Of course almost any item that circulates in almost any library may be obtained from the Burritt Library' s Interlibrary Loan Department. Researchers who have used this service find it extremely helpful, and there is no
charge to CCSU students, faculty, and staff. For details on borrowing materials through Interlibrary Loan contact Steve Cauffman at 860-832-3408 or email cauffman@ ccsu. edu. You may also vist the Burritt Library' s
Online Interlibrary Loan forms at http:// corso. ccsu. ctstateu. edu/ lib/ ill/ loan. html and electronically request books or journal articles.
Remote access to many of the Elihu Burritt Library' s databases is a reality that is becoming increasingly popular. To ensure your access, please read and follow the directions at this WWW address:
http:// csulib. ctstateu. edu/ screens/ helpframe. html (general help) and click the button on the left called "Setting Browser Proxy Settings".
Using Library Services via the Web?? Please Read this Remote Access Update:
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--by Nick Tomaiuolo and Joan Packer
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The Burritt Library Boosts Graduate Research on the Net! by Priya Rai
A s of this year students and faculty members of the Connecticut State University System and researchers elsewhere will find much more information than a mere citation to a graduate thesis submitted by a student of Central Connecticut State University. They can now point and click their way to abstracts of theses. The Technical Processing Department of the Burritt Library has cataloged Master' s theses as far back as the mid-1950s. In anticipation of the now familiar automated library system CONSULS, the department converted the manual card catalog records into machine-readable form. The size of the thesis collection at the Burritt library is approximately 1,515 items. Currently bibliographic information for 1,020 theses is available in CONSULS. Information on the thesis
collection not in CONSULS can be obtained by consulting the card catalog in the Reserve Reading Room, where all the theses are housed in numerical sequence.
Recognizing the research value inherent in our students' Master' s theses, which has been confirmed by the number of Interlibrary Loan Requests we have received, the Technical Processing Department has added significantly more
information to these records in CONSULS. Starting this year, patrons who access the CONSULS Webpac can choose to connect to full abstracts. Another enhancement to cataloging records of theses
includes the ability to locate the items by an additional access point: academic department name. This should prove to be useful to students contemplating research topics. By searching by the name of the CCSU academic department, the
researcher can identify a listing of theses that have been written by previous students.
To look at the newly enhanced records, point your browser to the Connecticut State University Library Catalog at http:// csulib. ctstateu. edu/ Then click on Search the CSU Library Catalog. Select and click on any of the first five
choices listed on the menu. The options are to search the catalog by one of the following methods: Keyword, Library of Congress Subject Heading, Author, Title or a combination of Author/ Title.
The following exercise illustrates how to learn more about searching the theses and viewing abstracts.
° Choose title search and in the search box enter as much of the title as you can for a thesis called American and Taiwanese College Students' Perceptions of Self and the Ideal Romantic
° Click on Search.
° The following screen appears providing full bibliographic information (please see page 3):
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° Notice that above the CALL NO. the researcher may "Click on the following to:" VIEW ABSTRACT. Doing so retrieves a complete abstract as shown below.
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Accessing abstracts of Masters' theses through CONSULS con' t
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A s students and faculty increasingly use the Internet, questions con-cerning "How to cite" World Wide Web information are frequently asked in library instruction classes and at the reference desk.
There are several styles that your instructor or editor may ask you to
follow. The three most consulted authorities for citation style are
those of the American Psychological Association (APA), the Modern
Language Association (MLA), and the Chicago Manual of Style.
Although the styles vary, the specific elements that each requires, and the
order in which they are to be presented remains fairly consistent.
Elements in a citation for a source located using the
World Wide Web:
Author (if given or known) Date of article/ last revision, etc.
Title of article/ web page Title of publication if available
Publication medium Volume number, issue number,
pages numbers if provided Name of computer service,
producer or distributor of content,
Universal Resource Locator (URL)
or Accession Number** see the next column for
details Date the user accessed
the information
** please note: As an alternative to listing the URL, since it is felt that
the existence of many Web docu-ments is transitory (and some
addresses impractical in length to note or enter as a location, see the
second example below), it is acceptable to provide the informa-tion
listed while including an acces-sion number, if available.
For more information see Xia Li and Nancy B. Crane' s Electronic
Styles, 1996. A copy is available at the reference desk of the Burritt
Library.
