Expanded Access to Computing Research with the ACM Guide to Computing Literature

New to the Cheng Library this year, the Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) Guide to Computing Literature provides significantly enhanced access to the published and unpublished research of computer science. Building on the full-text resources of the ACM Digital Library and Master Special Interest Group (SIG) File, which offers materials published by the ACM, the Guide provides citations to over 750,000 journal articles, books, conference proceedings, doctoral dissertations, master's theses, and technical reports from over 3,000 publishers. In addition to the citation details, many records also contain abstracts, citations to and from other papers, index terms from ACM's classification system, reviews from ACM's Computing Reviews, and web links to papers on their publishers' web sites. The Guide is easy to search and browse.

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is Now Part of Oxford Music Online

The new Oxford Music Online portal incorporates the full content of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, updated regularly, with several additional resources to enhance music research, including the following full-text publications:

• The Oxford Companion to Music - over 8,000 articles covering a wide range of subjects in music, including composers, performers, conductors, individual works, instruments and notation, forms and genres
• The Oxford Dictionary of Music - contains 12,500 terms covering musical subjects of all kinds

In addition to the new content, the search screen has been redesigned to support easier searching and browsing for specific types of content, including:

• over 44,000 biographies
• over 33,000 subject entries

The portal also provides useful learning resources, including timelines of women in music, operatic premières, and contemporary music; nine topical guides for major subjects in music history; and guides covering printed/manuscript sources and major institutions for music research. Oxford University Press has provided a tip sheet (in PDF format) for experienced users of the online Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians to help make the transition to the new interface easier. If you have questions about Oxford Music Online, please contact Tony Joachim or Bob Wolk, Library Liaisons to the Music Department.

Grove Dictionary of Art is Now Part of Oxford Art Online

The new Oxford Art Online portal incorporates the full content of the Grove Dictionary of Art, updated regularly, with several additional resources to enhance art research, including the following full-text publications:

• The Oxford Companion to Western Art - over 2,600 entries covering over 1,700 artists and their work
• Encyclopedia of Aesthetics - over 600 articles surveying the major concepts, thinkers, and debates about the meaning, uses, and value of all the arts
• The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms - 1,800 entries on art terms, critical periods, and styles in the visual arts

In addition to the new content, the search screen has been redesigned to support easier searching and browsing for specific types of content, including:

• over 23,000 biographies
• over 18,000 subject entries
• over 5,000 images

The portal also provides useful learning resources, including timelines of world art for six geographical regions, over twenty lesson plans on modern art topics designed by the Museum of Modern Art, and over a dozen thematic guides for major topics in the visual arts, art history and world history. Oxford University Press has provided a tip sheet (in PDF format) for experienced users of the online Grove Dictionary of Art to help make the transition to the new interface easier. If you have questions about Oxford Art Online, please contact Susan Sabatino, Library Liaison to the Art Department.

Over 400 Full-Text Journals Now Available Through PubMed Central

PubMed Central is the U.S. National Institutes of Health free and open access digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Through voluntary participation by publishers, PubMed Central is building a major electronic depository for biomedical research literature. In addition to providing unrestricted access to current content, the National Library of Medicine, which manages PubMed Central, is digitizing earlier print issues of many of the journals already available in the database. The Cheng Library provides access to PubMed Central's journals through its online catalog, its periodicals diretory, and through its biomedical and health sciences databases, including MEDLINE, CINAHL, Health Reference Center Academic, and other resources.

New Reference Centers Make High-Quality Student Research Easier in History, Literature, and Current Issues

Three new full-text databases from EBSCO provide convenient starting points for student research in important subject areas. Each database draws together a vairety of different types of sources appropriate to its subject area:

History Reference Center - This reference database contains content from over 2,000 reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books from leading history publishers; articles from over 100 history periodicals; almost 60,000 primary source documents covering every era of world history; over 50,000 biographies; over 110,000 historical photos and maps; and over 80 hours of historical video.

Literary Reference Center - This reference database contains over 27,000 plot summaries, synopses and work overviews; nearly 100,000 articles/essays of literary criticism; over 140,000 author biographies; over 569,000 book reviews; the text of 57,000 classic/contemporary poems and 14,500 classic/contemporary short stories; 4,700 author interviews; and over 7,100 classic literary texts. The database also contains full-text reference content from a number of literature encyclopedias.

Points of View Reference Center - This database is designed to provide multiple perspectives on current controversial issues. The database currently offers materials on 200 topics, and each topic section features an overview along with point and counterpoint essays drawn from a variety of sources, plus supplementary information including primary source documents and guides to critical thinking.

New York Times Archive Search Brings 72 Years of History to Your Desktop

The New York Times has recently made available a free, full-text, searchable archive of its articles, reviews and editorials covering the period from its first issue in September 1851 to December 31, 1922. The archive contains over 3.5 million items. The search engine supports searching by keyword, headline, and author, and it is also possible to limit the date range of a search. Search results are displayed by relevance (closest match to search terms), with options to resort by date (oldest or newest first). The display of results includes complete citation information and the first paragraph of each article; to view a complete article it is necessary to select a link to a scan of the article in PDF format.

The New York Times archive site also includes contents from 1923 to 1980, but the majority of these articles are not freely accessible.

In addition to the archive, the Cheng Library also provides subscription access to the full text of the New York Times from June 1980 to the present through the ProQuest search interface and through the Lexis-Nexis Academic database.

New Edition of Magill's Medical Guide Now Online

Designed for general readers, the 4th revised edition of Magill's Medical Guide contains 960 signed entries written by experts describing the major diseases and disorders of the human body, the basics of human anatomy and physiology, specializations in medical practice, and common surgical and nonsurgical procedures. Typical entries on diseases provide details on the anatomy or body system affected, the health specialties that address a given disease, a concise definition, the causes and symptoms, current treatments and therapies, and prospects for future treatments. Most entries also include photographs, charts, and/or drawings to illustrate the topic, hyperlinked cross-references, and an annotated bibliography for further information.

The online version of Magill's Medical Guide provides easy search and browse access to the full 3,200 pages of text found in the five-volume print version (also available in the Library - Call Number REF RC41.M34). The online indexes also offer fast access to the Guide's glossary, table of contents, anatomy and systems affected, medical specialties and related fields, and diseases and conditions, plus lists of health care providers, medical journals, pharmaceuticals, health organizations, recommended web sites, and contributors to the Guide.