Corrections or additions?
This article by Henry McInnes Adams was prepared for the October
25, 2000 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
Electronic Guide To Periodicals
Surfing the Internet can be a
catch-as-catch-can research endeavor. Just when you find the article
you need, you discover it is no longer available on the Web. Solution:
try the professionally organized electronic databases. Some cost
money, some are free for cardholders in the public library system.
For instance, if you have a library card in any town you
can use the EBSCO databases, with their full texts of periodicals and
documents. These databases were installed on the web pages of all the
libraries in the state last summer. A deal is under way to add four
major newspapers to all library web pages as well. Search here, and
you will find the article always available and for the right price,
free.
The New Jersey State Library has a $500,000 contract for
the full-text EBSCO reference databases to be available to library
card
holders
statewide. EBSCO belongs to an Alabama-based conglomerate
with 4,000
employees, and it is named after its founder, Elton B.
Stephens, who
sold magazines to pay his way through law school in the
1930s. It
has more than 50 years of experience helping libraries and
other public
and private organizations obtain information from the
company’s network
of databases.
The contract, says Jack Livingstone, the state
librarian, lets
the state library “level the playing field” for
all libraries
across the state. “We can now `wire’ even the
lowest-budget libraries
so that all library card holders can have access to
EBSCO’s enormous
resources,” he says.
A graduate of Temple, Class of 1949, Livingston has a
graduate degree
from Drexel and was director of the Monmouth County
libraries. Three
years after retiring he came out of retirement to take the
state librarian’s
job, first as an interim, then as permanent. After five
years he is
retiring again in the middle of November.
Livingstone is proud of what’s been done so far. “Let
me tell
you about the Irvington Public Library,” he says.
“It’s in
a township that’s almost bankrupt. The library director
didn’t have
a hope of become computerized. When I heard about the
situation I
contacted her and promised it would not cost her
anything.”
“We cabled her entire three-story building with the
help of 30
volunteers, three personnel from the state library, and
free cabling
provided by Bell Atlantic (now Verizon). Irvington Library
now has
what every other library in the state has: patron access
to the EBSCO
Host system.” Pennington Public Library, which is
outside the
main county systems, has been similarly wired, though it
still has
a paper catalog.
To move libraries into the cyber century, Livingston
developed a “hub”
system. “By developing the hub system we take
financially strong
libraries across the state (supplemented with state money)
to give
online access to libraries with tiny budgets or limited
resources,”
he says. That can save smaller libraries across the state
a combined
amount of $1 million a year in Internet Service Provider
charges.
The contract with EBSCO pays for every elementary, middle
and high
school library, and all non-profit and public libraries in
New Jersey
to gain access to all four, separate, age-specific
databases: elementary,
middle, high school and general. The same access would
have cost individual
schools and libraries a total of $2.5 to $3 million.
Here’s what just the EBSCO news service subscription
contains:
Issue and Controversies on File, which coversall relevantissues of the day.Today’s Science on File, which includes thelatest sciencenews in language understandable by almost anyone.Editorials on File, which has full-textnewspaper editorialson key events of the past 20 years.Funk and Wagnall’s New Encyclopedia, the fulltext thatcontains profiles on every country of the world.The World Almanac and Book of Facts, both ofwhich areclassic sources of reference information on statisticaldata and historicevents.MasterFile Premier, full text for nearly 1,840periodicalscovering nearly all subjects.Business Source Plus, full text for nearly all260 journalsdevoted to business, management, economics, finance,banking, investment.Clinical Reference System, more than 7,000reports, inuser-friendly language, describing symptoms, diagnoses,treatments,risks and the after effects of medications.Newspaper Source, selected full-text articlesfrom 154United States and international newspapers.Also MasterFile Elite, full text of nearly1,220 periodicalson most subjects); MAS FullTEXT Ultra (570 generalinterestand current events magazines); and Middle SearchPlus (110 magazinesappropriate for middle and high school students).For personal use, there is a comfort factor forparents: BecauseEBSCO Host databases are age-specific, elementary schoolstudentscan access the ones designed for their needs, and neitherparentsnor school teachers need be concerned that grade-schoolkids willstumble onto adult Internet sites or inadvertently joinadult chatrooms. EBSCO databases are not designed for highereducation users;there are other databases for colleges and universities.The state library also has a Spanish language database onits webpage, and it is also making available another resourcecalled “Novelist,”a reader’s survey database with library sources for oldand new booksand book reviews.To access these resources, go to your public library’swebsite. Foranywhere in Mercer County, try www.mcl.org or, forMiddlesex County,try www.lmxac.org and go to the Reference Resources Link.Click onthe EBSCO Host icon on the right side of the screen. Clickon thatto access the Login Page. Then enter your Patron ID —that’s your14-digit bar code number from your library card. Call yourlibraryif you need help. If it is closed, use the E-mailReference Serviceon the “Reference Resources” page to contact aprofessionallibrarian somewhere who will offer the help you need.Companies bidding on the contract won by EBSCO includedGale and UMI.”We said to them all, we have $500,000, so what canyou give us.They all kept coming back upping what they wouldoffer,” saysLivingston. He is working with Gale to add four majornewspapers —Bergen Record, NYT, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer— tothe all-library databases for $150,000 a year, for thepublic librariesthat go through the state library’s hub.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
