Volume 14, Number 2 Spring 2002

       Our many users know full well the depth, breadth, and scope of Sealy Library's criminal justice collections. We take pride in collecting comprehensively in the mission areas of the college and feel we do a splendid job given the budgetary constraints of recent years. To be sure, we have had some help from outside the Library in this collecting effort.

       This academic year the Student Government displayed its generosity with its gift of $10,000 towards a State of New York matching grant program for the purchase of criminal justice materials. The students are also attempting to supplement our budget for additions to our terrorist studies holdings. We are also aware that we do not, nay, cannot, collect to any great extent in areas in which the college does not have a major concentration. Almost all of the special program funds outside of our regular budget are earmarked for core areas of the college's curriculum, from undergraduate through the Ph.D. level.

       But being good librarians and collectors, we grieve over this state of affairs because we would like to collect whatever information is available in all subjects the college teaches. We have, however, a partial solution to this dilemma. During the current year, two academic departments have come to our aid: Anthropology, which has a tradition of supplementing our collections; and English, which is providing the necessary funds for a large number of texts and monographs its faculty find necessary for their work and that of their students. The books we will acquire with departmental funds are those we could not afford otherwise. We certainly applaud the generosity of these departments for their interest in the Library and its collections.

       The Library is a resource for the entire college community and I am pleased to hold up as a model the efforts of these two departments to make our collections germane to everyone at John Jay. We will continue to collect materials in all media and make them available, because that is what we do best, but our task is all the easier when other departments take an interest in the quality of our holdings in their entirety and help in building collections in their disciplines.

       Many of you are familiar with the full-text databases from EBSCO now available through the library. You may not know, however, that you can now set up an alert service so that the database will automatically run searches for you periodically and send the search results to your e-mail account. This is a great way to keep abreast of current research in your fields of interest.

       To set up an alert account, simply perform the following functions. When you enter any of the EBSCO databases — EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier, PSYCInfo, EBSCOhost Business, EBSCOhost Master File, or EBSCOhost Health Source-choose "expert search" from the opening page. Perform a search and then click on the "refine search" button. That will bring you back to the search page and you'll see your search is now listed under "your search history." Click on "save search/alert". This will bring you to a page that enables you to sign up for an account.

      To do so, you must select a user name and password (it would probably be best to use your email account name and password or something else you'll remember easily). Once you've done that, it will bring you to a screen that gives you the option to save your search or run your search as an alert. Choose alert. That screen will then allow you to customize your alerts. That is, you can choose to have your search run once a day to once a month, and have it alert you for any time up to a year. Any search results will automatically be sent to your e- mail account. If you have any problem setting up the alert account, you may contact Nancy Egan in the library at x8269 or negan@jjay.cuny.edu

       CUNY librarians are pleased to announce the arrival of a series of Information Competency Tutorials available now on the web for use by all CUNY students. The tutorials were prepared by a group of CUNY librarians with Prof. Kathy Killoran representing John Jay College. California State University generously provided the software.

       The major goal of the CUNY Information Competency Tutorials is to help students to understand how information is created and disseminated, in order for them to become literate consumers and interpreters of information. The tutorials are general in nature and are designed to appeal to students of all disciplines. The creators of the tutorials took into consideration the experience of the reference librarians who assist the students to fulfill their academic assignments.

       Four tutorial modules available now cover basic information literacy skills - determining information needs, defining research topics, locating and retrieving information, and using information technology. More modules addressing other aspects of information literacy, as well as quizzes and other assessment tools, will be added with time. There is a plan to create a special tutorial devoted to the new library catalog ALEPH that will be introduced to the university community next year (please stay tuned for further announcements about this exciting new information gateway).

      The tutorials are self-paced and can be conveniently taken one-by-one or separately. The navigation menu allows the users to jump easily to the sections they want to review. The tutorials can be linked to faculty web pages and to Blackboard online classes.

       The link to the tutorials is available at the library's website or at http://ols.cuny.edu/tutorial

       Faculty and students are encouraged to use the tutorials and to send their comments to the library at libinfo@jjay.cuny.edu.

     The annual Library book sale will be held this year on Monday, April 22 and Tuesday, April 23, from noon until 5:00 p.m. in the theater lobby. As usual, we will have incredible bargains and a great variety of material. Don't miss out! If you would like to donate books to the sale, you may drop them off at the Library's circulation desk or call Jane Davenport at x8236.