"askcheng" Text Messaging Service Now Available from the Cheng Library

Starting September 1 the Cheng Library will be participating in a year-long text reference pilot project sponsored by the statewide QandANJ virtual reference service. The Library will be using Mosio’s Text a Librarian software to administer the service, which - like our local chat reference service - will be staffed 89 hours per week during most weeks of the semester, although messages may be sent at any time.

To send the Library a text message from a phone or other mobile device, students, faculty and staff should use the following simple steps:

1) Dial 66746
2) Start the body of your text message with the keyword askcheng
3) Enter the rest of your text message/question

Patron info is private and anonymous. Library staff will answer your questions at the earliest opportunity.

Please contact Richard Kearney (973-720-2165 / kearneyr@wpunj.edu) if you have any questions about the service. Please give text reference a try this year, and get librarian expertise wherever you are!

American History in Video Offers a Unique Collection for Teaching and Learning

During the 2009-2010 academic year, the Cheng Library is serving as part of a nationwide advisory group to Alexander Street Press and will be evaluating its product American History in Video, an online database currently providing over 1,400 documentary, archival, public affairs, and newsreel videos in streaming format covering the span of U.S. history. Each video is accompanied by a complete transcript that can be searched to identify the most relevant segments of footage for research and teaching purposes. In addition to its search engine, the web-based interface supports browsing of the complete collection by historical era, specific years or events, people, places, and topics. The database also provides the creation of personal accounts students and faculty can use to compile and share customized playlists or collections of clips from individual videos.

Significant parts of this collection include:

* 292 television interviews on public policy topics conducted between 1951 and 1955 for the CBS television interview series "Chronoscope." The interviewees include government officials, business leaders, political figures, and public intellectuals discussing topics of the early Cold War era. Each program is approximately 15 minutes long. The original kinescopes were donated to the Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Branch of the National Archives by the program's sponsor, the Longines-Wittnauer Watch Company;

* 370 programs produced for the History Channel from series including "America at War," "Biography," "Battleline," "Civil War Journal," "Great Blunders in History," "Investigating History," and several others;

* 256 newsreel films produced during World War II by the Office of War Information and financed by the U. S. government for screening in U.S. and overseas theaters. Most of the films are approximately 10 minutes in length and addressed both military operations and stories and events on the U.S. home front during the war;

* An additional 540 newsreels produced between 1957 and 1964 by Universal Studios as part of the long-running (1929-1967) series Universal Newsreel. These newsreels have been in the public domain since being turned over to the National Archives in 1976 and approximately 400 Universal Newsreels covering other time periods during the span of the series are available in the Moving Image Archive at the Internet Archive.

Please contact Richard Kearney with any questions about using American History in Video.

Initial Collection of WPUNJ Graduate Theses Now Available Online

The first fruit of a collaboration between the Cheng Library and the University's Graduate programs, an initial collection of 19 digitized master's theses is now available online through Theses @ The William Paterson University of New Jersey, an online database using the ProQuest search interface. The majority of titles in the initial collection are from recent Communication Disorders program graduates, but in 2009 the program is expanding to include other programs and the collection will grow as new theses are submitted for digitization. The theses are available both on- and off-campus to WPUNJ account holders. Please contact Jane Bambrick if you have any questions about digital theses at WPUNJ.

Pre-CINAHL Now Fully Merged With CINAHL

The Pre-CINAHL database, which provided searchers with current awareness of the newest journal articles, and included a rotating file of limited bibliographic information while the complete citation records were being edited, has been fully merged into the CINAHL database and discontinued as a stand-alone resource. As a result, searches in the CINAHL database will include Pre-CINAHL content. Pre-CINAHL citation records in CINAHL normally will not include abstracts or assigned subject terms, although citation information and links to full-text (where available) will be included. Searchers will have the option to exclude Pre-CINAHL records from search results by using a checkbox available on the search screen.

11 Journals from the American Chemical Society Now Provided Online

The Cheng Library is pleased to announce that 10 journals published by the American Chemical Society - previously available only in paper format - are now accessible online. In addition to the online Accounts of Chemical Research, we have added the following titles online:

• Analytical Chemistry
• Biochemistry
• Chemical Reviews
• Environmental Science and Technology
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Journal of Organic Chemistry
• Journal of Physical Chemistry A: Molecules, spectroscopy, kinetics, environment, & general theory
• Journal of Physical Chemistry B
• Journal of Physical Chemistry C
• Journal of the American Chemical Society

Online backfiles to 1996 are provided for all titles.

Thursday, Nov. 13: "Menhaden and America" at the Cheng Library with H. Bruce Franklin - Not Just Another Fish Story!

On Thursday, November 13, at 3:30 pm, the David and Lorraine Cheng Library will present a special program on the big consequences of a small fish.

H. Bruce Franklin, John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University-Newark, will be joining us to discuss his recent book, "The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America." Franklin’s book focuses on menhaden, a small, oily, and bony fish that plays a major role in the marine ecosystem on the east coast of the United States. Virtually unknown to those outside commercial fishing or marine biology, menhaden have played a critical role in America’s national - and natural - history, but reckless overfishing now threatens their survival. Commercially harvested for animal feed, fertilizer, and oil used in everything from linoleum to health-food supplements, menhaden are also crucial to the diet of most food and game fish, as well as many marine mammals and birds. They also filter the waters of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, playing an essential dual role in marine ecology perhaps unmatched anywhere on the planet.

As menhaden’s numbers have plummeted, fish and birds dependent on them have been decimated and toxic algae have begun to choke American bays and seas. Two bills currently before Congress, H.R. 3840 and H.R. 3841, propose to prohibit the further commercial fishing of menhaden for use as industrial commodities.

Franklin's subject stands at the intersection of marine biology, ecology, corporate decision making, politics, public policy, history and culture. Students and faculty in all disciplines will benefit a great deal from this program.

The program will be followed by a reception at 5:00 pm in the Library's Friends Lounge and light refreshments will be served. This program is supported by a generous grant from the William Paterson University Alumni Association.

Everyone is welcome, so please join us at the Library on November 13.

Trial Access to the Web of Science Database Available Through November 27

The Web of Science database provides access to the world’s leading scholarly literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, supporting navigation through the tracking of citations. Our trial access to the Web of Science, available through November 27, includes the following components:

• Science Citation Index Expanded (1975-present) - citations from over 7,100 major journals across 150 disciplines
• Social Sciences Citation Index (1975-present) - citations from over 2,100 journals across 50 social science disciplines
• Arts & Humanities Citation Index (1975-present) - citations from over 1,200 arts and humanities journals

With the Web of Science, it is possible to follow a path for any individual article backward through its references or forward to subsequently published articles that have cited it. The database supports a wide variety of search options, including searching by subject area, document type, author, source title, publication year, institutional affiliation, language, and country of publication. The cited reference search options include searching by cited authors, works, or years. Web of Science also supports customized citation and search alerts so you can keep up with new material as it is added to the database. Please give the Web of Science a try and please let us know what you think: contact Richard Kearney, Electronic Resources Librarian, with your feedback.