Editorial note: Discussion regarding what is neces-sary
to cite as an electronic docu-ment continues. Some information
professionals feel that articles may be cited as though the actual paper
hard copy had been consulted, the reasoning being that not every
reader will have access to the proprietary databases that the
researcher cites. Most feel, how-ever, that it is necessary to state
when an item has been located online.
Citing Electronically Accessed Information found on the World Wide Web:
Suggested Guidelines by Nick Tomaiuolo
example of a citation in MLA style including an accession number in lieu of URL:
Dietz, Francis. "Speaking with One Voice." Mechanical Engineering 120.7 (1998): 36+ Online. EbscoHost Academic Search FullTEXT Elite. 824098. 12 October 1998.
example of a citation in MLA style including the document' s URL:
"Pacific Islands: Major Political Units of Polynesia: Easter Island: History: Archaelogy." Britannica Online. http:// www. ed. com: 180/ cgi-bin/ g? DocF= macro/ 5004/ 79/ 181. html .
12 October 1998.
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Strange Titles in Our Reference Collection
Don' t Do It! : a dictionary of the forbidden. St. Martins Press, 1997 (Ref GN 494 T46 1997)
An historical account of taboos in different societies and realms of life. For instance, in Hawaii there are many bananas (over 70
species) but there are also a large number of myths about them: it is considered bad luck to dream about them, carry them or take them
on a fishing trip. This book is shelved between the ethnic and folklore encyclopedias.
Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were. Penguin, 1998. (Ref GR 35 P33 1988) Follows the trails of fantasy through the
thickets of mythology, folklore, legend, fiction and fairy tales. Explains creatures, places and people such as quetzalcoatl, harpies,
zombies, centaurs, aeolus, charon, lotus-land, and valhalla.
English, English. Verbatim, 1980. (Ref PE 1460 S45 1980) Find out what it means to "get your knickers in a twist". "Who are
Darby and Joan?" and what is a "jumble sale"? This is a compilation of British English terms explained for Americans.
Latin for the Illiterati: exorcizing the ghosts of a dead language. Routledge, 1996. (Ref PA 2365 E5 S76 1996)
Lists nearly 6,000 Latin words, phrases and abbreviations taken from art, music, law, philosophy, medicine, theatre. Become
knowledgeable about the non sequitur, homo elegans, or obiter dicta.
The Vampire Book: the encyclopedia of the undead. Visible Ink Press, 1994. (Ref GR830 V3 M4 1994b)
Provides 375 descriptive entries, including biographies of vampires, organizations, major topics associated with vampires, and lives of vampires
in different media.
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M ost authors and editors try to create interesting titles for their books. After all, that' s probably a large variable in what sells them. Of course, we often see titles that are somewhat less than imaginative (e. g., Great Lakes Technical
Reports: Bibliography); yet, in almost every discipline writers
endeavor to craft titles that inven-tively capture the essence of the
work (i. e., String, Straightedge and Shadow; the Story of Geom-etry
or The Dancing Wu Li Mas-ters : an Overview of the New
Physics). Consider Terra Incog-nita (the Antarctic experiences of a
woman writer), Listening to Prozac (one doctor' s observations
concerning the efficacy of the drug), or Fear and Loathing in Las
Vegas (a mad journalist' s take on a writing assignment).
Titles of reference books tend to be less inspired. In the Reference
Department, the answers to ques-tions are usually found in books
such as Encyclopedia of Philoso-phy, the Weather Almanac, or
Handbook of Physical Properties of Rocks.
Recently we noticed some titles that were more engaging.....
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L ocating relevant informa-tion on the the World Wide Web can be challeng-ing. Although many search engines exist, few work with exceptional effectiveness. How may one pin-point Web information worth reading? Web search engines have
few rules. One engine suggests that the searcher use Boolean logic,
another boasts that the user may simply enter a question in natural
language.
An article in Science (see Lawrence and Giles, "Searching the World
Wide Web," Science, vol. 280, no. 5360, April 3, 1998, p. 98) esti-mated
that while 320 million pages are available on the Web, no
individual search engine looks at that total when a search is executed.
The authors comment that HotBot, AltaVista, and Northern Light each
covered approximately 30% of the Web. With so much information to
inspect, and such uncertain cover-age, some information professionals
suggest using several engines to find relevant information.
