WEB

Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows (The American Folklife Center)

Facts for Features: Halloween (The US Census Bureau)

Vintage Halloween images (NYPL Digital Collections)

BOOKS

The Book of Holidays Around the World

Horror Film Resources in the Library

Don't forget about our Edgar Allan Poe Bicentennial Events!

~ Heinrich Heine

NEW ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

As indicated in the previous issue, this year’s materials acquisition budget has allowed the library to restore book purchases to the healthier level of a couple of years ago, to consider restoring some subscriptions we had canceled, and to contemplate new and highly desirable products. Ramsey Library is very pleased to announce the following electronic resources:

· Art Index Full Text ~ Ramsey Library has long offered an electronic version of Art Abstracts which providing citations and abstracts but lacked full text articles. This upgrade This offers full text plus abstracts and indexing of an international array of some 500 peer-selected publications with full text access to some 200 with expanded coverage of Latin American, Canadian, Asian and non-Western art, new artists, contemporary art, exhibition reviews, and feminist criticism.

· Cambridge Companions Online (SOON TO BE AVAILABLE) ~ Cambridge Companions are lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics and periods. All are collections of specially commissioned essays, shaped and introduced to appeal to student readers. Together the chapters add up to a systematic critical account of, for example Plato, Luther, Jane Austen, Tom Stoppard or Stravinsky, the French Novel or Jewish American Literature, and each title is supported by reference features such as a chronology and guide to further reading. Addressing topics and figures as diverse as Gothic Fiction and Arabic Philosophy, WB Yeats and Martin Luther, the online collection contains over 3,000 downloadable essays, taken from 322 Cambridge Companions to Literature and Classics (195 volumes) and Philosophy, Religion and Culture (127 volumes). 2 new Companions have been added as part of the September 2009 update.

· Cambridge Histories Online (SOON TO BE AVAILABLE) ~ The Cambridge Histories have become an established and essential component of the academic research library, and now, for the first time, over 250 of these well-known, used and trusted volumes are available online, adding immense value to the texts and enhancing any aspect of historical research. 3 new volumes have been added to Cambridge Histories Online as of May 2009, bringing the total number of volumes included in the collection to 258.

· Oxford Scholarship Online (SOON TO BE AVAILABLE) ~ A large and rapidly expanding cross-searchable library which offers quick and easy access to the full text of 3,036 Oxford books in Economics, Philosophy, Political Science, Religion, Literature, Classics, History, Law, Business, Psychology, and Music with new and recently-published books are added each year.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

· Open Access to Research Is Inevitable
"I now believe that having public access to most scholarly communications is inevitable," said David Shulenburger, vice president for academic affairs at the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities. "Faculty are coming to understand, finally, that this has to happen if they're going to have the most scholarly opportunities to get things done."

· Course-Pack Company Loses Copyright Lawsuit
“A business in Ann Arbor, Mich., failed in its attempt to get around a legal precedent that guides the procedures for copying course packs.”

This database offers full text and/or indexing for over 500 art journals and magazines going back as far as 1984. You may want to search it in conjunction with Humanities Full Text, another H. W. Wilson article database.

Find more information here: http://www.hwwilson.com/databases/artindex.htm

Find a list of journals included in Art Full Text here: http://vnweb.hwwilsonweb.com/hww/Journals/

Good News and a BIG Thank You!

Like the rest of the campus community, Ramsey Library faculty and staff have been holding their collective breaths as we hoped for the best possible budget outcomes and prepared as best we could for the worst. Given the complexities of differing renewal dates for periodicals and electronic resources, the library had to cancel some materials beginning last spring. And, like many areas of the University, the library has suffered significant personnel loses.

So far, our community is very fortunate and we are all greatly appreciative for the relatively low reduction in UNC Asheville’s recurring state funding. Chancellor Ponder, our Board of Trustees, and others have succeeded admirably in advocating the value of UNC Asheville’s mission while demonstrating both our efficiencies and our persisting lack of resources.

