Library News Blog


Prof. Karen Okamoto, who substituted for Prof. Nancy Egan this past spring while Nancy was on sabbatical, has put together a list of Select Films Acquired During the Spring and Summer Semesters, 2010.

The catalog CUNY+ is unavailable this morning, Friday August 20, for maintenance. We expect it to be back at 10 am.

We have access to this database only through July 31, 2010.
"Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO) is designed to help busy researchers find reliable sources of information in half the time by directing them to exactly the right chapter, book, website, archive, or data set they need for their research. Each entry is a selective guided tour through the key literature on a topic, receives multiple peer-reviews as well as Editorial Board approval, and is designed to facilitate a research experience with no dead ends. All citations can be linked through to your collection via OpenURL, full-text via DOIs, or to the web via links to OCLC, WorldCat, and Google Books. These links are not established for the trial."
Bibliographies are currently available for these subject areas: Atlantic History; Classics; Criminology; Islamic Studies; Philosophy; Renaissance and Reformation; Social Work. Two John Jay faculty members ( Karen Terry and Lila Kazemian) compiled the bibliographies for 6 of the topics within the Criminology bibliography.

Click here to access Oxford Bibliographies Online

UPDATE: We have purchased a subscription to this database, for 5 concurrent users.

We have a 4 week trial for a complex database from Jane’s called Terrorism and Insurgency Centre. No library in CUNY has this database. The trial ends on May 22, 2010.

Access is limited to 5 concurrent users. Please remember to log out when you are finished, so someone else can use it. (Log-out link is in the top right hand corner of the database screen).

Click here for access from John Jay: Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre database trial.
Or click here for remote access.

The publisher claims this to be "The most comprehensive and authoritative source of the latest global terrorism-related news, analysis, reference and events . This unique service brings you the latest terrorism news, exclusive features, detailed reference and an interactive terrorist events database with an eight-year archive, giving you the most reliable and extensive collection of open source terrorism-related intelligence available. "

Please do send us your thoughts! Any thoughts regarding the database and whether or not we should subscribe to it are encouraged!

Lloyd Sealy librarians have been investigating the potential for ebook readers in the library. A report of their work and findings has just been published - click below for the article.

Maria Kiriakova, Karen S Okamoto, Mark Zubarev and Gretchen Gross. (2010, March). Aiming at a moving target: Pilot testing Ebook readers in an urban academic library. Computers in Libraries, 30(2): 21- 24.

The Greater New York Sports Chronology Professor Jeffrey Kroessler, our Circulation and Reference Librarian, has just published his latest book. To learn more about it, visit the Columbia University Press website.

 

The library is running a trial of Early English Books Online (EEBO), which contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. EEBO contains virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. Subject areas covered include: English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science.

 

As we must always be selective in making resource purchases, those that are strongly supported by faculty and students stand a better chance of being purchased in the future. So please take the time to look at this collection and get back to me with any comments. This trial will make the collection available until December 31. Please send any comments to Nancy Egan, the Electronic Resources Librarian at negan@jjay.cuny.edu.

The Library is featuring trials of two new databases: Global Issues in Contextissues and countries form the core of this dynamic database, containing a wealth of resources, including scholarly and news sources, maps and videos, which explain the historical and contemporary conditions necessary to understand global issues, conflicts and events. GreenR (Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources)offers authoritative content on the development of emerging green technologies and discusses issues on the environment, sustainability and more.GREENR is interactive and current, allowing users to navigate issues, organization and country portals. It's a one-stop site dedicated to studying sustainability and the environment.

Please email any comments to Nancy Egan at negan@jjay.cuny.edu.

EBSCOhost, the vendor for Academic Search Complete, PsycINFO, and others of our most popular databases, now provides an interface specifically for mobile devices like iPhones, Blackberries, and some Palm devices.  Access any of the EBSCOhost databases through the separate mobile device page and select the database you want to search.  Then search for articles (and in many cases read them) from anywhere you and your mobile device can access the Internet.

We welcome our New Reference/Freshman Services librarian Marta Bladek, and congratulate her on successfully defending her English dissertation at the CUNY Graduate Center the day before she started!

Thanks to the Chancellor's Textbook Initiative, the Library now has a textbook collection of over 360 distinct titles, many in multiple copies. All volumes in the textbook collection are being cataloged and listed in the library catalog, CUNY+, and shelved behind the Reserve Desk on the lower floor of the Library. Textbooks can be borrowed for up to 3 hours, for use within the Library.

Check out the blog entries below for news about the Library’s “film noir” video tour and our experimental federated search (more news about that to come later!).