Metasearch engines take your query and submit it to several search
engines simultaneously. When should you use a metasearch
engine? If you are looking for an obscure term, a metasearch engine
could save you a great deal of time. On the other
hand, almost any search engine would be able to locate high profile
sites such as the home page for Microsoft. Because it has been
shown that search engines do not cover the entire Web, it seems
logical that in an effort to "cast a wide net" (or to be comprehensive),
you might do your search repeat-edly; this won't be necessary if you
use a metasearch engine.
There are some concerns, however, that a search executed in a
metasearch facility cannot make use of all the special enhancements that
its constituent engines can employ. For example, a search using
AltaVista' s original interface may retrieve something different than a
search performed with a metasearch engine that sends its query to
AltaVista.
Below is a list of some of the prominent metasearch engines;
"Search Spaniel" and "Ask Jeeves" have unique interfaces that may
interest you. The others may surprise you with their performance.
Getting the Most Out of the Web: Metasearches . . . . . Better Searches
by Nick Tomaiuolo
"Ask Jeeves" http:// www. askjeeves. com
"Beaucoup Search Engines" http:// www. beaucoup. com/ engines. html
"Cyber411" http:// cyber411. com
"Debriefing http:// www. debriefing. com
"Dogpile" http:// www. dogpile. com
"Highway 61" http:// www. highway61. com
"Inference Find" http:// www. infind. com
"Internet Sleuth" http:// www. isleuth. com
"Internets" http:// www. internets. com
"OneSeek" http:// www. oneseek. com
"Mamma" http:// www. mamma. com
"Metacrawler" http:// www. metacrawler. com
"Metafind" http:// www./ metafind. com
"Profusion" http:// www. profusion. com
"Savvysearch" http:// www. savvysearch. com
"Search Spaniel" http:// www. searchspaniel. com
"Starting Point" http:// www. stpt. com
"SuperSeek Web Search" http:// www. super-seek. com/
super-seek. htm
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Will Y2K Bug You? by Cheryl Dreher T he Y2K Bug --we've all heard of it. Twenty years ago, when computer memory cost about $60,000 per
byte (compared with 10 cents today), programmers routinely used
two digits instead of four to repre-sent the year in order to conserve
valuable space. Because of this decision, those programs reading a
two digit date will read the year 2000 as 1900. Computers may
subsequently malfunction or shut-down.
You may be asking yourself, "but isn't someone, somewhere, handling
this?" The answer to that is "Yes" and "No". It is incumbent upon
individual companies to prepare themselves. Toward that end many
have been working hard to ready themselves; but the work is tedious
and the possbility of error is great. Each and every line of code needs
to be reviewed and rewritten. To appreciate the magnitude of the
problem, consider that Giga Infor-mation Group in Cambridge,
Massachusetts estimate that even though only 5% of the computer
systems use embedded date-sensitive chips, there was, as of
January 1999, over 25 billion chips in use around the world. That
means 1.25 billion chips need to be checked for compliance. And even
if one company is prepared, it isn't clear what happens when it ex-changes
information with a company that isn' t.
As the year 2000 approaches concern over the Y2K bug in-creases
as evidenced by the grow-ing number of Websites
that discuss the subject. Here is a small sample of what the Web has
to offer:
United States Government Year 2000 Gateway for Information Technology www. itpolicy. gsa. gov/ mks/ yr2000/ y2khome. htm
This is one of the best sites available for information on the Y2K bug. As the name implies, there are links to an extensive list of Y2K resources,
including information for businesses, consumers, and citizens. Especially interesting is the Y2K rumors (go to CIO Council Committee Information
Directory, then to Frequently Asked Questions) where the compliance of nuclear missiles is addressed.
Year 2000 Information Center www. year2000. com Recommended for its technical links and Year 2000 press clippings
which are updated daily. The press clippings link to articles from the Wall Street Journal, BBC News, and the Computer Weekly (to name a
few). Archived to December 1996.
Year 2000: The Millenium Problem www. bcs. org. uk/ millen. htm This site is sponsored by the British Computer Society and is
recommended for those interested in international resources. Its list of Year 2000 resources denotes those sites that are global in nature.
Perhaps you knew Ö Most PCs purchased after 1995 use operating systems
that are Y2K compliant. However, Windows 98 recently released an update that corrects some minor Y2K issues.
For more information contact Microsoft at 1-800-363-2896. Check with the manufacturer of your software to find out
whether your current software is "Y2K-ready".
Ö If you own date-sensitive machinery, such as a VCR, that needs to be tricked into reading the correct date and
day of the week, set it back 28 years -to 1972, when the days of the week fell in the same sequence.
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