But in addition, I want to take advantage of this “bully pulpit” to personally and on behalf of the community to send a special thank you to Chancellor Ponder and all the members of the Chancellor’s Senior Staff. Recognizing the fundamental importance of books, journals, electronic databases, videos, and other library materials to the learning and research processes we so value, they worked diligently to provide a materials acquisition budget which is stronger than circumstances would lead to expect. And while we will continue careful stewardship of our funds by examining existing expenditures and seeking better ways to meet community needs, librarians have already begun the process of seeing what databases and products can and should be restored (e.g., an improved “Research Central is on the way) and will be working with faculty and students on those decisions. More later . . . .

Again, many thanks!

Jim Kuhlman

University Librarian

New Online Resource for Philosophers

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently announced a new online resource for philosophers “Billed as ‘a comprehensive directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers. . . .” Check it out at:

Archive Watch: Taking It Philosophically

PhilPapers

What They’re Reading on College Campuses

If you haven’t seen it lately, you might want to check out the Chronicle of Higher Education’s best seller list, “What They’re Reading on College Campuses.” Top of the list this month and last? Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. Now who said great literature was dead???

“What They’re Reading on College Campuses”

Recent News of Note

Copyright-Law Curricula Face Each Other in a Duel

Chemistry Journals Go Digital-Only

University Presses Can Hang Together to Make E-Books, or All Hang Separately
Wired Campus: 5 Major Research Universities Endorse Open-Access Journals

And NOTES FROM RAMSEY’S personal favorite:

If You Dance With No Pants, a Well-Defined Body (of Slang) Helps

~ Heinrich Heine

NEW BOOKS!!!

Even though this year’s budget picture isn’t perfectly clear as yet, Ramsey Library is certainly more optimistic about the financial forecast and we’re back buying books at a moderate pace. Faculty should continue to request materials for the library collection through your library liaison.

Not only do we have new books to share, we are trying an enhanced display for the new books to spark interest. Many thanks to Barbara Svenson, Noel Jones, Anita White-Carter, and Brandy Bourne for making this happen. We are leaving the dust jackets on the new books until they’re transferred to the stacks and devoting two of the shelves in the display cases to take advantage of all the nice art work. We’re also trying the elimination of the pop reading shelves (those titles have been moved to the stacks and are in the catalog) to allow space and to emphasize that all books are popular. (Is NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY exposing its bias here? Hope so!)

Please visit the new new book display. In the meantime check it out at https://sites.google.com/a/unca.edu/new-book-display/.

INSTRUCTION RESOURCES FOR INFORMATION INTENSIVES

Like many areas on campus and as NOTES FROM RAMSEY mentioned earlier, the library enters the new academic year with fewer staff. We have been particularly affected by the loss of the professional librarian position previously devoted to coordinating and supplying a great deal of the library’s user education. While everyone is trying to do as much as possible to fill the gap, many instructors will inevitably find that we’re unable to help at the time requested. Please be patient as we all attempt to cope as well as we can.

NOTES FROM RAMSEY does want to invite instructors’ attention to digitally available resources that can help them in presenting information resources to their students (actually better than a librarian coming to your class because the students pay much more attention to their “real” teacher) and to help their students directly. On the “InfoLit” page on the library’s web site you can find learning modules on research basics, finding articles, finding and evaluating web resources, suggested sample assignments, and resources for LANG 120 and LSIC 379 instructors.

Check it out at http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/infolit/Default.htm.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

· Research on Teaching Reading Shows What?

· Pricey Cost per Page Hurts Humanities and Social-Science Journals

· Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars
“Geoffrey Nunberg gets lost in the metadata of digital books.”

