The AcqWeblog Archives

Contents of News

	Weblog
	Weblog Archives
	Conference Announcements
	New Publishers

: a particularly useful site for Acquisitions and Collection Development

August 28, 2000

• NetLibrary to Raise $82 M in IPO (Jim Milliot, Publishers Weekly): an interesting analysis of NetLibrary as it starts to go public.

August 23, 2000

• At long last AcqWeb has a relatively short, tidy URL! http://acqweb.library.vanderbilt.edu/

  This comes as part of a server move here at Vanderbilt's Jean and Alexander Heard Library in Nashville, Tennessee.

  An enormous thank you goes to Marshall Breeding and Jody Combs of the Library Technology Team and Library Administration for all of their work and patience in this migration.

  There are, of course, the usual warnings for URL changes. Please update your bookmarks and links. While we have redirects in place, we plan to delete them in a year. And if you spot errors, don't hesitate to let us know. Just email a.leiserson@vanderbilt.edu

August 22, 2000

• U.S. Serials Services Price Index for 2000 from the May 2000 American Libraries is now on the Web. It is a tidy two-page summary, based on an analysis of 1,294 titles. It shows an overall rise of 5.3% and "a shift to electronic publications."

• The Shape of the 21st Century Library, by Howard Besser, is "an attempt to help librarians understand some of the changes that will affect libraries in the coming years, and to prompt librarians to think seriously about how to deal with these changes." He looks not just at the impact of technology, but also economic factors such as the movement to larger, less-personal institutions such as mega-discount stores. He then goes into key challenges facing libraries -- all in a surprisingly brief paper.

• The Emerging Role of E-Books by Roy Tennant (August 1, 2000, Library Journal) is a clear analysis of e-book issues for libraries, with some helpful links.

• FreeTranslation.com, a new machine translation service, is good enough to have made LII's "Best of..." list. That's because it's fast, phrase-based and can handle more words than other Web translators.

  AcqWeb Site: Reference : Multilingual Resources

August 14, 2000

• Documents in Information Science (DoIS) is a free, searchable "database of articles and conference proceedings published in electronic format in the area of Library and Information Science." Thus far, most of its coverage comes from six e-journals: Cuadernos de Documentación Multimedia, D-Lib, Bulletin des Bibliotheques de France, Boletín de RedIris, Ariadne, and Journal of Electronic Publishing. Its managers are José Manuel Barrueco Cruz, Thomas Krichel and Natividad Noverges.

  AcqWeb Site: Library Science : General Sites

• Electronic Literature Organization is a new group "to facilitate and promote the writing, publishing, and reading of literature in electronic media." As best we can tell there are no librarians on its boards. For more background information, see Publisher's Weekly's coverage.

  AcqWeb Site: Associations and Organizations

August 8, 2000

• Our Accounting and Auditing Section just took a big leap forward -- from 0 to 4 links. This is a something of a milestone, given how important, yet shrouded in mystery, these subjects can be for acquisitions. We learned of them from a presentation by Susan Klopper at AALL.

  • Rutgers Accounting Web (RAW), described as the "mother of all accounting Web sites"
  • Kaplan's AuditNet Resource List
  • Accounting Professionals' Resource Center
  • CPAnet

  AcqWeb Site: Reference : Money Matters

August 7, 2000

• Baker & Taylor Settles Lawsuit with 18 States (American Libraries Online, August 7, 2000). In the wake of a five-year Justice Department investigation, Baker & Taylor has agreed to a $15.5 million settlement with schools, libraries and the U.S. government for books they allegedly overcharged for.

• ONIX (ONline Information eXchange), the international standard for book industry product information in electronic form, has just been released. According to PW Daily for Booksellers (Publishers Weekly) it "provides standardized forms for identifying a book's title, author, publisher and ISBN as well as ... physical descriptions such as dimensions and weight, which are used in automated warehousing systems. It can also accommodate thumbnail cover graphics."

• LC21: A Digital Strategy for the Library of Congress is a thorough examination of the responsibilities and challenges the world's largest library collection faces with the explosion of digital information.

• Random House Plans to Establish Exclusively Digital Unit (New York Times, 7/31/00). Random House is the first major trade publisher to establish an imprint exclusively for original electronic books: AtRandom.

