The more than forty prestigious scholarly journals published by Johns Hopkins University Press are now available on-line at all Penn State locations twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, thanks to the University Libraries' subscription to Project Muse. The journals, focusing in the areas of humanities, social sciences, and mathematics, can be found on the Libraries' Web site at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/pubinfo/collect.html.
Project Muse is a pioneering initiative that enables worldwide access to the Johns Hopkins University Press' scholarly journals via the World Wide Web. Launched by Hopkins Press, John Hopkins University's Eisenhower Library, and its academic computing center, this unique venture is a model for making scholarship widely available within university communities by using online technology to produce affordable electronic journals.
From any Penn State location, faculty, staff, and students have simultaneous, unrestricted access to Project Muse journals without having to worry about passwords or special hardware of software. (Access to the Internet using any World Wide Web browser is all that's required.) There is no limit to the non-commercial usage of material within the campus community. Even unrestricted paper printing of individual articles for coursework, reserve research, and personal use is permitted, so long as all articles are used on campus for the faculty, students, and staff non-commercial research needs without external distribution of any kind.
In addition to receiving the straight text of the print journals, Project Muse offers a wide range of added value in terms of searching and multimedia features, e.g. hypertext links; Boolean searches; the capability to create "hot lists" of frequently used files; and the ability to search by full text, article, author, or key word, either in a single journal, among specific journals, or across all journals. Extensive keyword indexing has been provided using Library of Congress classifications.
With online versions of journals available sooner than their print counterparts, as well as text designed for on-screen reading and enhanced graphics (including color), Project Muse promises to be an invaluable and user-friendly research tool for the Penn State community.
Two years ago, Project Muse was launched with a $400,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The National Endowment for the Humanities recently awarded another $320,000 to the Project, with each of the nine NEH reviewers giving it the highest praise.
These and many other resources are available through the University Libraries at the URL http://www.libraries.psu.edu/ on the World Wide Web. Contact Kim Fisher at (814) 865-0670 for additional information.
Four new database selections have been added to the Library Information Access System (LIAS). Provided through the CambridgeScientific Abstracts Internet Database Service, these resources can be found through LIAS at http://www.lias.psu.edu/ and are available to all Penn State users.
Aquatic Sciences provides comprehensive information on the science and technology of marine, freshwater, and brackish water organisms and environments. Coverage is from 1978 to the present.
Environmental Sciences provides abstracts and references to the literature covering all areas of air, land, water, and noise pollution as well as bacteriology, ecology, toxicology, risk assessment, environmental engineering, environmental biotechnology, waste management, and water resources. Coverage is from 1981 to the present.
Materials Science is a collection of six databases that provide access to the worldwide literature of materials science and engineering. Coverage is from 1966 to the present.
Mechanical Engineering Abstracts provides access to the worldwide literature of mechanical engineering, engineering management, and production engineering. Coverage is from 1981 to the present.
All of the above databases can be found on the Fast Track to All Resources menu within LIAS. They are available only through LIAS on the Web, since they require the graphics capabilities of Windows. You cannot access them through the "telnet" (non-windows) version of LIAS, so you won't see them on the "LIAS Selection Menu."
For more information, contact Amy Paster at (814) 865-3708.
A Do-It-Yourself Searching Service will be available Monday and Wednesday evenings from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. in 105 East Pattee Library.
This service gives students, faculty, and staff a chance to do their own computer searching using a choice of more than 150 dial-up databases in a variety of subjects. Self-study guides provide users with the basic skills needed to do searches, but for best results users are advised to consult a librarian in their subject area. The search process is similar to CD-ROM searching but more databases are available, and it provides more years of coverage. For Penn State students, faculty, and staff, many searches are provided free of charge.
For more information, contact the Search Service Coordinator at 865-3705 or jah@psulias.psu.edu. To make an appointment, call the Life Sciences Service Desk at 865-7056.
Penn State students, faculty, and staff now have access to the world's most comprehensive interdisciplinary engineering database through the World Wide Web. CompendexWeb, the Web-based version of the Compendex database, covers engineering literature such as journal articles and conference papers from 1970 to the present. More than 220,000 abstracts are added each year.
Located at URL address http://cpxweb.ei.org, the system logs visitors on automatically if they are connecting from an on-campus computer or via a Penn State access account. Compendex Web will replace the EIP database and the Compendex CD-ROMs as the University Libraries' primary database access to the engineering literature.
For more information contact Tom Conkling at (814) 865-3698.
The previous articles were contributed by Pamela T. Peterson, Writer/Editor, University Libraries
The Gateway Library is part of what formerly was the General Reference Section. The Gateway supports the instructional, research, and general information needs of the University Libraries, with special emphasis on Business Administration, Higher Education, Psychology, and Hotel/Restaurant/Institution Management. The following resources are included:
If you can't peruse the entire site, make a quick visit to the Ready Reference Sources, where you can find almost any reference materials you would ever need, from dictionaries to encyclopedias to phone directories to writing resources to fact books.
The Gateway Library reference desk provides assistance in room C105 Pattee Library, and at (814) 865-2112. Inquiries are received in person, by telephone, by correspondence, by electronic mail and by fax to (814) 863-1403.
Information for the above article was obtained from the University Libraries Web site (http://www.libraries.psu.edu/)