Library Resources in Linguistics

Cornell's first Librarian was Willard Fiske. He was also the Professor of North European Languages and head of the University Press. Among his many contributions to the university and its library are the well-known Icelandic Collection and our lesser-known Raeto-Romance Collection. Fiske was an early proponent of a full-service library at a time when libraries were little more than storerooms. He scoured Europe for the libraries of European scholars on which to nurture the infant Cornell Library. One of his first purchases was the library (some 1,400 volumes) of Franz Bopp, the founder of comparative Indo-European linguistics. The Bopp collection is now scattered throughout the library, much of it in the Asia Collection stacks, but it provides an early example of the library's support of language study that continues to the present day.

The modern manifestation of this support falls naturally into three areas. Fiske would congratulate us on at least two areas: our commitment to the acquisition of printed books and journals in linguistics and our public service in support of them. Since Fiske was in many ways an innovator, we think the third, electronic resources, would have met with his approval.

In addition to the general collection of books and journals housed in the Olin stacks, remember those special collections of Fiske's: The Icelandic Collection has its own shelves on the mezzanine of the Kroch Library, where it shares space with part of the Asia Collection. The first two floors of Kroch contain the balance of the Asia Collection with three constituent parts: an East Asia Collection; a Southeast Asia Collection established by John Echols, a noted Asia linguist; and a South Asia Collection which could be said to have been founded on Bopp's library. Fiske's other language collection, the Raeto-Romance Collection, substantial portions of the Icelandic Collection, and some Asian materials are housed in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

Note how spread out these resources are: a linguistics book could be in the third or sixth floor Olin stacks, any of the special collections, or in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections. The resources are tied together by our online catalog which provides a user-friendly interface to most of our collection. Just remember that some material acquired before 1973 may have to be searched in the card catalog located in Olin Reference.

Reference materials in linguistics are much more focused; most of the material is in the Olin Reference collection. We have a newly-prepared guide to reference materials in linguistics. It has the advantage of listing resources actually here at Cornell and locating them for you. Ask at the Olin or Uris reference or information desks for a copy or look for it on the Web.

Linguistics researchers have many print periodical indexes to choose from, most notably MLA (Modern Language Association) International Bibliography from 1921-and Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) from 1967. Other print indexes devoted to linguistics research literature are Bibliographie Linguistischer Literatur (BLL) and Bibliographie Linguistique. Related fields, such as anthropology and psychology, also have their own print indexes. Our guide has an extensive list.

An increasing amount of material is available through various electronic media. Periodical indexes such as MLA Bibliography and LLBA are available online as well as in print. The online versions are cumulative, so, for example, you can search all the years of MLA from 1963 and LLBA from 1973. The online presentation of these databases has the additional advantage of using the same searching rules as the online catalog. The real key to using both the catalog and the online indexes is keyword searching. Keyword searching allows a researcher to limit their search of materials by language, year, format, or all three. Make sure to take a look at our handout Keyword Searching in the Online Catalog for hints.

Some indexes are also available on CD-ROM in the Olin Reference area, including the ubiquitous MLA Bibliography (from 1981 in this format) with a different interface from the online catalog. There's a discussion of CD-ROM resources in the article on page four of this issue.

Most print dictionaries are in Olin Reference, some are in the special collections and some are in the stacks. In a class by itself is the Oxford English Dictionary Second Edition, on Compact Disk, also available in the Olin Reference CD-ROM area.

Some resources are available through the World-Wide Web. ARTFL, for example, is a concordance to 2,000 major works of French literature. There are many Web sites devoted to some aspect of linguistics. See "Web Corner" in this issue for some examples.

New to the Reference Services Division is the Electronic Text Center (ETC) which you are encouraged to visit on weekdays between 1:00 and 5:00. The ETC features access to many large text collections such as the Patrologia Latina. One recent acquisition of interest is Letteratura Italiana Zanichelli, an "Italian ARTFL." We also invite you to visit the Map Collection on the lower level in Olin Library which is featuring a display of linguistic cartography.

Linguistic resources are spread over many physical locations and many types of media and use many different interfaces. The one consistent element throughout the library is the helpfulness of our staff. We're all proud of these resources and anxious to help you use them effectively. Please stop at one of the service desks before you begin your research and let us introduce you to this rich and substantial collection.

Robert Kibbee, Reference Librarian
rk14@cornell.edu

Web Corner: Language and Linguistics Resources

With all the interest in linguistics being generated by the LSA Institute this summer, we thought it would be useful to highlight some important language-related sites on the Web.

A good place to start is the Human Languages Page, a compendium of more than 1,400 links to resources covering more than 100 languages. It encompasses such diverse areas of study as parallel corpora, phonetic research, ethnolinguistics, translation, and artificial intelligence. It even provides links to computer-based language instruction courses in Breton and Tagalog, not to mention a multitude of dictionaries.

