The WiLS Annual ILL meeting is less than a month away—Wednesday, October 1. We are excited to have as our keynote speaker, Cyril Oberlander, Associate Library Director at SUNY Geneseo, giving a presentation on Transforming Resource Sharing Services. Cyril has been active in resource sharing circles for years in Oregon, Virginia, and now New York.
Kathy Drozd and Becky Ringwelski from Minitex will then give us an overview of the Minitex Resource Sharing Program. Following a buffet luncheon at the Pyle Center, Mark Beatty from WiLS will give us an OCLC update. The final session will incorporate two tracks: one for the UW system staff discussing the various CUWL, UW-System funded initiatives and the second track, Back to the Basics, will cover covering custom holdings, workflow shortcuts, copyright and copyright clearance center, borrowing tricks and tips, and national and state policies.
The cost for the meeting is $35. More detailed information including the online registration form can be found at www.wils.wisc.edu/events/ill08.
September 2008
CONTENTS
Upcoming Events
Resource Sharing News
The New Access
A new school year is starting and a new format for Access is also beginning. The old Access was a quarterly publication in a PDF format. With the new Access we want to provide more timely information so it will be a monthly publication in the format that you are currently viewing. We will be tweaking it the first few issues so let us know what you like and dislike about the new format.
WiLS will also shortly be inaugurating a new newsletter called Your WiLS which will incorporate all the functions of WiLS: cooperative purchasing, OCLC, training/consulting, reference, and interlibrary loan. Stay tuned.-- Bob Shaw
WiLS ILL Departmental Wiki
Departmental wiki...nothing new right? Well I'm sure most of you have either heard of them and have said one of two things: I just don't have the time or expertise or What would we even put on it? In WiLS, we answered those two questions.
We ARE way too busy and no, we don't have wiki creation experience. We were very aware that our training materials were scattered among our staff in different stages of accuracy. So over the course of the summer we set about preparing ourselves for the upcoming fall semester for training new students with a training wiki that they can access within our home office or while out and about running for materials on campus.
We decided that since we didn't have the time nor the expertise, we would ask one of our longstanding students, who was very familiar with our work processes and who had also created a wiki for a class, to gather our existing training materials and get to work creating the wiki. By scheduling specific times for her to work on this project, we could steadily get the materials reviewed and updated, discover which wiki software would work for us, and it allow our staff to oversee the organization of the wiki.
With the creation of our wiki, we have a dynamic means of keeping our policies and work procedures up-to-date and a great way to keep the information in front of our students by setting up the wiki as our homepage for reference.
So the moral of the story is: put some trust in the staff that you have around you, and make plans to do something that will make your life easier.- Eric Robinson
We ARE way too busy and no, we don't have wiki creation experience. We were very aware that our training materials were scattered among our staff in different stages of accuracy. So over the course of the summer we set about preparing ourselves for the upcoming fall semester for training new students with a training wiki that they can access within our home office or while out and about running for materials on campus.
We decided that since we didn't have the time nor the expertise, we would ask one of our longstanding students, who was very familiar with our work processes and who had also created a wiki for a class, to gather our existing training materials and get to work creating the wiki. By scheduling specific times for her to work on this project, we could steadily get the materials reviewed and updated, discover which wiki software would work for us, and it allow our staff to oversee the organization of the wiki.
With the creation of our wiki, we have a dynamic means of keeping our policies and work procedures up-to-date and a great way to keep the information in front of our students by setting up the wiki as our homepage for reference.
So the moral of the story is: put some trust in the staff that you have around you, and make plans to do something that will make your life easier.- Eric Robinson
ILL tips:
Requesting newspapers from the Wisconsin Historical Society
One of the more popular parts of the Wisconsin Historical Society's collection is Wisconsin newspapers on microfilm. There seems to be confusion, both in OCLC and in Wiscat, about where to put the dates needed on the ILL request.. Sometimes the request is sent as a serial request because there is an obvious date field. Other times requests get sent as loans but the dates wanted are in various fields.
Here is the preferred method that the WiLS staff encourages to ensure that we send the correct reels. In both Wiscat and OCLC, please send the request as a loan (not a serial)and in the title field modify the title to incorporate the dates wanted, e.g., "Richland Observer for 1943-1945" or "Milwaukee Journal for July-August, 1964". If you follow that format, it is not necessary to put the dates in the borrowing notes. It is also not necessary to put the reel numbers in the ILL request since we always check Madcat in order to get the correct reels for the dates listed.
Only positive reels (indicated by a P number, e.g., P94-457) circulate. If there is a negative number (indicated by N as a prefix, e.g., N84-243), that indicates a non-circulating negative reel that has to have a positive reel made and which can take 3-4 weeks. We ship up to 6 reels of microfilm for the same title. If some reels are not on the shelf, the shipping slip will indicate that; please re-request those reels at a later date.
