The AcqWeblog Archives

Contents of News

	Weblog
	Weblog Archives
	Conference Announcements
	New Publishers

: a particularly useful site for Acquisitions and Collection Development

Amazon.com is pushing our paradigm again, giving the library world pause with more innovations. The latest uproar is about their new "Purchase Circles," which list bestsellers not only by city, but also by organization. See, for example, the articles in today's New York Times and in USA Today. Using "Purchase Circles," it's not only possible to find out what is selling well at Vanderbilt (or Harvard or IBM), we could sign up for a monthly email with this data.

This comes on the heels of The Response to "Building Earth’s Largest Library," where Steve Coffman continues his thought-provoking ideas about using the Amazon.com model in the libraries. He has certainly caught our attention, and deservedly so. As he notes: "Since the publication of 'Earth’s Largest Library,' I’ve been contacted by no fewer than eight major commercial vendors interested in pursuing the project from a purely business point of view."

August 25, 1999

Librarian's Lao Tzu by Andy Barnett, Assistant Director of McMillan Memorial Library in Wisconsin Rapids, is "a partial rendering of the Tao te Ching from the viewpoint of a librarian." Highly recommended. Regain perspective as we hurtle into September.

AcqWeb Site: Library Science: Diversions

August 24, 1999

VivaSmart does comparison shopping for textbooks, much the same way that Acses and AddALL search for monographs (although it's limited to the United States and Canada). While it was started for students by students (specifically two Standford graduate students), it can be quite helpful for us too, since Amazon, etc., don't have thorough textbook coverage.

AcqWeb Site: Verification: In Print -- U.S.

August 23, 1999

AcqWeb's Directory of Email Addresses of Publishers and Vendors has been updated by David Marshall and Barbara Karpel. It now has over 4500 entries, with access to more than nine thousand email links and Web forms.

AcqWeb Site: Publisher Directory: Email Addresses

August 16, 1999

Yenny.com is an Argentine bookstore on the Web. Use "búsqueda avanzada" to search by ISBN, etc. Thanks to Associate Editor David Marshall for finding this site.

AcqWeb Site: Verification: In Print

August 13, 1999

The 60-Second Book, from the Aug. 2 issue of Time Magazine, discusses Print on Demand, claiming implications "the equivalent of the cable revolution" and that "a book never need go out of print." Never? One can only wonder, given that publishers themselves are morphing at a fantastic rate.

For those interested in on demand publishers, there is a list in AcqWeb's reprint section.

August 12, 1999

Banned Books Week (BBW) is September 25 to October 2, 1999 in the United States. This ALA Web site also has a list of Challenged and Banned Books and a Resource Guide.

AcqWeb Site: Library Science: Hot Topics

July 30, 1999

"If your company is looking for someone to help it understand how to take advantage of the Internet, hire a librarian." This is the conclusion of Librarians Get It: How Librarians are Shaping the Web, a noteworthy article by Dale Dougherty, publisher of Web Review.

July 29, 1999

Planning and Building Libraries by Linda Levar of the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, is an first-rate collection of Web links. It covers automation, barrier-free design, famous libraries, interiors, lighting, security, standards, and more.

AcqWeb Site: Library Science: General

July 26, 1999

BookWhere 2000 - Available Databases is sizable list of Z39.50 compliant hosts -- primarily library catalogs. It's from Sea Change Corporation, a company selling Windows-based client software for simultaneously searching multiple large information databases on the Internet using the NISO Z39.50 / ISO 23950 protocol.

AcqWeb Site: Verification: Library Catalogs

July 23, 1999

Alibris, the used and rare book agent, now has a section devoted to libraries. It's a first for these already very useful sites, and because of this, we have moved Alibris to the top of our listing for antiquarian verification. They understand not only our market significance, but also our needs. Thus it is possible for those of us that do not yet have institutional credit cards to use purchase orders. They are also planning to include MARC record information for their listings in the near future.

Thanks to Marla Schwartz of Washington College of Law Library, American University, for pointing this out.

AcqWeb Site: Verification: Antiquarian

July 15, 1999

Hypertext Library Lingo: A Glossary of Library Terminology, by Joan Reitz (Ruth A. Haas Library at Western Connecticut State University), is intended as a reference resource for college and university library users and library professionals. It currently defines about 1,000 terms.

AcqWeb Site: Reference: Library Glossaries

July 14, 1999

Two New Quotation Resources:
The Poetry Archives @ eMule.com is "an ever expanding archive of classical poetry." It currently has 3628 poems by 137 poets, plus a poetry discussion forum.

Creative Quotations has an interesting and potentially helpful twist. You can search quotes by date, i.e. an author's birthday.

AcqWeb Site: Reference: Quotations

July 13, 1999

Search Tips: Finding the Elusive Publisher Web Site is a new addition to the publisher directory. After searching for publishers and vendors for five years, we thought it time to share how we tackle this often frustrating job.

This is the Web, so "the best" search strategy is volatile. We plan to update this page as our methods change.

We welcome your input. Do you have a great way for finding publishers -- or specific types of publishers? Please write us at: a.leiserson@vanderbilt.edu

AcqWeb Site: Directory of Publishers

July 12, 1999

The Publisher Section has been updated, with 176 new listings. Thanks to Peter Brading and Ann Denton for the many links they brought to our attention.

AcqWeb Site: Directory of Publishers

July 9, 1999

Web Search Engines Are Lagging according to a flurry of stories on the Web in the last couple of days. See, for example, the New York Times and ZDNet News. They are based on an article in the latest issue of Nature: "Accessibility of information on the web," Steve Lawrence and C. Lee Giles (400: 6740, July 8, 1999, p. 107-109). The article itself is not yet publicly accessible, but if you go to www.wwwmetrics.com, Mr. Lawrence will email you a PDF version.

This a great read for librarians. It's remarkably short and to the point. Here's a sampling of some of their findings in case you haven't read this elsewhere:

• The publicly indexable portion of the Web has about 6 terabytes of text data;
• Only 34.2% of servers contain metadata on their home page, and of those a mere 0.3% adhere to the Dublin Core standard;
• Of the 11 search engines analyzed, Northern Lights covers the most, but that's only about 16%; and
• Combining search engines, including using metasearchers such as MetaCrawler, "greatly improves coverage."

July 8, 1999

The FIDDO Project, or Focused Investigation of Document Delivery Options, from the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University, aims to address "a fundamental need for an objective and independent examination of electronic document and article delivery to derive and indicate what may be an optimal scenario for this type of service." As well as giving access to their reports and conference proceedings, it has a number of useful lists such as document delivery services, references, standards and Web sites.

AcqWeb Site: Library Science : Hot Topics : Document Delivery

July 7, 1999

Archiving the AcqWeblog. In the past we have not saved the News portion of AcqWeb, but with our new Weblog format, this changes. Weblogs will be stored bimonthly.

One caveat: while we go to great lengths to repair degrading links in AcqWeb (no small task for the publisher section in particular), this will not always be possible for the Archives. For example, links to news articles will disappear in time. When the archives lead to a dead end, your best bet is to look in the rest of AcqWeb, where we delete sites no longer with us.

AcqWeb Site: AcqWeblog : Archives

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