Cite & Byte December 1996 (Vol. 6, No. 5)

<CENTER> <STRONG><FONT SIZE=+4>Cite & Byte</FONT></STRONG><BR> <IMG SRC = "red_line.gif" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=2></IMG> </CENTER> <TABLE WIDTH=100%> <TR> <TD COLSPAN=2 ALIGN=CENTER><FONT SIZE=-1>A Newsletter of the Reference Services Division, Olin·Kroch·Uris Libraries, Cornell University</FONT></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN=LEFT><FONT SIZE=-1>Vol. 6, No. 5</FONT></TD> <TD ALIGN=RIGHT><FONT SIZE=-1>December 1996</FONT></TD></TR></TABLE> <CENTER><IMG SRC = "red_line.gif" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=2></IMG></CENTER><P> <CENTER> <A TARGET="text" HREF = "#etc">Electronic Text Center</A><P> <A TARGET="text" HREF = "#webcorner">Web Corner: Electronic Journal Collections</A><P> <A TARGET="text" HREF = "#new">Two New Reference Sources</A><P> </CENTER> <CENTER><IMG SRC = "red_line.gif" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=2></IMG></CENTER><P> <A HREF = "cb65only.htm" TARGET="_top">[text only version]</A><P> <A NAME = "etc"></A><STRONG><FONT SIZE=+2>Introducing a New Service: the Electronic Text Center</FONT></STRONG><P> <EM U>Much foolishness still surrounds the idea of the electronic book, particularly in speculations that it will replace the printed volume, so rendering conventional libraries obsolete. [T]he genius of the electronic medium lies in an entirely different direction. From the few examples we now have, it is clear that the e-book has a much greater potential as a tool with which study and research are conducted than merely reported--a kind of laboratory or workshop for ideas to be developed.</EM><BR> --Willard McCarty, <STRONG>A Potency of Life: Scholarship in an Electronic Age</STRONG>.<P> The opening of the <A HREF = "http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/cet/cet.html" TARGET="_top">Electronic Text Center [ETC]</A> in Olin Library on October 17 marked the first step in the development of a laboratory in the library where scholars and students can read, search, and manipulate primary documents in electronic form. The purpose of the Electronic Text Center is to gather these texts in one location together with the hardware and software necessary to use them.<P> As of November, the ETC is home to a number of texts on CD-ROM, such as Migne's Patrologia Latina and CETEDOC, an electronic version of Corpus Christianorum. We have an electronic version of the Hebrew Responsa from Bar Ilan University. The text of over 11,000 articles from three Civil War newspapers--the New York Herald, Richmond Inquirer, and the Charleston Mercury--is available in another substantial collection on CD-ROM. Goethe's complete scientific and literary works are currently on order along with the Archive of Celtic Latin Literature which, like CETEDOC, is published by Brepols. We expect the number of sources available in electronic form to grow rapidly, and we are working closely with the Olin bibliographers to identify appropriate titles for acquisition by the library.<P> Substantial databases of scholarly and instructional interest are also appearing in networked form on the Internet. Two outstanding resources that are currently linked to the Electronic Text Center's home page are the Perseus Project, an extensive collection of material on Greek and Roman antiquity managed by the Classics department at Tufts University, and the ARTFL database of scholarly materials on the French language from the University of Chicago. The ETC Web site provides access to the latest news about the center and a current list of texts available for use on our five computers. Additional background information about electronic texts, text markup, and text centers at other universities is available. The URL for the Electronic Text Center Web site is <A HREF = "http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/cet/cet.html" TARGET="_top">http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/cet/cet.html</A> . <P> What can be done with electronic text that is not easy to do with printed text? First and foremost, it is possible to search large bodies of writing, such as the 200 plus volumes of the Patrologia, for specific words and phrases and go to the text where they appear, all in a matter of minutes. One could then answer the questions, how often did the authors of the works in the Patrologia cite Aristotle in their writing, and in what context did his name appear, as one way of deducing his influence on later writing. Concordances of literary works can be constructed using the appropriate software. Word frequencies can be used to help identify works of disputed or unknown authorship. Multiple versions of a text can be compared side-by-side and a newly edited and annotated version produced.<P> At the moment, we are in the first phase of the development of the center: identifying sources of electronic texts and textual analysis software. We are working to develop staff expertise in the use of electronic texts so that we can pass that knowledge on through instructional sessions and one-on-one support in the ETC. As our knowledge of how to use and create electronic texts increases, we will begin encoding texts of particular interest to Cornell students and faculty. As demand for and knowledge of electronic texts grows, we plan to move some texts onto the network to make them even more widely available.<P> We want to keep you up to date on our plans for the future through the Reference Division's newsletter, Cite & Byte and on our ETC Web site. The Web site includes links to publications on the use of electronic texts for research and scholarship as well as links to the resources themselves. We welcome your questions and your suggestions for texts and software to add to our holdings.<P> Please come and visit us in our new center, on the left by the entrance to Kroch Library. Our hours are Monday through Friday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Our telephone number is 255-1830. The address of the ETC Web site is <A HREF = "http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/cet/cet.html" TARGET="_top">http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/cet/cet.html</A> .<P> We look forward to working with you.<P> <EM U><A HREF = "http://urislib.library.cornell.edu/michaelengle.html" TARGET="_top">Michael Engle</A>, Electronic Text Center Coordinator<BR> <A HREF = "mailto:moe1@cornell.edu">moe1@cornell.edu</A></EM><P> <CENTER><IMG SRC = "red_line.gif" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=2></IMG></CENTER><P> <A NAME = "webcorner"></A><STRONG><FONT SIZE=+2>Web Corner: Electronic Journal Collections</FONT></STRONG><P> The Cornell University Library is currently subscribing, on a trial basis, to two electronic journal collections that are of use to scholars in the humanities and social sciences. These two collections, JSTOR and MUSE, are available through a standard World-Wide Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator.