Library Collections

The SciTech Team recently completed a comprehensive review of the reference materials on fourth floor, downsizing the collection there by over 60%.  While they haven’t moved far, the current periodicals have now been shifted onto the shelving opened up by this process.  This in turn frees up more floor space for student use or other purposes.

The MLA International Bibliography will be moving to the ProQuest platform effective August 1, 2013.  This will provide a user-friendly interface for the leading bibliography of books, articles, dissertations, and websites on modern languages and literatures.  In addition, VIVA was able to negotiate favorable pricing for access to Literature Online (LION) as well as LION Premium content. These new resources combine the texts from works of literature with criticism and reference.

Shifting of the E call numbers from second floor to third floor has now begun!  Please be aware of this as you direct patrons to the stacks or look for materials.  The plan is to have all the volumes in the D and E call number ranges moved to the third floor within the next few weeks.  This will clear the entire new wing on second floor as part of broader initiatives for transforming library spaces.

Through a special bundle purchase we now have greatly expanded our online coverage on the Web of Knowledge platform.  This acquisition brings significant new STEM-H content in the areas of the life sciences, medicine, chemistry, and patents.  It also adds interdisciplinary databases in key areas including  conference proceedings, book citation data, and a data citation index.  In addition to a one-time archive purchase, an active subscription component to the deal will ensure that all of the resources below are kept fully up to date for our users. Links for each resource are still in the process of being added to our library web pages but these databases are all currently active on the Web of Knowledge site.

BIOSIS Citation Index: 1926-present
Data Citation Index: 1900-present
Derwent Innovations Index: 1963-present
Medline: 1950–present
Zoological Records: 1864-present

Web of Science (added content):
Book Citation Index: 2005-present
Conference Proceedings Citation Index: 1990-present
Current Chemical Reactions
Index Chemicus

The VIVA Resources for Users Committee has approved renewals for several ProQuest databases including  Agricola, Factiva, and Sociological Abstracts among others.  A renewal was also approved for CINAHL on Ebsco.  The committee also discussed the results of the RFP that was done this spring for the MLA database.  One vendor emerged as a clear winner and we hope to be able to publicly share the recommended choice in the very near future so stay tuned.

The VIVA DDA project is moving into the implementation phase and libraries now have records they can load.  These titles are in STEM disciplines and supplement the ebook collections VIVA recently purchased from Springer and Elsevier.

The committee also reviewed some potential new opportunities including ebooks from the American Society of Microbiology, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, and LibGuides.  At this time the only one recommended to move forward as a VIVA product was to pursue a single statewide license for JSTOR.  This will result in some cost savings on annual fees.

Two VIVA databases will be going away when the current contract runs out at the end of June.  These are Bowker’s Books in Print and Gale’s Contemporary Women’s Issues.  Usage of these did not warrant their continuation by VIVA and we currently have no plans to try to pick them up locally.

VIVA is moving ahead with its plans to implement a Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA) e-book program for books in STEM disciplines. EBL was selected as the primary partner earlier this year. Several publishers have now agreed to participate in the VIVA program, and we have just heard that the following will be included:

· John Wiley & Sons
· Oxford University Press
· Jossey-Bass
· McGraw-Hill UK
· Wiley-VCH

The negotiations continue and VIVA hopes to have more publishers in the plan soon. As details are finalized we will be modifying the parameters of our own DDA and approval plans to take full advantage of the new offerings through VIVA.