On the subject of dictionaries, Bucknell maintains an impressive collection of 300 dictionaries for 100-plus languages, including links to thesauri and lists of English vocabularies in specialized areas like botany, real estate, and gay slang. Bucknell also offers a Web page listing links for a variety of grammars for Cree, Luganda, and a host of other languages. Visit also the University of Oregon's Yamada Language Guides site, for its extensive archive of non-Roman fonts, directory of language-related news groups, and links to language-related mailing lists.

Need information on the activities of a particular scholarly association in the field? Try the linguistics section of the University of Waterloo's Scholarly Societies Project, an alphabetically-arranged list of links to Web sites produced by approximately 75 academic organizations, from the Accademia della Crusca to the Yuen Ren Society for the Promotion of Chinese Dialect Fieldwork.

If you focus on the study of minority languages and cultures, you might want to examine the Summer Institute of Linguistics Web page, featuring a searchable online version of the SIL Bibliography, a source listing nearly 11,000 references to academic works.

And don't forget the Web sites for Cornell's own Department of Linguistics and Department of Modern Languages, both of which contain useful information on language study at Cornell, as well as relevant links to other institutions and organizations.

The number of language-related Web-based resources is surprisingly large, so at some point you may need to employ a Web search engine such as AltaVista in order to find highly specialized materials. If searching the Web is unfamiliar to you, consider attending the Reference Services Division's class, Finding What You Want on the Web.

Fred Muratori, Reference Librarian
fmm1@cornell.edu

CD-ROMs for Linguists

Linguists are blessed with a plethora of periodical indexes, not only in their own field, but in related fields such as anthropology, education, and psychology. Both CD-ROM and online indexes offer a greater variety of search options than print indexes and usually cumulate several years of indexing. Interfaces are usually easy to learn and use. One obvious drawback of CD-ROMs is that a researcher has to come to it. Another is that very large databases may be distributed over several disks and so the advantage of cumulation can be lost. But these are minor annoyances compared to the convenience of CD-ROMs.

In addition, the entire process of collecting and either printing or downloading material is much simpler from CD-ROM indexes than from other media. CD-ROMs are perfect for small bibliographic or full-text databases of records from narrowly-focused fields.

Here at Olin we have about twenty such resources, many of which will be of interest to linguists. To give you an idea of what kind of linguistic resources they contain, I tried a couple of searches on all the databases where they seemed relevant.

The MLA Bibliography has been mentioned several times in this issue. It's available online through the online catalog interface. Online access has its advantages, but many users still prefer the CD-ROM and will make the trip to Olin to use it. Our CD-ROM is no longer being updated (1981-1996) but we keep it available as a backup for when the network is down. My search on lexicograph* resulted in over 5,000 hits and a search on rhaeto*or raeto* resulted in 129 hits.

Some CD-ROM databases specialize in particular time periods, but still cover linguistic topics. The International Medieval Bibliography (IMB) contains citations to articles in medieval studies. The CD-ROM version covers the years 1984-1993. My rhaeto* search netted 11 hits and lexicograph* 278.

Anthropological Literature is another database you shouldn't overlook. The emphasis is obvious from its title and it claims to include linguistics in its coverage. My impression was that most of the coverage was ethnolinguistical. Even so, a search on lexicograph* brought up 26 items, some of which might well be unique to this database.

An important class of databases is the citation databases, Social Sciences Citation Index and Arts and Humanities Citation Index. Most linguistic information is in A&HCI. These indexes allow you to trace scholarship through cited references. These indexes are a bit unwieldy to use at first ( the two databases extend to over 18 disks!), but we can get you started and help plan your strategy to make effective use of them.

An underutilized resource is the Internationale Bibliographie der Zeitschriftenliteratur (IBZ). This is a truly international database, but with an emphasis on German periodicals. It covers from 1989 to the present on two disks.

Finally there's Dissertation Abstracts International (1861-present) on four disks. DAI is also available on the Mann Library Gateway. The CD-ROM version is quite a bit more flexible and easier to search, but the online version presents the entire span of 135 years in one cumulated database.

All these resources are kept in the CD-ROM area behind the reference desk. Please don't hesitate to ask for help when using the CD-ROMs. The staff is always happy to help.

Robert Kibbee, Reference Librarian
rk14@cornell.edu

Reference Home Page	Cite and Byte home page	URL:http://www.library.cornell.edu/okuref/citebyte/cb73only.htm Martha Walker, editor, Cite & Byte [rev. 6/24/97] Amy Blumenthal and Mark J. Mandel, editorial assistants Olin·Kroch·Uris Libraries Reference Services Division
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