  AcqWeb Site: Publishers : Electronic

• AcqWeb's Book Review Page has just expanded, thanks to the discovery of Overbooked: Reviews and Reading Lists. It led to:
  • Books Unlimited, from the Guardian and Observer
  • BookWire: Reviews
  • Canadian Book Review Annual
  • The Richmond Review, a UK literary magazine

  AcqWeb Site: Library Science :
  Collection Development : Book Reviews

August 4, 2000

• AcqWeb News. We're in the middle of a server switch, so updates have been sporadic recently. We should be back on track soon, but until then, please bear with us.

  Meanwhile, read on for backlogged news from the world of Acquisitions, Collection Development and the Web ....

• AcqWeb's International Directory of Email Addresses has been updated. It now has over 11,000 links! Congratulations to our amazing Associate Editor, David Marshall of Georgetown.

  AcqWeb Site: Email Addresses

• Cribsheet on Electronic Books (eBooks). In case you haven't happened across this site by Jerry Kuntz, it's a particularly helpful breakdown of the myriad types of electronic books. It can serve as a one page demo that not all e-books are by Stephen King, nor are they necessarily read on one of those gizmos that looks like a cross between a cell phone and an Etch-a-Sketch.

  AcqWeb Site: Library Science :
  Hot Topics : E-publishing

• Two promising book reviews recently discovered on the Web:
  • the constant reader is a weekly Web magazine with book reviews, essays, poetry, and fiction. Four of the writers are librarians in the New York/New Jersey area.

  • The Washington Monthly Magazine focuses on U.S. politics, and includes Book Review Archives.

  AcqWeb Site: Library Science :
  Collection Development : Book Reviews

• And two helpful general reference sites:
  • Internet Collegiate Reference Collection from Bill Frost of Bloomsburg University's Harvey A. Andruss Library has a subject index which uses LC Classification.

  • FindArticles.com is a "free online article-search service," using Gale Group editorial content. The search engine is fast, and the ads (which make it free) are not too obtrusive. After testing several acquisitions-related searches, it appears that Library Journal and School Library Journal are the only journals from our field included. Nonetheless, this is an impressive and potentially useful site.

  AcqWeb Site: Reference :
  General and Miscellaneous Sites

• New verification resources for books from Mexico:
  • La Librería de Porrúa Hnos. y Cia

  • espiral.com

  AcqWeb Site: Verification :
  In Print Listings : Mexico

• Gateways Through the Vendor Maze is a PowerPoint presentation on "using technology -- and other tricks -- to manage legal publishers." It was part of a presentation by Rob Richards and Frank Houdek at last month's American Association of Law Libraries' annual meeting. It includes a useful bibliography.

• Seeking a Radical Change in the Role of Publishing -- in case you missed it in June 16 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

• Adaptive Technology for the Internet is an excellent guide by Barbara T. Mates on how to make "Electronic Resources Accessible to All."

• And finally an interesting tidbit.... We were reminded last month that Amazon.com has been on the Web 5 years. We'd forgotten -- we're older than Amazon. For the curious (like us), they have a rendition of their original home page

July 21, 2000

• Three New Journals. We are just back from the annual meeting of the American Association of Law Libraries, and have a number of new resources up our sleeve. We will be posting them over the next few days. Here to start this influx are three excellent professional serials:
  • Law Library Journal American Association of Law Libraries (Full content)
  • AALL Spectrum American Association of Law Libraries (Full content)
  • The Charleston Advisor (Table of contents; partial content)

  AcqWeb Site: Directory of Journals

July 13, 2000

• SearcheBooks.com. From the talented group that brought us SearchEdu.com and SearchGov.com, here's another very useful specialized Internet search engine -- this time devoted to ebook Web sites. They even provide the code so you can add a Search ebooks.com form to your own site.

  AcqWeb Site: Library Science :
  Hot Topics : E-Publishing

July 12, 2000

• All Nations Telephone Search Engine. Here's a handy tool when you need telephone information -- particularly when you need to figure out how to make an international call. It gives dialing prefixes and links to telephone directories by country.

  AcqWeb Site: Reference Resources :
  Telephone Information

July 10, 2000

• AALL Committee on Relations with Information Vendors. Have you seen the recently redesigned CRIVPage of the American Association of Law Libraries? For some time it has been a model clearinghouse of information on working with publishers. Now its handsome layout adds to its effectiveness. For those less acquainted with U.S. law libraries, it has a section with Sample Letters, pointers on Dealing with Telemarketers, a Glossary of Publishing Terms, an excellent Divested Titles List and more. Well done CRIV, with special thanks to Chair Frank Houdek and Webmaster Anne Myers!

  AcqWeb Site: Resources for Law Librarians

Until next time, wishing you all a pleasant cyber-day,