I hope you enjoy this inaugural issue of the Library’s faculty newsletter. The Buley Bulletin is a major initiative of our newly-formed Library Public Relations Committee, charged with assessing the Library’s public relations needs, recommending initiatives to facilitate external communication, and coordinating publishing efforts, special projects, and library events. Current members include Tim Klassen (chair), Lisa Bier, Shirley Cavanagh, Paul Holmer, Cindy Schofield-Bodt, and Winnie Shyam.

With the support of the University administration in the past three years, the Library has made remarkable progress toward meeting the American Library Association standards. Services were improved and expanded, collections grew by more than 65,000 volumes, 100+ electronic databases extend those resources beyond the library walls, and most public areas were refurbished to provide an environment conducive to study and research.

Current budget constraints and staff shortages will slow the growth of collections and services, but the library staff continue to improve efficiency and effectiveness, to strengthen existing services, and to carefully select the best resources to serve the campus community.

The Buley Bulletin will be published once each semester, highlighting some of our collections, services, and initiatives. I hope that you find the articles interesting and informative, and that you are encouraged to visit the Library to take advantage of our wealth of resources.

Susan E. Cirillo

Elsevier Deal Increases Access to E-Journals

The library is now entering a three year consortial agreement for access to online journals published by Elsevier. The deal provides many excellent benefits for Southern and our scholars.

Through the ScienceDirect interface, we gain access to more than 500 of the most important journals published in the Sciences, Social Sciences, and the Humanities. Coverage is from 1995 to present and includes the full text of the articles. In addition to our 90 Elsevier journal subscriptions, we also gain access to the titles subscribed to by our consortial partners, many with substantially stronger journal budgets than ours. This includes more than half a million dollars of content. One example is the chemical journal, Tetrahedron, which normally runs at $18,000. These titles will soon be added to the library catalog and currently can be accessed from http://www.sciencedirect.com.

Tim Klassen

Interlibrary Loan –Just Got Easier & Faster!!!

When I started to expand the foreign film collection at Buley a year ago, I had these objectives in mind. Firstly, it has to represent as many countries and cultures as possible. Secondly, the films have to reflect the highest artistic achievement intended by both the directors and the rest of the production crew. Thirdly, the themes of the movies will be broad, encompassing all possible emotions, circumstances as well as the profound and complex intricacies of human relationships.

Consequently, acquisitions include Antonia’s Line, a Dutch movie about a woman who is perhaps the personification of Mother Earth. Her forgiving, loving, courageous and compassionate character sustains her in her daily struggle to overcome the small town bigotry and prejudices by being a single mother to a lesbian daughter. Then there is Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, The Wrath of God. The film was shot in 1975 with a budget of $320,000 in the depth of the Amazon jungle. In overcoming the impossible odds of a miniscule budget and hostile environment, both Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the actor, present a film that is breathtaking in its beauty and darkness.

There are now over 200 films in the collection. In one way or another, each of these films embodies some aspects of the above mentioned goals. To locate these titles, please go to CONSULS and look under the subject heading. FOREIGN FILMS, or MOTION PICTURES, followed by Spanish, Italian, Hong Kong, India, etc. You can also browse the collection housed in the Learning Resource Center.

Hing Wu

SpotLight: Hing Wu— Media Cataloger

Most library users know that they can find helpful, knowledgeable librarians at the reference desk or available for individual research consultations in their offices. Many users don’t realize that there is a whole other staff of librarians working to make research materials available and accessible.

One of those librarians at Buley Library is Hing Wu. As a member of the Technical Services Division, she has responsibilities in both the areas of acquisitions and cataloging. She works with others developing Buley’s multimedia collection—filling requests from across the campus for educational and feature films, audio materials and three dimensional teaching items. Hing’s desire to develop a high quality foreign film collection is attainable in part because of her fluency in many languages and extensive international experiences.

Hing catalogs media with great attention to detail. She develops bibliographic records with access points that take in all the significant contributors to a work, the subject areas, locations and time periods that the work is about. Her records routinely replace high level Library of Congress records found in the world wide shared database, OCLC.

Hing’s “behind-the-scenes” work contributes greatly to the overall library experience and her infectious enthusiasm brings out the best in those who work with her.

Cindy Schofield-Bodt

Citation Indexes—The Most Powerful Research Tool You’re Not Using!

Anyone who did intensive library research before the age of computers remembers the horrors of having to use the ISI citation indexes, with their tiny print and all but useless KWIC (Key Word in Context) subject indexes when they needed data on who had cited their articles or any other given article. Fortunately citation indexes have entered the 21st century in the form of ISI’s Web of Knowledge.

Southern provides access to both Social Sciences and Arts and Humanities Citation Indexes from 1980 to present. Both databases can be accessed from the Library’s Database pages.

In addition to searching for who has cited who, and subject searches, you can also perform much more complicated searches. In particular you can take a given paper and find all of the other papers that share one or more of the same references presented in order of those that share the most down to the least.