· New Editing Process Seeks to Improve Wikipedia's Accuracy

~ Heinrich Heine

REMODELING TO ENCOURAGE PERIODICAL USE

For those of you who could get away, welcome back to campus! For the many who pushed on through the summer, NOTES FROM RAMSEY hopes you did have some good time away and that the fall semester is off to a great start for you. Many of you may have missed this announcement in an earlier NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY, so like the CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION in dealing with its summer vacation, NOTES wants to share our new periodicals layout with you one more time.

Under the expert eye of Noel Jones, one of Ramsey Library’s able circulation supervisors, keen minds and strong backs recently completed a no cost rearrangement in the current periodicals area of the main floor to encourage the reading of current magazines and journals. The project consolidated shelving of the majority of paper periodicals, grouped by subject according to their Library of Congress classification, into an area nearer the windows of the periodicals area in order to create more space for group work and comfortable seating. In addition, the library pulled some of the more popular titles from the single subject grouping and added new titles selected as a result of a student, staff, and faculty survey to create an easily accessible range of popular magazines suitable for browsing. Older titles included in this new grouping include:

American Craft

Ebony

Ecologist

Economist

Harper’s

Mother Jones

Ms.

Newsweek (NOTES FROM RAMSEY hates the new format!)

NYT Book Review

Rolling Stone

Scientific American

Time

U.S. News

Women’s Health

New titles added in response to survey requests include (note: less popular titles in the survey were canceled to allow for the change):

The Believer

Bitch

Bust

Dwell

Make

Men’s Health

Mental Floss

Paste

ReadyMade

Shambala Sun

Spin

Vanity Fair

Veg News

Week

See photos at: https://sites.google.com/a/unca.edu/ramsey-library-pop-periodicals/ and be sure to stop by for a visit!!

RESEARCH CENTRAL CANCELED

"Research Central" was the name for a commercial product embedded on the library's web main page which allowed you to put in a search term or phrase and retrieve results from the catalog (books, primarily) and the library's electronic databases (largely citations to articles and full text) all in one search. This is a feature known as "federated searching" for all you library groupies out there. Library staff had worked with this product for about a year while making it available to you in "Beta." While we felt there were still functional problems we also recognized that some faculty and more students found this an easy and productive way to search. Unfortunately, it also cost us $6,500 a year. In light of the anticipated limitations of this year's budget and the somewhat less than dependable performance, the library recently canceled the product so that we can spend the $6,500 on books and electronic information content that we would otherwise not be able to provide. When the library's budget begins to recover (and it will!) we'll return to our search for an affordable and functional federated search engine.

RECENT NEWS OF NOTE

* Google Hopes Readers Can Download, Share, and Use Books
"The company announced . . . that it will work with Creative Commons to let authors decide how their works can be used and cited."

*A Laboratory of Collaborative Learning

"How can we put the library back at the center of undergraduate education where it belongs?"

AND FOR THE ANNUAL BACK TO SCHOOL REALITY CHECK

* Beyond the Experience of Today's College Freshman: Johnny Carson and the KGB
blockquote>"As professors dust off their lecture notes in preparation for the new academic year, they might want to vet their cultural references with the folks at Beloit College."

American Craft
Ebony
Ecologist
Economist
Harper’s
Mother Jones
Ms.
Newsweek (NOTES FROM RAMSEY hates the new format!)
NYT Book Review
Rolling Stone
Scientific American
Time
U.S. News
Women’s Health

New titles added in response to survey requests include (note: less popular titles in the survey were canceled to allow for the change):

The Believer
Bitch
Bust
Dwell
Make
Men’s Health
Mental Floss
Paste
ReadyMade
Shambala Sun
Spin
Vanity Fair
Veg News
Week

Like the rest of campus and the UNC system, Ramsey Library is awaiting budget news on pins and needles. However and in spite of uncertainty, we know that fall classes inevitably loom. The library is now accepting from faculty book and media requests to support fall classes or research projects. We will go ahead and order these materials as soon as possible in order to have them in time for classes. Please limit requests to essential materials in support of this fall’s work until we know more about next year’s budget. Check the library’s web site for your department’s bibliographer.

