The continuing crisis of ever escalating prices of research information has prompted some academic libraries to actively challenge the existing market.  Statistics by leading research libraries confirm that they are spending ever-increasing amounts of money to buy fewer titles.  With prices continuing to increase by more than 10 percent annually in many disciplines, the cost of maintaining research collections has become unsustainable for many institutions.  The Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), an initiative of the Association of Research Libraries, is a direct response to the increasing costs of scholarly communication.

SPARC is an alliance of libraries created to foster expanded competition in scholarly communication in order to reduce the costs of acquisition.  One strategy of the alliance is to use technology to improve the process of scholarly communication and to reduce the costs of production and distribution of information.  The Brandeis Libraries are among the founding members of SPARC.

SPARC encourages publishers to enter markets where the prices are highest and competition is needed most - primarily in the science, technical, and medical research areas.  Through its activities, SPARC reduces the risk to publisher-partners of entering the marketplace while providing researchers with prestigious and responsive alternatives to current publishing vehicles.  SPARC solicits and encourages the introduction of new publications of high quality and fair price and guarantees a subscription base and markets new products to potential subscribers.  The alliance may provide start-up capital in selected cases and generates support for projects from distinguished faculty, educational organizations, professional societies and scholarly publishers.

Many segments of the scholarly community will benefit from the efforts of SPARC.  Working with a variety of publishers, SPARC is developing a vibrant and economically viable new model of scholarly communication.  Libraries and researchers both will benefit by the creation of new alternatives to the established high-priced scholarly journals.  [top]
 

Darwin F. Scott

Creative Arts Librarian

This past November the Libraries established the Walter F. and Alice Gorham Collection of Early Music Imprints, 1501-1650.  Supported by the generous funding of the Walter F. and Alice Gorham Endowed Collection in Music (created as part of the 1991-94 National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant, in association with the Brandeis University National Women's Committee), the Gorham Collection is housed in the Special Collections Department.  The establishment of this collection was inspired by Brandeis Music Department Professor Jessie Ann Owens. 

The Gorham Collection consists of the original imprints of music or books on or related to music published between 1501 and 1650.  Music students and scholars can learn much from examining these rare imprints from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.  In particular, these rare books and scores enable the close study of the edition as a physical and historical object by allowing scholars to examine contemporary binding practices, paper, variations in press runs, printing corrections, marginalia and other jottings by previous owners, provenance, and a myriad of other intriguing details.

For a descriptive list of the Gorham Collection, look under Creative Arts at the Brandeis University Libraries Special Collections website: http://www.library.brandeis.edu/spcoll/spcintro.html.  [top]
 

Vera Lampert Deak

Music Cataloger

The Libraries are pleased to announce the acquisition of ARTFL, or Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of French Language.  ARTFL is a full-text database, developed and maintained by the Institut National de la Langue Francaise of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifiques and the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Chicago. The database contains a broad range of information from the 17th to the 20th centuries, including French dictionaries from the 16th to the 19th centuries; pamphlets and periodicals of the French Revolution of 1848, and the French Bible by Louis Segond.

ARTFL also collaborates with the ItalNet consortium, which recently released the Opera del Vocabolario Italiano database, containing 1,369 medieval Italian documents dated prior to 1375 as well as works by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. 
 
The Reference collection of the ARTFL database includes a French-English Dictionary and several English thesauri and dictionaries (Wordsmyth, Roget, Webster).  ARTFL can also be used for verb conjugation, generating word frequency and morphological analysis.

The database also provides links to additional resources, among them Les tres rich heures du Duc de Berry and French illuminated manuscripts from the Bodleian Library.  [top]
 

Ralph Szymczak

Reference Librarian

For a little over a year students and faculty have been enjoying Web access to the traditional LEXIS-NEXIS service, now called Academic Universe, which provides full text newspapers, magazines, company reports and a wealth of legal resources.  Now, through a joint subscription with other libraries in the Boston Library Consortium, the Brandeis University Libraries have been able to add Congressional Universe and Statistical Universe to our growing collection of electronic databases.