Web of Knowledge basically allows you to trace the path of research both forward and backwards in time. Please talk to a reference librarian for more information on this incredibly powerful research tool.

Tim Klassen

Accessing the Online Databases from Off-Campus

You can use almost all of Buley's online databases from anywhere in the world, as long as you are a registered SCSU student, or faculty or staff member. All you need to do is set up a library PIN (Personal Identification Number. You no longer have to configure your browser!* Your library PIN is totally separate from your MySCSU PIN) or any other PIN you might use on campus. It is unique to the library and you have to create it yourself.

If you've used the databases from off-campus in the past or have requested a book through CONSULS, you already have a library PIN and can go directly to the Online Databases page (http://www.library.southernct.edu/newdbs.html) and use the Alphabetical List or Subject List to select a database.

If you're not sure whether you have a PIN or need to set one up, follow the directions below:

Go to the library's home page (http://www.library.southernct.edu/), click on CONSULS, then click on Login to Your Library Record on the right. Type in your social security number (without hyphens), and enter a PIN in the lower box. Click on Display Record.

If you see your name and address on the left side, you're all set to use the databases.

If you see "You do not currently have a library pin..." type your PIN in the two empty boxes and click Display Record. You should then see your name and address on the left. You're all set to use the databases.

If you see "Invalid PIN", call the Circulation Desk at (203) 392-5756 and ask them to delete your PIN. Then return to Login to Your Library Record and try again. This time, you should see "You do not currently have a library pin...". Type your PIN in the two empty boxes and click Display Record. You should then see your name and address on the left. You're all set to use the databases.

If you see "Cannot find patron record" or any other message about your record, call the Circulation Desk at (203) 392-5735 and tell them. Then return to Login to Your Library Record and try again. This time, you should see "You do not currently have a library pin...". Type your PIN in the two empty boxes and click Display Record. You should then see your name and address on the left. You're all set to use the databases.

Trouble-shooting: If you're having trouble connecting to a database, please wait a few hours and try again. Many databases allow a limited number of connections at a time, The database you're trying to access could just be busy. If the problem persists, e-mail Sue Clerc (clercs1@southernct.edu) and tell me the database you're trying to use, how long you've been unable to connect, and what message you're getting.

*If you're still using the old proxy server that required you to configure your browser, you can continue to use it, or follow the directions (offcampus.html) to adjust your browser. It's easy. Really.

Susan Clerc

A Unique Chapbook by S. Babcock, New Haven

In past centuries one of the most common forms of reading material was the chapbook. These were inexpensive tracts sold by itinerant merchants called “chapmen” from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries. Chapbooks were small in size and made up of four stitched pages, or multiples thereof. Most were illustrated with woodcuts. Subjects included tales of popular heroes, jokes, reports of notorious crimes, ballads, nursery rhymes, and school lessons, as well as Bible stories.

Low cost and availability made them a main source of reading material for common people, especially children, and they were produced in vast numbers. They are scarce today, however, for they were inherently fragile. Their small size also made them useful for a variety of non-reading purposes as diverse as lighting fires and toilet paper.

Among the most active American publishers was the Babcock Company of Connecticut. Beginning in Hartford in 1784 and then in New Haven and Charleston, the firm continued until 1886, in the last years as booksellers. During this time they were responsible for over 1,000 titles and were the century’s most prolific source of children’s material.

Long dismissed as trivial, renewed academic interest in everyday reading has brought an enhanced appreciation of these little booklets. Buley Library Special Collections is fortunate in possessing a good selection, including the example illustrated here: S. Babcock’s Mischievous Boys (1832). This tiny volume is only 2 7/8” x 1 ¾,” comprising eight pages in paper covers with four woodcuts. Although minuscule, these illustrations are of remarkable quality. Ours is the only known copy. Considering its fragility, it is amazing that it has survived at all!

Paul Holmer

Instruction in the Library

Do you know that Buley Librarians provide subject and assignment-based Library and Internet searching instruction for your students? Our library instruction sessions can include a brief library tour, physical or virtual, with introduction to services and policies, hands-on instruction in the use of CONSULS (our online catalog), general and subject specific databases and effective use of the Internet. The sessions also emphasizes effective search strategies to locate and evaluate appropriate resources.

Library instruction sessions can be tailored to a subject area, a research topic, or a specific assignment. Please
provide as much advance notice as possible to accommodate scheduling and planning needs.

• Classes are scheduled on a first-come first-serve basis with a minimum of fourteen (14) working days advance notice.
•  BU 17 (Electronic Classroom) can accommodate up to 25 students with hands on capabilities for computer usage.
• Larger classes should be split into two or more sessions, and separate request forms completed for each session.
• Instructors are expected to attend the session with their students.

To request a library instruction session for your class you may:

• Submit the request form on the library homepage at http://www.library.southernct.edu/birequestform.html
• Complete the paper form available at the Reference Desk (Library-1st Floor)
•  Telephone or email your subject liason or the Instruction Coordinator, Clara Ogbaa, at 392-5769 or ogbaac1

Subject Liasons -- Contacts

Clara Ogbaa