May 2002, Issue 17

Update: 2002 Review of Journals and Proposed Cancellations

Patrick Wilkinson
wilkinso@uwosh.edu

Polk Library has received responses from most departments and colleges regarding the 2002 journal review. The responses reflect careful consideration and a real concern for the quality of library collections to support students and faculty. Obviously, the staff of Polk library shares this concern.

Currently, library staff is reviewing the responses and will make decisions regarding cancellations as soon as possible. Decisions will be communicated to departments and colleges by mid-May. These decisions must be made in May so that savings will occur in the 2002 - 2003 fiscal year.

If you have questions about the 2002 journal review, please feel free to contact me. Also, I would be happy to discuss the challenges facing the library's materials budget now and in the future and how UW System libraries are addressing these challenges at departmental or college meetings.

If you are interested in the "crisis" facing academic publishing that is restricting access to the world's research information, please see:

The Budapest Open Access Initiative at http://www.soros.org/openaccess/. This initiative strives to make the world's research literature that "scholars give to the world without expectation of payment" available free online.

The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) at http://www.arl.org/sparc/. "SPARC is a worldwide alliance of research institutions, libraries and organizations that encourages competition in the scholarly communications market . . . " that works to provide "top-quality, low-cost research to a greater audience."

The Public Library of Science at http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/. This non-profit organization of scientists is "committed to making the world's scientific and medical literature freely accessible to scientists and to the public around the world . . ."

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Out with the Old, In with the New

Betsy Schutte, EMC Assistant

Out with the Old

After spending the past four years as an EMC employee, my time is finally drawing to a close as I will be graduating in May. I started out my stint at the EMC as a scared freshman whose stomach would churn with nervous butterflies each time a patron approached the desk with a question. I am now the EMC Assistant and my stomach only churns with nervousness about a quarter of the time!

I look back on my time in the EMC with fond memories. I've met many interesting people and have been privileged to work under the guidance of Mary Keefer, the EMC Coordinator, who has helped me in countless ways. So much of what has made my job pleasurable has been my co-workers. Many members of the Polk Library Staff have helped to make my time here at the EMC enjoyable and I will miss working here. As is the case so often with library life, it is out with the old and…

In with the New

The EMC Educational Sofware collection has been steadily expanding over the course of the past few years. Here are some software titles we've recently acquired.

• People of the Northwest Coast, People of the Forest, People of the Plains, and People of the Desert are great sources for teaching students about Native Americans. Each covers various aspects of history, activities and reference.
  
• Cultural Horizons of Wisconsin explores culture as something deeper than race, ethnicity, or nationality.
• Material World: A Global Family Portrait. Families from 30 different countries are profiled in photos, lists, and video clips showing details about their lives including belongings, jobs, etc.
• Culture Grams contains cultural guides to over 175 countries with information on customs, lifestyle, people, government and history. It also includes audio country name pronunciations and national anthems.
• Harmony Tree helps teach children conflict management, problem solving skills and good social skills.
• The Human Genome Project: Exploring Our Molecular Selves Multimedia is a great science source for teaching your high school students.
  

Please stop by the EMC where our friendly staff is waiting to assist you in finding these great new titles. For a complete listing of our Educational Software please visit the EMC Website at http://www.uwosh.edu/library/emc/bibliographies.html and scroll down the alphabetical list of bibliographies until you find the one titled "Educational Software."

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Renew Items Online!

• From the http://www.uwosh.edu/library/ page select Your Record in the middle of the page.
• Log in with your 16-digit TitanCard number and last name.
• Select the boxes next to the UW Oshkosh Polk Library titles you want to renew.
• Click on the Renew button at the bottom of the list on the page.
• Write your new due date on the due date cards in the item pockets.

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New Digital Content from the Archives

Joshua Ranger
ranger@uwosh.edu

The UW Oshkosh Archives and Area Research Center has been busy placing new digital content on the Web. Partnering with the UW Oshkosh History Department as well as local historical museums, the Websites bring the history of our university and community to your desktop.

