Knox College Library News

Seymour Library’s Unnamed Newsletter

19 November 2007

The ‘we don’t call it a newsletter for nothing’ issue, featuring

• New circulation policies and practices
• A new interlibrary loan option
• New SFX, new EZproxy
• New indexes and databases in gender studies, history, and political science
• New JSTOR and Sage journals online
• Newly on exhibit in the library
• A new way of thinking about trains

New circulation policies and renewal processes

We adopted some new circulation policies last summer along with our new Voyager library system. Their first effects will soon be felt by many Knox faculty and staff. If you borrowed or renewed a book early in the fall term, it will soon be due. In place of our once fixed faculty/staff due dates of December 1 and June 1, we now have moving due dates for faculty and staff that guarantee the loan of a book for at least 13 weeks from the day you borrow it. As we cycle through the first round of loans under this new policy, keep in mind that

• You will receive an e-mail from us four days before a 13-week loan is due; you may then renew the loan online using your 7-digit Knox ID barcode number.
• After another 13 weeks you can renew an item by returning it to the library, where the borrow/renew cycle begins again if you want to keep an item for another six months.
• You’ll find detailed renewal instructions at the ‘Services: Circulation’ link at library.knox.edu.
• Some collections and formats – our browsing collection, the DVD/video collection, reserve materials, etc. – have shorter loan periods. These are also defined at the ‘Services: Circulation’ link.

I-Share: A new interlibrary loan option

Seymour Library is now one of 71 academic libraries in Illinois using the Voyager library system and sharing their book collections through an interlibrary loan system known as I-Share. The 71 I-Share libraries include all University of Illinois campuses, all regional state universities, Bradley, Illinois Wesleyan, and Augustana. Collectively they have 32 million copies of more than 9 million individual books, maps, recordings, etc. (Our library has 241,000 copies of 206,000 items.)

Other things you may want to know about I-Share and interlibrary loan now

• Requests for periodical articles should continue to go through our online ILLiad service.
• ILLiad is also available for books we can’t borrow through any of the I-Share libraries.
• Books requested through I-Share rather than ILLiad will generally arrive much faster and will be loaned to you for a longer period of time. And you don’t have to enter publication information about the book into an online form – I-Share does that for you.
• Since our first I-Share loans in July, we’ve lent and borrowed more than a thousand books through I-Share.
• You may use your Knox ID card to borrow books at any I-Share library.
• Major libraries not a part of I-Share include Northwestern, DePaul, and the University of Chicago.

You can get to the I-Share catalog by any of several ways:

• Follow the ‘Search 71 Illinois Libraries’ link on our home page
• Choose the ‘I-Share Catalog’ button when using Seymour Library’s online catalog.
• If your search for a book in our catalog comes up empty, you will be prompted to repeat your search in the combined holdings of all I-Share libraries (‘Repeat search in the I-Share catalog?’).

Once you’ve found an I-Share book you want, choose the ‘Request’ button at the top of the screen to initiate your loan.

New: SFX and EZproxy

In addition to the Voyager and I-Share developments, we have also recently upgraded two essential established services: SFX is a new and superior means of finding your way to our on-line journals and EZproxy is a new way to access library subscriptions and services from off campus:

• SFX not only identifies more freely accessible e-journals, but also has more accurate information about dates of coverage for Knox’s paid e-journal subscriptions. Search SFX by the title of a periodical or its key words to find out whether we have full-text access to it through one of our online services. You’ll find SFX both in the ‘QuickLinks’ drop down menu on the library’s home page (look for ‘E-journals’ there) and through the Find out if an article is available online: e-journals lookup link on our home page. Like our new Voyager catalog, SFX is subsidized by the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois and is maintained on a CARLI server.
• Our new proxy server, EZproxy, extends access to our web-based licensed databases and e-journals in a (mostly) seamless manner for Knox students, faculty and staff working off-campus. To use Knox’s licensed databases or e-journals with EZproxy, you need do nothing but click on a link to a licensed resource from the Library’s web pages, and log into EZproxy with your Knox username and password. EZproxy will then pass you through to the database as if you were connected to the Knox network. EZproxy needs no additional setup in your browser. Additionally, the links to e-journals that you discover in the new SFX link resolver are also served by EZproxy. For information on using EZproxy with Moodle, see the ‘New Proxy Server for Access to Licensed Content’ entry in the ‘News‘ link at library.knox.edu.

