By Keith Allen
Arizona Daily Wildcat
The UA Library is expanding its electronic databases by adding on-line full-text sources to SABIO.
Jerilyn Veldof, an undergraduate services and social sciences librarian, said the Encyclopedia Britannica, the expanded academic index, the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science and Technology, ABI-INFORM, and other sources either have or will have full texts in SABIO within the next month.
"It is a pretty exciting time for undergraduate research. This offers students straight links to more information and in the future, more articles," Veldof said.
The services can be accessed on SABIO through the menu selection, "other databases and remote libraries."
"This would be faster than me personally going to the sources myself," said Carrie Cooper, a junior majoring in English. "I am inclined to use them just for the fact that I can."
Other students also said that they would use the full texts to facilitate their research. Students said that they mostly use SABIO for reference to journals, books and newspapers.
The CD-ROM LAND, which currently can be used only in the library, is expected to be on-line by October, Veldof said. This will offer students full-text Newsbank on-line, as well as other CD-ROM services.
Some newspaper articles are housed in Newsbank and some of the other reference services, while ABI-INFORM houses some full-text business database journals.
Veldof said that research time should be cut down and more time should be spent "creating ideas."
Students should be aware that this only refers to the 64 CDs that currently are up in the library, and that there will be a limited number of connections to the CD-ROMs at a time, Veldof said.
Stuart Glogoff, assistant dean of the Library Information Systems, said that the number of CD-ROM LAND accesses will depend upon the license the library receives. He said he could not give an accurate number of connections that would be available.
Students can access all the full texts through the SABIO index that refers to other databases. This list includes the expanded academic index and Encyclopedia Britannica, which are already on-line.
"It won't look pretty, but we are trying to get the information out there," Veldof said. "Access is critical."
Steve Bosch, an associate librarian, said he estimates that the library spends about $100,000 per year in licensing fees for the CD-ROM LAND. He said he estimates that the library will have to spend $20,000 to 30,000 more a year in licensing fees to put the CD-ROM LAND on-line.
Bosch also said that the library will spend $100,000 a year to keep the subscription for the full text on-line services, which includes the ability to download and copy all the articles, he said.
Another straight link to information is an e-mail reference service, which has been up since the end of August, said Laura Bender, a support service librarian.
The library's question and answer service is accessible worldwide, to anyone with an e-mail account or Internet access, Bender said. The library's home page offers a box to connect to it as well as the e-mail address, askref @bird.library.arizona.edu.
"This is an extension of the libraries public service desk. It has been extremely successful at the University of Indiana, though it was only offered to those within the university," Bender said.
Questions can be asked to the library by anyone in the world, Bender said. She said they are previewing the system to make sure it is not overloaded.
Currently, the library has 25 trained reference people to answer questions and another 30 who are being trained, Bender said.
Bender said responses could be given within 48 hours, unless it was a more in-depth message and (had to be) referred to a specialist, which would cause a delay. An average of about 20 to 24 questions per week have been received so far, she said.
"We're dictating services we need to provide and that our customers want," Bender said. "The world is going electronic. If the library wants to remain a viable resource, we have to do this."