October 2002 , Issue 18

Now the Good News!

Patrick Wilkinson
wilkinso@uwosh.edu

For the past year, I have been telling faculty and staff about the “crisis in scholarly publishing.” Simply stated: Predatory pricing by major journal publishers combined with more than a decade of flat library funding threatens scholars’ access to the research literature of the world. Unfortunately, this is still true, but Polk Library will work with faculty and instructional staff to deal with this situation in the best way possible.

This year I want to stress a positive message also. Despite limitations in funding, the staff of Polk Library has improved and will continue to improve library services to campus. Below are a few of the improvements that you have seen recently or will see in the near future.

• Electronic Reserve. In the past year, 130 faculty have placed 1,800 items on eReserve for 235 courses.
• Universal Borrowing. Now you can search most UW library catalogs, directly request materials online and have them quickly sent to Polk Library for pick up.
• Online Renewal. No longer do you need to physically bring books back to the library each semester to renew items. You can renew online and avoid the hassle.
• New Materials Tab. Want to find out what the library has recently received? Just use the new materials tab in the library’s catalog and find out what the library has added in the last week to the last month.
• Extended Study. Thanks to the Chancellor, a part of Polk Library was open last year and will again be open this year from Midnight until 2 AM five nights a week for students who need a late night place for study and research.
• Updated Web Site. Recently, Polk Library revised its web pages to help students find the best of our online resources in addition to general databases. Also, services and resources most useful for faculty are more prominently featured.
• Desktop Document Delivery. Through Article Express, faculty, instructional staff and graduate students now have access to electronic delivery of articles from journals that the library has needed to cancel since 1995. If the economics of this service work as intended, Polk Library may be able to expand this service beyond cancelled journals in the future.
• Common UW ILL System. It may sound boring that a common interlibrary loan system for UW libraries will be implemented during 2002 – 2003. Yet, this new system should make what is already a great library service even better by making it easier to use and faster to receive. We will be doing the technical work for this improvement in the fall. I hope you will start to see some initial results by the spring.
• Ask a Librarian. Polk Library will enhance its electronic reference service this year. We have partnered with many libraries in Wisconsin in joining a global reference network. This will give the library the ability to refer reference questions of an esoteric nature to specialists around the world. It will also allow the library the ability to provide some limited hours of online “chat” reference service.

These improvements reflect the hard work of all library staff. Staff throughout the library contribute in developing, implementing or maintaining all of the library’s successful projects. As with any new service or technology there may be “bumps” along the way; please let us know when things are not working well. We will do our best to correct it.

Have a good year!

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Cancelled Journals Come Back to Life

Sarah Neises
neises@uwosh.edu

A new model in article delivery is now available at Polk Library. It’s called Article Express. Article Express is a service we have established with WiLS (Wisconsin Library Services) in Madison. Polk Library has provided WiLS with a list of over 500 journals for which we have cancelled print subscriptions since 1995. WiLS has set up a simple web form for use by UW Oshkosh faculty, instructional staff and graduate students. The password necessary to use this system will be distributed to deans, department heads and departmental/college library representatives and is also available from the Reference Desk (424-4333 or infodesk@uwosh.edu). WiLS will scan articles from these journals and provide them on a server as Adobe Acrobat PDF files. They will send the requester an email providing a direct link to the article, and it will stay on the server for 14 days.

Polk Library is subsidizing this service, and we will be paying for it per article. This is a much more economical model for us to follow in most cases, as opposed to paying for standing journal subscriptions. You can find links to Article Express on the library's web site in the Faculty Research Tools section (http://www.uwosh.edu/library/faculty.html). Check http://www.uwosh.edu/library/articleexpressjournals.html for a list of journals available through this service.

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Extended Study Hours Again Offered

Polk Library is providing extended study hours during the 14-week semesters of the 2002-2003 school year. Extended study hours are from 12 midnight until 2 AM after the library’s Sunday-Thursday night schedule.