Ramsey Library Subject Bibliographers

http://bullpup.lib.unca.edu/library/libdir/bibliographers.html

Recent News of Note You May Have Missed

· United Nations Opens World Digital Library

· How a Student-Friendly Kindle Could Change the Textbook Market

The expected introduction of Amazon's wide-format Kindle could revolutionize the delivery of textbooks, or the new product could get as lukewarm a reception as previous e-book readers.

· Physicist Set to Unveil 'WolframAlpha' Web Site, a New Kind of Research Helper

Notes From Ramsey thinks this is one amazing product. Check it out at http://www.wolframalpha.com/

· Google Books Mutilates the Printed Past

Lest Notes from UNCA ITS’ buddy Google takes this the wrong way, please note this isn’t our headline!! “Google Book Search promised to bring the world's archives to our computers. Instead, too often, we're getting the digitally mutilated remains, writes Ronald G. Musto.”

· 10 University-Press Directors Back Free Access to Scholarly Articles

Happy computing!

Ramsey Library, Classroom & Instructional Technology Support (CITS), and the entire UNC Asheville community has lost the long serving and loved Rudy Moorrees to the temptations of retirement and Hawaii. Thankfully, the also talented and committed John Myers, our Moodle and course support expert, has agreed to assume Rudy’s management duties on an interim basis in addition to his own important work with Moodle.

Several folks have asked about the less than clear reference in the last NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY to being able to continue ABC Express and Interlibrary Loan (ILL), at least for now. Please excuse the ambiguity.

The concern applies only to the remainder of this fiscal year. The money that supports the Western North Carolina Library Network (WNCLN) and, thus, ABC Express is handled by Financial Affairs at ASU. So far, their interpretation of the state’s spending ban is that we can continue to put gas in the ABC Express truck. As long as we can do that, ABC Express will continue to run. If the state or ASU determines that we can’t put gas in the truck, we stop. The same’s true for ILL. We can continue to mail materials under NC guidelines. If those change and paying for mailing is prohibited, we’ll have to stop. On the ILL side of things, another complicating factor is that we may be borrowing materials from libraries in states where mailing is no longer allowed.

Ramsey Library will not willingly let ABC Express or ILL go, nor would I expect that from our campus. State regulations are another matter.

Search or browse 100 computing books from major publishers like O'Reilly. Topics include Web Design & Programming, Computer Science, Software Engineering, Networking, Graphics and Multimedia.
NOTE: We have a limited number of concurrent users, so log out when you're done in order to allow others immediate access. If you can't get through, we probably have too many people logging on, try again in a few minutes.

Check out these new online books:

Google Apps: The Missing Manual

Google™ Web Toolkit Applications

Google Hacks

Google Apps Hacks

Google Maps Hacks

Google™ Apps: Administrator Guide

Like all campus units, Ramsey Library began this year with a significant cut to its operating budget and the attendant reduction in the information resources we could buy. The first law of library economics is that the cost of books, journals, and electronic subscriptions rise every year. In aggregate, this increase has averaged about 8% a year over several decades depending on many factors including the strength of the dollar. Journals, continuations, and electronic products tend to increase more rapidly and regularly averaging about 10%. Book prices increase at a much lower rate closer to the increase in the Consumer Price Index. Inevitably, a library’s tendency is to pay the increasing prices of the serials and continuations devoting whatever is left to the more discretionary book requests or perhaps new serial titles. It’s not difficult to envision what happens when the overall library materials budget fails to grow, much less the potentially dire consequences of materials budget reductions. Maintaining current serial subscriptions reduces funds available for books. And since the most costly serials, both paper and electronic, tend to be in the natural sciences there is a disproportionate effect on those disciplines that rely more heavily on books, particularly the humanities.