The product of a UW Oshkosh History Department internship, "Do Your Thing" is an on-line exhibit on the archives' website exploring "Black Thursday," the 1968 student protest on the campus of Wisconsin State University, Oshkosh. The exhibit was written by undergraduate Mike Reuter who received credit working in the University archives researching University history and contributing to the outreach of the program. Visit the site at: http://www.uwosh.edu/archives/bt/home.html

"Joseph McCarthy: A Modern Tragedy" is the on-line version of an exhibit of the same name at the Outagamie Museum in Appleton. UW Oshkosh Archivist Joshua Ranger worked with Outagamie County Historical Society curator Kim Louagie to bring the life of Joseph McCarthy to the Web. Visit the site at http://www.foxvalleyhistory.org/museum.html. Future updates will include information and examples of documents to demonstrate how students can use Wisconsin archives to learn more about the senator.

On May 31, 2002, the University Archives, along with the Oshkosh Public Museum will release a digitized version of the 1912 silent film "Oshkosh in Motion" on the World Wide Web. The movie, filmed on May 31st ninety years ago, captures Oshkosh's scenes in black and white glory, a gift to the city from Carl Leammle, the Oshkosh native who went on to become the founder of Universal Studios. The digitized version will feature period music written by Oshkosh composers, recorded via computer by UW music department professor, Bruce Atwell. Brian Ledwell produced the digitized version of the film.

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Check Out What's in the Browsing Room!

Amanda Swaw, Student Coordinator of the Browsing Room

Many students use the Browsing Room in the library as a haven right here on campus. The couches and cozy chairs provide contentment not found in other areas of the library. There are more than couches in this little room. The Browsing Room contains the best of popular fiction and non-fiction.

The purpose of the Browsing Room is to provide current leisure reading materials to the university community. The Oshkosh Student Association established the Browsing Room in 1982. In the original proposal, the organization declared that "the availability of books … for student leisure and out-of-class development remains a major concern." Out of that concern, the Browsing Room was born. Following the suggestions of OSA, books on hobbies, travel, and music as well as contemporary bestsellers were acquired. The collection is extremely dynamic and new titles are added weekly.

Comprised of approximately 5,400 books, this small collection accounts for a significant portion of the materials checked out of Polk Library on any given day. Authors in every genre can be found in the

Students and faculty alike are encouraged to spend some time on the second floor north in Polk Library. You will undoubtedly enjoy its quiet comfort, its cushy couches, and the thousands of spellbinding books that make up the Browsing Room.

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2001 Jeanette Elmer Funds Improve Polk Library's Collection -150 New Titles Added

Mary Keefer, EMC Coordinator
keefer@uwosh.edu

During 2001 Polk Library began purchasing teaching materials funded by the Jeanette Elmer Trust Fund. Jeanette Elmer was a former UW Oshkosh Librarian who had a keen interest in both education and Native American nations. Jeanette lived most of her life in Oshkosh.

Three years ago, the then Dean of the College of Education and Human Services, Don Mocker, became aware of her interests and the trust fund. He and others sought funding from the trust to acquire instructional materials for the PreK-12 students and for the UW Oshkosh campus. Eventually, an advisory committee was formed and now consists of Mike Ford, Judy Hankes, and Ava McCall (COEHS) and Cindy Huebschen, Deb Duncan, Adrienne Sosinske and myself (Polk Library). The Educational Media Collection (EMC) began the research and acquisition of PreK-12 instructional materials in late 2001. The funding is expected to continue for 5-6 years.

The mission of the initiative is "to acquire and provide access to materials in multiple formats at the PreK through 12 educational levels which accurately reflect the culture and history of the indigenous tribal nations of Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region." During 2001, as the EMC Coordinator, I visited schools and libraries at the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin and the College of the Menominee Nation in Keshena, Wisconsin. By sharing information with educators at both places, I was able to make a strong beginning on purchasing authentic, high quality and practical titles.

All items purchased with these funds are accessible on the Polk Online Catalog by doing a Basic keyword search using the quotes "elmer trust" or "jeanette elmer trust". Approximately 150 titles were purchased in 2001 including videos, books and software.

