The Scoop

Library staff --

Please be advised that all Voyager services (including SUMMIT public catalog) and library web resources will be unavailable from 6-7am on Wednesday, Feb 4.

The purpose of this outage is to allow CMS to perform network maintenance.

The Voyager system and library web resources should be fully operational at the conclusion of this outage, and users should notice no difference in system behavior.

Integrated Library System Management Group
E.S. Bird Library
Syracuse University
ILSM@syr.edu

Posted by mhlennox at 09:15 AM | Permalink

EXTENDED OCLC SYSTEM MAINTENANCE ON
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 1, 2004 AND SUNDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2004

To allow for hardware and system maintenance, the OCLC FirstSearch service
will be unavailable for approximately 6 hours, beginning at 02:00 a.m. US Eastern Standard Time Sunday, February 1, 2004, and again on Sunday, February 8, 2004. This will also affect any libraries that use OCLC group catalog services or link into WorldCat and FirstSearch from partner information services. Temporary disruptions to the QuestionPoint service are also likely to occur on February 8, 2004.

Barring any unexpected problems, we anticipate that these services will be available for use again beginning at approximately 08:00 a.m. US Eastern Standard Time Sunday, February 1, 2004 and February 8, 2004 respectively.

OCLC sincerely regrets the inconvenience to its users.

Posted by nbturner at 09:14 AM | Permalink

This morning the library experienced a network slowdown due to high utilization on one of our servers. The server being close to capacity and experiencing increased demands caused the high utilization. The process used to correct this issue was also subject to the slowdown and took over an hour to run. Server operation is back to normal and LISD is working to reduce the server load. Please let us know if you encounter any problems.

Posted by mdesalvo at 02:28 PM | Permalink

A trial has been established for the database All Academic SearchTM --"a collection of peer-reviewed conference proceedings and journal articles from the social sciences."

According to the publisher, "this full-text library is an essential tool for students and scholars interested in the social sciences. The database contains refereed primary research from conventions, journals, and other sources. "

To access the trial, log in to the site at:
www.allacademic.com/explore

username=ALA2004
password=book123

Note: You will need to provide a name, affiliation and accept the License Agreement in order to access this database.

Trial Contact: Kelly Hovendick

Posted by nbturner at 09:42 AM | Permalink

Join Pam Thomas, SU Digital Initiatives Librarian, and Nancy Turner, SU Electronic Resources Librarian, for Syracuse University Library's first Peer to Peer Library Dialog session of the new year:

Clash of Library Civilizations: Online Portals Challenge the Catalog

Roy Tennant, of the California Digital Library, says that "Only librarians want to search, everyone else likes to find." Current user studies do indicate that today's students and faculty want simple search interfaces, like Amazon or Google, that quickly help them to access books, articles and websites. How well do our current library catalogs satisfy the expectations of today's researcher? Is federated searching, or metasearching, the answer? What are the current trends in the development of OPAC's? Join Pam and Nancy for a lively discussion of "Clash of Library Civilizations: Online Portals Challenge the Catalog."

Peer to Peer Library Dialog
Wednesday February 4
Noon - 1pm
1916A Room - E.S. Bird Library

Those interested in reading more about this topic are also invited to review the following articles (available on SU Library course "reserve" under
course number "LBR 100"):

1. Luther, Judy (2003, Oct 1) Trumping Google?: Metasearching's Promise. Library Journal, 128(16), 36-39.

2. Sarah E. Thomas, Abundance, Attention, and Access: Or Portals and Catalogs. Available at: http://www.arl.org/newsltr/212/portal.html
Bimonthly Report on Research Library Issues and Actions from ARL, CNI, and SPARC (Issue 212, October 2000)

Contact Info: Peer to Peer Library Dialog is a staff initiated program of monthly discussion about trends and current topics of interest in librarianship. Send comments or questions to Michael Pasqualoni mjpasqua@syr.edu

Posted by pthomas at 11:48 AM | Permalink

A trial to the online version of Encyclopedia of Public Administration & Public Policy is now available from Dekker at:
http://www.dekker.com/servlet/product/productid/E-EPAP

This encyclopedia covers a broad range of topices including:
-----Processes, methods, and influential ideas from "Achieving Productivity" and "Game Theory" to "Uncertainty in Decision Making" and "Win-Win Approaches to International Peace"
-----Policy decisions and histories in fields such as privatization, biomedical ethics, education, diversity, and judicial ethics
-----Watershed decisions and policies, spanning the Nuremberg trials to the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and recent budget reconciliation bills
-----Current administrative practices and models with articles such as "Types of Organizational Theories," "Electronic Government," and "Economic Theories of Administration"

This trial will be accessible from the campus only through February 15. For additional information, contact Michael Pasqualoni at mjpasqua@syr.edu or 443-3715

Posted by nbturner at 04:08 PM | Permalink

A notification of hardware maintenance at Kluwer's electronic journal site has been sent to users at SU Library:

All Kluwer Online Journals sites, including the gateway pages at:
http://journals.kluweronline.com
http://journals.kluweronline.com
http://www.kluweronline.com
http://www.kluweronline.com

will be down on Sunday 25 January 2004 from 3:00 - 3:30 PM EST for hardware maintenance. Other Kluwer Academic Publishers web sites will be unaffected.

Kluwer apologizes for this inconvenience and will make this technical change as quickly as possible.

Posted by nbturner at 11:41 AM | Permalink

As of 1:00 pm, Reference USA is temporarily unavailable due to technical problems at the site. According to ReferencUSA technical staff, these problems should be resolved by 2:00 pm.

Posted by nbturner at 01:07 PM | Permalink

The following new databases have been added to SU Library's collection of electronic resources and are available online.

HarpWeek : Full text access to Harper's Weekly from 1857 to 1877, including the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. This database includes scanned images of the periodical in addition to searchable text.

Sanborn Maps : Digital access to more than 660,000 large-scale maps of more than 12,000 American towns and cities.

Bertolt Brechts Werkes : An electronic edition of Brecht's works based on Bertolt Brecht - Ausgewählte Werke in sechs Bänden - Jubiläumsausgabe um 100.

Kafkas Werke im WWW : An electronic edition of Kafka's complete works, Franz Kafka, Kritische Ausgabe, Schriften und Tagebücher.

Posted by nbturner at 11:04 AM | Permalink

SU Library has added a new JSTOR collection to its electronic journal subscriptions. The Arts & Sciences III Collection is focused on the arts and humanities and currently contains 33 Language & Literature journals, 32 Music journals, and 7 journals in the disciplines of Art & Art History and Architecture & Architectural History. Additional titles in these fields as well as journals in cultural studies, film, folklore, performing arts, and religion will follow. The collection will be complete by the end of 2005. A title list can be viewed at
http://www.jstor.org/about/asIII.list.html.

Posted by nbturner at 09:59 AM | Permalink