Congressional Universe provides the most comprehensive access available to the publications generated by the U.S. Congress.  It offers indexing and abstracting as well as some links to the full texts of hearings, committee reports, bills, public laws, legislative histories, and regulations.  Furthermore, researchers who turn to this database will find the status of legislation, voting records, committee and member profiles, campaign finance data and full text commentary on policy issues from National Journal (1977-current)  and Congress Daily (1991-current).  Access to the full text Congressional Record (1985-current), Federal Register (1980-current) and the current Code of Federal Regulations is also conveniently provided.  Explanations of the legislative process, information on citing a variety of congressional publications and links to other sites are included.  Retrospective indexing for all congressional publications is provided back to 1970 whereas the full texts of some of them now tends to be available from 1994 to the present.

If you need help in finding statistics, consider searching Statistical Universe, which includes statistics on a variety of topics issued by federal and state agencies, private associations and, eventually, international organizations.  This resource includes a growing number of links to the full texts of documents, which is now mostly restricted to materials published since 1995.  However, searchers can locate citations to statistics published as far back as 1973. 

Congressional Universe and Statistical Universe combine both traditional subject searching and keyword searching to facilitate information retrieval.  Some of the documents referenced in both databases can be found in the Brandeis University Libraries' federal documents paper or microfiche collections.  However, LEXIS-NEXIS continues to draw many full text documents from agency Web sites as well as convert documents to electronic format from hard copy.

Brandeis students and faculty have both campus-wide as well as off-campus access to these exciting products.  Extensive online help is provided.  More information on these LEXIS-NEXIS databases can be found at http://www.lexis-nexis.com/lncc/academic/.  Both databases can be accessed from the Brandeis University Libraries' web page under "Electronic Databases".  If you need help in searching these resources, please call 781-736-4670 and ask to speak with a reference librarian.  [top]
 

The Creative Arts Department is now generating monthly acquisitions lists of newly acquired books, music scores; and compact disc recordings.

Distribution of these lists occurs only via e-mail, either as simple text or file attachment.  Printed copies of the lists are posted in the Creative Arts Section, and will soon appear on the Creative Arts website.

If you would like to receive the lists via e-mail, please contact the Creative Arts Librarian, Darwin Scott, by phone (x64680) or e-mail (dscott@brandeis.edu).  Please specify which lists you would like to receive and whether you prefer simple text or file attachment.  [top]
 

Wednesday, March 17   12:00 Noon 
The ACM Digital Library 

The ACM Digital Library will soon be available from any campus-networked workstation, offering full-text access to 21 ACM journals and 44 ACM SIG Conference Proceedings from 1991 forward. 

Wednesday, April 28  12:00 Noon 
Grants Literature -- New (and a few old) Ways to find Money 

The COS (Community of Science) Funding Opportunities database and the SPIN (Sponsored Programs Information Network) database can help you locate sources of funding for your research, study, travel, etc.

The Brownbag Lunch presentations are held in the Science Library Group Study Room.  Bring your own lunch - coffee and tea are provided.  [top]
 

Sally Wyman has been promoted to the position of Head, Gerstenzang Science Library.  Sally has been a member of the Science Library staff since 1985.  She initiated the Science Library "Brown Bag" series of informational meetings for Science faculty and has served as a collection development liaison to the Chemistry Department.  In addition to her Master's degree in library science, Sally holds a Master's degree in marine science.

Ann Schaffner has assumed new responsibilities under the title of Associate University Librarian for Research Services, Instruction and Planning.  Ann will coordinate new client-based teams that bring together staff from the Libraries and Information Technology Services, and will also have a more formal role in contributing to curriculum development in the University.  Within the Libraries, Ann will coordinate all research and reference services, and serve as acting University Librarian in the absence of Bessie K. Hahn.

Tony Vaver has joined the staff as Humanities Librarian.  Tony came from the Center for Electronic Texts in the Humanities at Rutgers University and also served as the Digital and Collection Development Librarian for the Universal Library Project at Carnegie Mellon University.  In addition to the Master's degree in library science, Tony holds a Ph.D. in English.  [top]