New: Indexes and databases

We’ve added to our list of online indexes and databases three of the services that we offered on trial last spring. You’ll find all three among the ‘Databases A-Z’ or ‘Databases by subject’ links at the top of the ‘Quick links’ drop-down menu at library.knox.edu.

• GenderWatch describes itself as “a full text database of unique and diverse publications that focus on how gender impacts a broad spectrum of subject areas. With its archival material, dating back to 1970 in some cases, GenderWatch is a repository of an important historical perspective on the evolution of the women’s movement and the changes in gender roles. Publications include scholarly journals, magazines, newspapers, newsletters, regional publications, books, and NGO, government and special reports.”
• Historical Abstracts is a database of 750,000 citations and abstracts of journal articles and citations of books and dissertations covering the history of the world since 1450 (Historical Abstracts excludes North American history, which is covered by the America: History and Life database). Scholarly material on anthropology/sociology, area and multicultural studies, political science, and current affairs can also be found here.
• Worldwide Political Science Abstracts indexes more than 1500 international journals in political science and what its publisher CSA defines as “its complementary fields, including international relations, law, and public administration / policy.” This database of more than 600,000 citations and abstracts is a merger of two previous political science indexes: Political Science Abstracts (1975-2000) and ABC POL SCI (1984-2000). New material added since 2000 emphasizes international sources.

New online periodicals

And as the number of online indexes and databases grows, we also continue to expand our holdings of e-journals. These 400 or so new online periodicals are among the titles you can identify through SFX.

¶ The new JSTOR Arts & Sciences II full-text periodical collection doubles to about 250 the number of titles in our JSTOR archive of core academic journals. New titles include extensive additions in economics and Asian studies as well as JSTOR’s first titles in classics, Middle Eastern studies, and African studies. Among the JSTOR II titles we’ve never had access to through print subscriptions are

• Journal of Palestine Studies [1971-2003]
• Journal of Modern African Studies [1963-2001]
• Biometrics
• Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London [1917-2001]

All JSTOR collections accessible at Knox — JSTOR Arts & Sciences I, Arts & Sciences II, and Ecology & Botany – are also accessible and searchable through the JSTOR Quick Link.

¶ SAGE Deep Backfile provides online access to all pre-1999 content of 301 academic journals – that’s 4,284,000 articles in 357,000 issues. The SAGE backfile both adds new journals to our collections and extends our holdings of many print subscriptions back to their first date of publication. Titles include

• China Report (1965-1999)
• Journal of Management (1975-1999)
• Journal of Peace Research (1964-1999)
• Journal of Sport and Social issues (1977-1999)
• Review of Radical Political Economics (1969-1999)

The complete list of titles in the Sage Deep Backfile is available at http://www.carli.illinois.edu/mem-prod/e-resources/07SageTitleList.pdf

Paper Dreams, Paper Nightmares: Fictions Packaged in Paperbacks

An exhibit of mid-20th century paperbacks is on display in the Eastman Exhibit Area on the second floor of Seymour Library. ‘Paper Dreams’ features Hemingway and Sartre in their paperback glory, science fiction and detective genres, paperbacks from abroad, and paperbacks gone Hollywood. Our thanks to all who gave or loaned us books from their collections: Joel Ward, Laurie Sauer, Steve Fineberg, Carley Robison, Isabel Livosky, Bill Brady, and Sharon Clayton.

A train-inspired epiphany

Finally, as promised, lines from a poem inspired by a ’sign at a railroad crossing in Kenya:’

In a poem, one line may hide another line,
As at a crossing, one train may hide another train…
….And so when you read
Wait until you have read the next line –
Then it is safe to go on reading…..
One idea may hide another: Life is simple
Hide Life is incredibly complex…
And one dream may hide another as is well known, always, too.

– from ‘One train may hide another,’ Kenneth Koch