New ProQuest interface

The new ProQuest interface has been switched on for APSU. I plan to replace the existing interface with the new interface on the library website Monday, January 10, 2011. This will impact the databases American Periodicals Series Online, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, and the online version of the Leaf Chronicle.

Until 1-10-11 you can preview the new interface both on and off campus using the following URLs:

• American Periodicals Series Online
http://ezproxy.lib.apsu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/americanperiodicals?accountid=8437

• ProQuest Dissertations & Theses
http://ezproxy.lib.apsu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/pqdtft?accountid=8437

• Leaf Chronicle
http://ezproxy.lib.apsu.edu/login?url=http://search.proquest.com/leafchronicle?accountid=8437

A Quick Start Reference Overview can be found here:

http://www.proquest.com/assets/downloads/products/qsg_np.pdf

A full User Guide Can be found here:
http://www.proquest.com/assets/downloads/products/userguide_np.pdf

Announcements have been made on the info page for each of these databases.

Please let me know if you have questions concerning this change.

New journal access: (Caliber) University of California Press titles

I have now turned on remote and on-campus access for the following titles through Caliber--University of California Press. Direct links are provided below:

19th-Century Music: 2006-04-01 - current

The Auk: 2008-01-01 – current (A Quarterly Journal of Ornithology)

Nineteenth-Century Literature: 2006-03-01 - current

Social Problems: 2006-02-01 - current

The American Biology Teacher: 2010-01-01 - current

These titles will now show up in Find Periodicals and “Search for Full-text” searches. APSU has access to these titles because we purchased print + online access.

Access to current editions of these titles (except for American Biology Teacher) was previously unavailable electronically through any format. Citations are provided for articles outside the full-text date range.

Michael

New Interface and Content: Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

The OED Online has been updated and changed (it now contains 600,000 words and 3 million quotations, traces over 1,000 years of the English language, and is integrated with the Historical Thesaurus of the OED .

Access to the new interface is now provided on the library website at http://library.apsu.edu/inform/21OED.htm. A link to the previous version will also be provided here until 3-31-2011.

Below is a description of the new resource taken directly from the Chief Editor John Simpson:

We've tried to tilt the site more towards the English language than towards the dictionary as an end in itself. Search results move from simple lists to visualizations/timelines. They can also be filtered according to a number of categories, allowing you to start off with big numbers (e.g. all English words derived from Italian), and reduce them by steps down to small, significant subsets (e.g. all English words derived from Italian from the field of Music which are first recorded in English in the 18th century). That's 167 words, starting with adagio.

Other new features include pages (updated each quarter from the dictionary data) on the OED's most-cited authors and texts, plus links to other online resources—such as the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography—offering more on those who've shaped the language. There's also an ‘Aspects of English’ section, a series of descriptive articles on language, past and present.

Perhaps the most important new feature involves the Historical Thesaurus to the OED, published in book form in 2009. The entire text is now integrated with the OED Online, so that you can follow semantic links throughout the dictionary.