Religion: April 2006 Archives

A number of changes will be underway soon with the completion this summer of Temple's new Library Depository, a closed-stack shelving and retrieval facility.

Over the course of the summer, thousands of lesser-used volumes will be relocated to the Depository, thus allowing Temple Libraries to centralize a number of collections, expand services, and refurbish Paley Library's stack areas with expanded study and collaboration space. Many research libraries are already using similar closed-stack facilities to preserve their growing research collections and open up space within the library buildings to meet the varied needs and expectations of contemporary students and scholars.

Materials in the Depository will be listed in the online catalog with a conveniently linked online request form. They will be retrieved by library staff and available within a quick turn-around time.

In conjunction with these changes, several branch libraries will close over the summer, providing the opportunity to expand services and reintegrate collections that have been split for years because of limited space. The Zahn Library's last day of operation will be Friday, May 12, 2006, the last day of spring semester. Physics Library will be next, followed by Chemistry, Biology, and Mathematical Sciences. An exact schedule has not been set, but it is expected that the closings will be completed and the library materials relocated by the end of the summer sessions.

An FAQ with full details about the Depository and related services is posted on the library website. Advisories and progress reports will be featured in the library blog as the transitions proceed.

For more details about the Library Depository and the related changes, please see the Temple Times article published on April 27, 2006.

Here's a recent view of the construction underway as moveable compact shelving carriages are assembled. New photos will be added occasionally as work progresses.

-- Carol Lang

One of the library's latest purchases is xreferplus, a collection of over 200 reference books in electronic form. This full-text searchable collection is cross-referenced between the sources, allowing users to move not only within books but between books and disciplines.

The included sources are in a variety of subjects: Art, Bilinguals, Biography, Business, Conversions, Dictionaries, Encyclopedia, Food, Geography , History, Language, Law, Literature, Medicine, Music, Philosophy & Psychology, Quotations, Religion, Science, Social Sciences, and Technology. And come from publishers such as Barron's, Blackwells, Cambridge, Cassel, Columbia, Elsevier, Penguin, Routledge, Sage, Gale, and Wiley.

See a list of all the included books.

The advanced search allows limiting a search to longer articles on subjects as well as articles that contain images or sound files. Each entry also includes a citation for itself in MLA, APA, and Chicago styles.

The special visual search option called a "Concept Map" graphically represents the connections between different articles and sources. The image below shows the beginning concept map for a search on "Duchamp." Even at this level one can see the connections made from Duchamp (the artist) to other artists, art movements, and art concepts.

Each node on the map represents an article in the xreferplus collection. The interface allows users to zoom in on parts of the map and more directly see the connections between the nodes.

xrefeplus is a valuable resource for quick answers, general overviews of a topic, and students beginning research and looking to better negotiate their topic.

If you have any questions, feel free to direct them to me or your librarian of choice.

--Derik A Badman

Paley Library has purchased the combined LexisNexis Congressional and United States Serial Set research databases.

LexisNexis Congressional is the most comprehensive electronic index currently available for United States legislative information.

Congressional publications comprise an extremely wide variety of information that reflects the needs and concerns of an evolving nation. They impact virtually every aspect of the curriculum and are particularly important for the Departments or Schools of Business Administration, History, Economics, Law, Political Science, Social Administration, Communications, Criminal Justice, Sociology, Education, Geography and Urban Studies, Journalism, American Studies and, African American studies.

The LexisNexis Congressional interface allows users to simultaneously search the Congressional reports and documents that comprise the Serial Set as well as prints, bills, the Congressional Record, selected testimony in hearings before Congress, Public Laws, Statutes at Large, the United States Code Service, the Federal Register, and the National Journal. It also provides information about Congressional Committees, Congressional biographies, recent legislative activities, and public policy issues such as voting records, financial data, and regulatory information. Much of the material is linked to full text. Congressional publications from as early as1789 are available in their entirety as are the text and status of proposed current legislation and recently signed laws. Additional resources offered by LexisNexis Congressional includes a keyword searchable Code of Federal Regulations, and the full text of the Washington Post’s Section A from 1977 to the present.

LexisNexis Congressional’s legislative publications online and Paley Library’s collection of legislative publications combine to provide the Paley Library community with a complete set of the official congressional publications.

The link to this resource is now available via the library electronic resources web pages. Here's the A-Z database list.

We hope you will find this resource useful. If you have any questions about its content or if you have any difficulty using it, please contact me or one of my colleagues in Reference and Instructional Services at Paley library.

--Susan J. Golding