During extended study hours, not all library services and collections will be available. Services that are available include:

• Areas for study on first floor north (EMC)
• ILL article and book title pick up
• Circulation and Reserve services
• Computers for accessing and printing from the library’s databases
• Multiple audiovisual stations
• General access computer lab (until 1 AM)
• The Accessibility Resource Room (for students with disabilities)
• Restroom facilities

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Government Database on Inherited Traits

Mike Watkins
watkins@uwosh.edu

An interesting and informative database called “Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man” (OMIM) is available on the web at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Omim/searchomim.html The database is authored by the National Center for Biotechnology, a subordinate unit of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. The site provides a searchable catalog of the known inherited traits in humans, providing text, pictures and links to article citations in PubMed.

The site can be searched at different levels of sophistication. For those unfamiliar with human genetics, a text search can be done using a phrase describing the specific trait or resulting condition or syndrome. More sophisticated searchers can search specific fields such as allelic variants, gene map disorder, clinical synopsis and separate elements of the citations. The information retrieved includes text describing the trait, the history of the observations of the trait, allelic variants and a list of references. The information provided on this site is valuable to both the uninitiated searcher and the serious academic researcher.

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What's New in the Browsing Room?

Karen Reiter
reiter@uwosh.edu

With the start of fall and a new semester, here are some of the new bestsellers that are now available in the Browsing Room at Polk Library:

• Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
• Emperor of Ocean Park by Stephen L. Carter
• Dive from Clausen Pier by Ann Parker
• Red Rabbit by Tom Clancy
• Standing in Rainbows by Fannie Flagg
• Shadow Puppets by Orson Scott Card
  

As always, if the Browsing Room does not have the title you want, you can fill out a request form available in the Browsing Room. You will then be notified by e-mail when the book is available for your use. Hope you have a great read!

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Raffle Winners!

Congratulations to the winners of the 2002 Polk Library Raffle, held at the Taste of UW Oshkosh:

• Molly VandenLangenberg -- $25 Gift Certificate to University Books and More
• Cheryl Carroll -- The Real Freshman Handbook
• Dana Koringer -- Two videos: "Internet Basics" and "English Grammar"
• Jenny Deutschendorf -- Two videos: "Public Speaking" and "Microeconomics"

Many thanks to University Books and More for their generous donation of the raffle prizes.

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Government Documents Hours Expanded

Mike Watkins
watkins@uwosh.edu

The Government Documents Division of Polk Library will be open longer hours this semester. The change was facilitated by fully securing the locked Area Research Center and Archives cage. The area will be open Monday through Thursday 7:45 AM-Midnight; Fridays 7:45 AM-9:00 PM; Saturdays 10:00 AM-7:30 PM; and Sundays 11:00 AM to 12 Midnight. The expansion of hours will allow students to access materials and study in the area all of the hours that the entire library is open.

The Government Documents area has staff available for assistance Monday through Thursday 7:45 AM –10:00 PM; Fridays 7:45 AM-4:30 PM; and Sundays 6:00 PM –10:00 PM. Staff at the reference desk on first floor are available for assistance on Saturdays until 5 PM and Sundays from 1:30 PM-5 PM when there is no staff present in the immediate area.

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Staff Highlights

Joshua Ranger, University Archivist, has been appointed the Public Information Officer for the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC) for the period 2002-2004. MAC, the nation’s largest regional professional association for archivists, now has over 1150 individual and 177 institutional members from a variety of corporate, government, church, and university archives, as well as historical societies and other manuscripts repositories and special collections. MAC’s Website is http://www.midwestarchives.com/.

Debra Duncan, Technical Services Librarian, presented "Universal Borrowing and the Wisconsin Experience" at the Great Lakes User Group Meeting (GLUGM) conference at Indiana State University on October 4. GLUGM serves as the Midwest regional conference for libraries using the Endeavor Voyager Library Automation software. Debra will also be co-facilitating a discussion entitled "Coffeetalk for Librarians" at the Wisconsin Library Association conference in Middleton on October 30.

Mary Keefer, Educational Media Collection Coordinator, has accepted a new position as Adjunct Faculty Reference Librarian at Montana State University in Bozeman. Sarah Neises, Head of Information and Instructional Services, is serving as the interim Educational Media Collection Coordinator.

Marisa Finkey, Library Instruction Coordinator, attended the May 2002 Library Orientation Exchange (LOEX) Conference at Eastern Michigan University. LOEX is a national organization that facilitates the exchange of teaching materials and ideas among librarians.

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

Renee Sengele, editor (sengele@uwosh.edu) 920-424-7331

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

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