the latest offerings on the Web puts the
searcher at a significant advantage. Access FindArticles at http://www.findarticles.com.
FREE
On page 3 we familiarized CCSU faculty and students with the Interlibrary Loan and document delivery process.
While Interlibrary Loan is a tremendous help to library users, many individuals often require materials so quickly that waiting
for delivery of a resource isn't always feasible. For those people, the State of Connecticut offers "reQuest" - the Statewide
Library Catalog. It can be used to discover which Connecticut libraries own specific books and journals, and it can be used
to compile subject and author bibliographies as well. In reQuest, you can search over three million individual titles located in
over two hundred Connecticut
libraries at once.
Here's an example of the usefulness of reQuest. The student searched Sociological Abstracts book/article/confer-
ence paper/dissertation database. He found information on his topic, but not enough was onsite at the Burritt Library to
provide him a complete picture of the issue he was investigating. With the helpful bibliography he assembled from his search
of the Sociological Abstracts database, the student cross-referenced what he needed with a search of the entire state by
searching reQuest. He found many of the items at the UConn (Storrs) campus, and he decided to visit the campus the
following day.
School libraries, public libraries, special libraries, and academic libraries all have a presence on reQuest. To access
reQuest: 1) begin at the Elihu Burritt Library home page at http://wilson.ctstateu.edu/lib. 2) Click "Libraries on the Internet"
(located in the box with the heading "Finding Information on the Internet"). 3) On the next page, under the heading of
Connecticut Libraries, click REQUEST - Statewide Library Catalog.
Incidentally, while you're on the "Libraries on the Internet" page, notice and try the other interesting links to "Public
Libraries of Europe", the "Australian National University", and the "Bookwire Index to Libraries" which will take you to
institutions in Asia, Latin America, and Canada.
Tip: if you need to search for Connecticut libraries' journal holdings, go to reQuest,
click "Database Selection" and then choose "reQuest Serials Cat".
Discover What's in Connecticut's Libraries
re

uest
Q
CCSU Library Newsletter
Reference Department
Elihu Burritt Library
Central Connecticut State University
1615 Stanley Street
New Britain, CT 06050
Information for Students and Faculty:
Plagiarism update
More new databases
Web databases with free full text
New developments in digitized resources
Expanding / focusing your searches with
special search shorthand