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Electronic Resources: What's Available?

Cynthia Huebschen
huebschc@uwosh.edu

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the choices in electronic databases and the continual changes? Following is a quick refresher about some of the links you can expect to find on Polk Library's Web resources page (from our home page, under Articles & More by Subject).

Polk Library offers several databases of collected journal article references. One of the most frequently used is EBSCO's Academic Search Elite, a general "academic" periodical index with coverage in the social sciences, humanities, and general sciences. EBSCO also offers a more "popular" periodical index, MasterFile (which includes magazines like Self, Sports Illustrated, and Ladies Home Journal. Also available within EBSCO are a business database, an alternative health database, ERIC (for educational journals and documents), and Medline. Each of these will offer some full text articles, directly or through links. One alternative to the EBSCO databases is the Wilson Indexes, which include Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature (for popular magazines), Humanities Index, General Science Index, Social Sciences Index, Education Index, and Business Periodicals Index. Each of these also offer selected full text articles.

The library also has access to some full text journal databases which offer complete full text or full image coverage of specific journals. These include Project Muse, from Johns Hopkins University Press and other participating publishers; JSTOR, an archival database of scholarly journal articles; the American Chemical Society journal collection; the Emerald "Management Collection" and related groups; and the (British) Institute of Physics journals.

Also available are the three major "citation" indexes from ISI (Institute of Scientific Information), each with coverage back to 1987: Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Arts & Humanities Citation Index.

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Government Orders CD-ROM to be destroyed

Michael Watkins, Head of Government Documents
watkins@uwosh.edu

In a democratic society, open access to government information is seen as necessary so that citizens can be informed about the issues and affairs of government. The Federal Depository Library Program (Government Documents) was created to disseminate published documents and electronic documents to libraries across the nation. In the past the Federal Depository Library Programs motto has been "Documents to the People." The program, which is run by the Government Printing Office, distributes documents to over 1350 libraries nationwide and also provides access to electronic documents. By law, government agencies are required to provide copies of their publications to be distributed through the Depository Program. The Government Documents Division on the third floor south building of Polk is a participating Federal Depository and provides access to paper, microfiche, CD-ROMs, floppy disks and documents distributed through the Internet.

Occasionally, government documents librarians will be asked to withdraw and destroy a document. The GPO, at the request of the issuing agency handles such requests according to a specific procedure. Last October, the GPO, upon the request of the USGS, directed depository libraries to destroy a United States Geological Survey CD-ROM entitled Source-Area Characteristics of Large Public Surface-Water supplies in the Coterminous United States: An Information Resource for Source-Water Assessement, 1999. This document had been distributed in 1999 to about 300 depository libraries out of over 1350 participating in the program. Upon receiving this notice, the disk held by Polk library was immediately destroyed.

Many librarians in the depository community were upset about the request to destroy this document. Because of the incidents surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks, some documents librarians felt that the withdrawal of the document was linked to protecting the public from further harm by terrorists and felt compelled to follow the order to destroy. Librarians by their very nature and culture subscribe to the ALA Library Bill of Rights and are against destroying information of any kind in any format. On the other hand, librarians working in the Federal Depository Library Program are well aware that the documents that they provide access to are owned by the federal government and they must abide by the rules of the GPO who has established guidelines for the withdrawal of published information from the program.

The controversy surrounding the request by the GPO to destroy this document was the result of the clash of two cultures. The government in withdrawing the document was being vigilant in its attempt to protect the American public from further harm by terrorists. Some in the library community were being vigilant because past history has shown that it is in these times of crisis that attempts are made to censor information needlessly. In this instance, it appears that the compelling need to protect Americans from terrorism overruled censorship concerns of librarians. There is a fine line or balance between unlimited access to information and national security concerns in times of national crisis.

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Polk Library News is a publication of Forrest R. Polk Library, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.

Sarah Neises, editor. Polk Library 920-424-0401 neises@uwosh.edu

Patrick Wilkinson, Director, Polk Library 920-424-2147 wilkinso@uwosh.edu

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