From the Desk of the Chief Librarian

In the midst of one of our coldest Januaries since the `memory of man’ (a phrase much beloved by medieval chroniclers) I received an e-mail requesting the article `The Existential Question: What is real?’ published some years ago in The critical criminologist. The existential fact for us is that Sealy is the only library in the country that catalogued this newsletter. In the same vein, last year we received a request for a Canadian report on money laundering that only John Jay and Harvard Law owned. These are just two examples of the uniqueness of our holdings, especially as they relate to the grey literature of our mission fields. Reports, newsletters, pamphlets, contain much important information for the scholar, but most libraries don’t catalogue them and thereby they become all but inaccessible to the researcher. We tend to rely overwhelmingly on digitized formats these days, but many of us tend to forget that much historical -- and crucial -- material remains only in print format. The very fact that we dedicate the resources to make this material available highlights the importance of the Sealy Library to criminal justice researchers and students alike.

This ephemeral literature and our special collections help put us in the forefront of criminal justice institutions. Making archives accessible, however, makes a skilled special collections librarian a necessity, something we have haven’t had for over ten years. Now this situation has changed. I’m pleased to report that Assistant Professor Ellen Belcher joined our staff on February 2nd. Ellen, who will have responsibility for these original materials, among other duties, comes to us from the University of Washington with graduate degrees from Columbia University. I trust you will join me in welcoming her to the John Jay community.

Larry Sullivan

Improved Linking to Journal Full Text

While we have not yet reached the nirvana of being able to search a topic and instantly connect to the full text of all relevant journal articles, the John Jay Library has made major strides towards that goal in the last few months.
In November, the Library contracted with a company called Serials Solutions to help maintain our “List of Full Text Electronic Journals”. Our list is now larger (over 20,000 journal titles) and more accurate than it has ever been, containing links to journals included in such full-text databases as EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier, journal collections such as Project Muse, Elsevier’s ScienceDirect and Kluwer Online, and scholarly journals that are available for free over the Internet.

Even better, we are now able to link from all of our major online indexes to the Serials Solutions database so with one click of a mouse you can discover whether John Jay has online access to any journal found in the result list of your search. If we do have access you can link directly to the journal (though not the article) with just one more mouse click. This two-click access to full text is now available for all Wilson indexes (Social Sciences Abstracts, Humanities Abstracts, Science Abstracts, etc.), all of our criminal justice indexes (Criminal Justice Abstracts, Criminal Justice Periodicals Index), and other important indexes such as Sociological Abstracts, MLA Bibliography, and America: History and Life. Look for the phrase “Search for Full Text.”

One caveat, of course: this is a relatively new technology and occasionally connections do not work, or information is incorrect. Please let us know about these glitches so that we can try to correct them.

Bonnie Nelson