Given this year’s budget reduction, Ramsey Library sought to maintain as much of our book buying capability as possible. Late in the fall library bibliographers consulted with some faculty and made difficult decisions to cancel lesser used serials in both paper and electronic formats that were judged to have least impact on teaching and research. Obvious targets were subscriptions to the paper versions of journals where we already subscribed to an electronic version in a stable format. In such cases we lost no content while eliminating the cost for the paper subscription as well as an associated expenses for binding, staff processing, and library space. The canceled electronic products were judged to have high cost relative to benefit or that they duplicated information available in a less costly or free resource. For example, we canceled INFOTRAC ($5,115), a basic full-text periodical database we’ve long maintained, because we also receive Academic Search Premier, a very similar product, at no cost through NC LIVE. Please note also that one advantage of electronic products as compared with more traditional library serials subscriptions is that we can restart them when budgets permit and demand requires. You can find a listing of cancellations at http://facstaff.unca.edu/kuhlman/Ramsey_Library_Cancellations.pdf. Savings totaled just over $64,000.

Like the rest of campus and most of higher education, Ramsey Library anticipates at least as much financial difficulty over the next few years as we’ve already experienced. Accordingly, library bibliographers are working on initial prioritization of potential cancellations of additional electronic products, continuations, and journals, and will be working with available faculty and the Library, Information Resources & Technology Committee (LIRTC) over the summer and into the fall in order to exercise the greatest possible stewardship with the resources we have. This will require creativity and flexibility from us all. We appreciate your help and patience.

LIBRARY STAFFING

As you plan for the fall, please keep in mind that the library will be operating with fewer staff as will many areas on campus. You already know that Classroom Instruction & Technology Support (CITS) will not be able to fill Rudy Moorrees’ position and that we anticipate losing it permanently. In addition, we lost our User Instruction & Reference Librarian at the end of the fall semester and have not been able to fill that position. I anticipate that it will also be lost permanently. With the loss of two professional positions everyone in Ramsey Library and CITS is intensifying their efforts to continue to provide the very best information services possible, but there will be some diminishment. This will be particularly true when it comes to our ability to support information literacy efforts next fall since we have lost the primary professional position devoted to that effort.

REDUCED BOOK PURCHASES

As indicated above, fixed or reduced library materials budgets tend to reduce book purchases as a first casualty. This affected Ramsey Library purchasing from the beginning of the year and motivated the serials cancellations indicated above. Unfortunately, book ordering was halted with a bit more than $70,000 in book funds unencumbered more than eliminating book purchases we had planned to make with the $64,000 savings from serials cancellations noted above. The combined effect of the initial reduction and the early stoppage is represented in the following table:

Academic Year-----------------Book Volumes Added

2006-2007------------------------------7,079

2007-2008------------------------------6,258

2008-2009------------------------------3,269

We face great unknowns, but at this point Ramsey Library estimates that without cancelling additional electronic products and assuming a materials budget at least equaling this year’s expenditures (optimistic, perhaps) we may only be able to purchase 1,000 to 1,500 new books next year.

IMPACT

NOTES FROM RAMSEY LIBRARY reports these figures so that instructors realize that students are already encountering diminished resources in terms of books and a few electronic resources. Please anticipate greater impact as you plan for next year. While we are fortunate in being able to tap the collections at ASU and WCU through ABC Express (note: we’re not sure how long that service will be allowed), they anticipate significant cuts in funds as well. The library at ASU has begun a serials cancellation project of far greater scope than we anticipate. Many thanks in advance for your help and understanding.

Brown Bag Book Talks
with UNC Asheville Faculty Authors

The Brown Bag Book Talk series wraps up with Dr. Mark Gibney, Professor of Political Science and Belk Distinguished Professor in the Humanities, who will discuss his latest book, International Human Rights Law: Returning to Universal Principles (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), on Tuesday, April 21 from 12:30-1:30.

All book talks will take place in Special Collections, upper level of D. H. Ramsey Library, on the UNC Asheville campus. Bring your lunch and join us for a stimulating book talk.

For more information about the Brown Bag Book Talks, visit our website.