<P> JSTOR (Journal Storage) is an independent not-for-profit organization created with the assistance of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in information technology. JSTOR is creating an electronic database containing "faithful reproductions" of the backfiles of seventeen core scholarly journals in ecology, economics, history, and political science. Coverage for each title begins with volume one and in most cases runs through at least 1989. Current volumes and issues are not included.<P> MUSE is a project of the Johns Hopkins University Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library to enable worldwide networked access to the full text of the press's 40+ scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and mathematics. It is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Coverage for each title includes current and recent issues.<P> There are two ways to use these collections, searching and browsing. It is possible to search the full text of the articles as well as the more narrowly-defined author, title and headings or abstract fields. Searches can be performed within a particular journal title or across a set of journal titles. The second option is to browse the collection one issue at a time to find a citation or article.<P> New titles are being added to these collections over time. The Cornell University Library Web server provides access to these collections, as well as other electronic journals, through its <A HREF = "http://www.library.cornell.edu/library/ejournal.html" TARGET="_top">Electronic Journal home page</A>. This page includes links to the individual collections as well as to combined title and subject lists.<P> Please have a look at these collections - particularly since they are available on a trial basis - and e-mail your comments regarding their usefulness to Edward Weissman, Research and Planning Librarian, at <A HREF = "mailto:esw3@cornell.edu">esw3@cornell.edu</A>.<P> <EM U><A HREF = "http://urisref.library.cornell.edu/tony.htm" TARGET="_top">Tony Cosgrave</A>, Reference Librarian<BR> <A HREF = "mailto:ajc5@cornell.edu">ajc5@cornell.edu</A></EM><P> <CENTER><IMG SRC = "red_line.gif" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=2></IMG></CENTER><P> <A NAME = "new"></A><STRONG><FONT SIZE=+2>Two New Reference Sources</FONT></STRONG><P> <TABLE BORDER><TR><TD>Sasson, Jack M., ed. <STRONG>Civilizations of the Ancient Near East</STRONG>. 4 vols. New York: Scribner's, 1995. [Uris Ref DS 57 C55x 1995]</TD></TR></TABLE><P> This four-volume set offers a comprehensive and encyclopedic introduction to the civilizations of the ancient Near East. In collecting 189 essays from nearly 200 contributors, this work offers multiple perspectives of the civilizations that arose in Egypt, Syro-Palestine, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, and Northeast Africa between the third millennium BCE and 330 BCE. The essays are arranged in nine categories, including the environment; history and culture; social institutions; population; economy and trade; technology and artistic production; religion and science; language, writing, and literature; and the visual and performing arts. These subject areas are bracketed by introductory and retrospective chapters that set the work within the context of how study of the ancient Near East has developed since the major discoveries of the nineteenth century.<P> Most of the essays include bibliographies and cross-references to related articles within the set, and all of them are both integral to the whole collection and self-contained and can be consulted separately and randomly. The volumes are generously illustrated with photographs, maps, and drawings. A chronology, a cultural table of contents, and an index are also included.<P> This set is a companion work to the three-volume reference work, <STRONG>Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome</STRONG> [Olin and Uris Ref DE 59 C58 1988].<P> <TABLE BORDER><TR><TD>Knippling, Alpana S., ed. <STRONG>New Immigrant Literatures in the United States: A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural Literary Heritage</STRONG>. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996. [Olin Ref PS 153 M56 N53 1996]</TD></TR></TABLE><P> This book constitutes an introduction to the new immigrant literatures of the United States and offers bibliographic and critical essays about post-World War II literature for most American racial and ethnic groups, with some exclusions and two major exceptions: neither African-American nor Native American literatures are covered in this volume. Fields covered include multicultural literature, diasporic literature, critical and cultural studies, comparative literature, and ethnic and multi-ethnic studies.<P> The material is divided into four categories: Asian-American literature, Caribbean-American literature, European-American literature, and Mexican-American literature, with each category further divided into chapters focused on a specific ethnic group. Each of these chapters is then arranged into sections covering literary-cultural history, dominant concerns, major authors, early and recent efforts, prevailing genres, and conclusions. Each chapter also supplies selected bibliographies of both primary and secondary resources that balance the needs of general readers with those of scholars and researchers. Most materials discussed or listed in the bibliographies were written in English.<P> <EM U><A HREF = "http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/lance.htm" TARGET="_top">Lance Heidig</A>, Reference Librarian<BR> <A HREF = "mailto:ljh5@cornell.edu">ljh5@cornell.edu</A></EM><P> <CENTER><IMG SRC = "red_line.gif" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=2></IMG></CENTER><P> <TABLE WIDTH="100%" > <TR> <TD ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT="50%"> <LI><A HREF="http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/" TARGET="_top">Reference Home Page</A></LI> </TD> <TD ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT="50%"> <LI><A HREF="http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/citebyte/citebyte.html" TARGET="_top">Cite and Byte home page</A></LI> </TD> <TD ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP ROWSPAN="2"><FONT SIZE=-2>URL:http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/citebyte/cb65.htm<BR> Martha Walker, editor, Cite & Byte [rev. 3/5/97]<BR> Amy Blumenthal and Mark J. Mandel, editorial assistants<BR> Olin·Kroch·Uris Libraries Reference Services Division </FONT></TD> </TR> <TR> <TD ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT="50%"> <LI><A HREF="http://www.library.cornell.edu/" TARGET="_top">Library Home Page</A></LI> </TD> <TD ALIGN=LEFT VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT="50%"> <LI><A HREF="mailto:maw6@cornell.edu">E-mail the Editor</A></LI> </TD> </TR> </TABLE>