If you have any questions about requesting microfilm, please contact me at reshaw@wils.wisc.edu. - Bob Shaw
Reference Service News
New resources in the UW Madison Collection:
Fink, Arlene. Conducting research literature reviews: from the Internet to paper. 2nd ed. Sage Publications, CA, 2005. 245p bibl index ISBN 1-4129-0904-X, $37.95. Reviewed in 2005jul CHOICE.
Classed with scientific research handbooks, Fink's work provides examples of designs and analytical concepts from medical, educational, psychosocial, and business domains. She laudably holds qualitative and observational research designs to the same standards of reliability and validity as experimental research. The book's main contribution is its discussion of meta-analytic statistical techniques for synthesizing a body of research findings, locating best practices for application, or justifying basic research. This edition (1st ed., 1998) offers new checklists, flow charts, and updated bibliographies. Criteria used in selecting general references (mostly new Sage publications) are unstated. The work's organization makes it suitable for classroom use, but changes in type fonts, mixed bulleted and numbered lists, and various rule bars detract from clarity. Inadequate indexing (e.g., "Validity," "External validity," and "Internal validity" entries are not cross-referenced) reduces its value as a comprehensive reference work. It offers limited practical research advice, conflating Internet search engines with online database search interfaces, and muddling distinctions between freely accessible "public" government databases (e.g., Medline) and "private" (licensed or proprietary) databases produced or hosted by vendors such as Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. Summing Up: Optional. Graduate students; professional practitioners.
-- P. E. Sandstrom, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne
Here is a review of the 2001 edition of which we have 2008:
Stuart-Fox, Martin. Historical dictionary of Laos. 2nd ed. Scarecrow, 2001. 527p bibl afp (Asian/Oceanian historical dictionaries series, 35) ISBN 0-8108-3880-X, $75.00. Reviewed in 2001sep CHOICE.Revised by one of the authors of the original edition (CH, Sep'92), this second edition represents a major advance over the first. It is nearly double the size (527 p. versus 258), and the section of alphabetical entries has twice as many. Moreover, the author escapes the editorial constraint requiring that the first edition focus on recent (post-WW II) political events and persons involved in them, offering much more coverage of precolonial and French colonial periods. This greater historical depth coupled with coverage of events in the 1990s make this edition especially valuable in providing authoritative information on a little-known nation. General and academic readers.
-- K. Mulliner, Ohio University
Two that I found interesting but for which I found no review in Choice (perhaps because they are older):
The Merriam-Webster New Book of Word Histories (1991).
And Cassell's Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (2002).
A few new electronic databases were acquired. Please let me know if you would like further information:
- Dance in Video
- Encyclopedia of Language and Education
- HFES (Human Factors and Ergonomics Society)
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Reports
- The Gilded Age
- British Periodicals
- Dictionary of Old English: A to G Online
- Newsbreak Online (Southeast Asia)
- Oxford Music Online
- GreenFILE
- Tales Online (See: Kathleen Horning)
- Economist Historical Archive, 1843-2003
- Encyclopedia of Parasitology
Also new at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN DIGITAL COLLECTIONS:
Archival Resources in Wisconsin: Descriptive Finding Aids 63 finding aids, added 8/5/08. The Archival Resources in Wisconsin: Descriptive Finding Aids presents archival finding aids prepared and contributed by the institutions across the state. The finding aids serve as a searchable access point to the archival holdings described. Archival holdings can include a variety of materials such as correspondence, diaries, maps, government records,
film, photographs, and audio recordings. The most recent additions include contributions from the Wisconsin Historical Society, University
of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures.
digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/WIArchives--Fran Metcalf, fmetcalf at wils.wisc.edu
Phone: 608.263.4981
Fax: 608.263.3684
Submit a reference request
OCLC for ILL
A new WorldCat Resource Sharing User Guide is now available online
This document is your complete resource for information on all aspects of resource sharing and interlibrary loan procedures through OCLC's WorldCat Resource Sharing system.
Some sample topics:
- The Basic Interlibrary Loan Cycle
- Access and Authorizations
- Additional Loan Cycles
- OCLC Policies Directory
- OCLC ILL Fee Management Service
- Creating ILL Requests
- Choosing Lenders
- Completing a Loan Cycle
- Printing from Request Manager
The WorldCat Resource Sharing User Guide is available in PDF format at: www.oclc.org/us/en/support/documentation/resourcesharing/using/userguide/WCRS_UserGuide.pdf During Fall 2008, OCLC's Documentation Dept. will also make available an HTML version. The HTML version will be available at: www.oclc.org/us/en/support/documentation/resourcesharing
Please send any comments or questions about this user guide to Peter Insabella at insabelp@oclc.org.
Thank you Christa Starck OCLC Delivery Services
A monthly publication with writing contributions by Fran Metcalf, Joy Pohlman, Eric Robinson, Bob Shaw, Al Wenzel, Mary Williamson, and Sheila Zillner.
Edited by Bob Shaw and Joy Pohlman.
Layout, graphics by S. C. Zillner.
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WiLS ILL phone—608.263.4981; email—wilsill@wils.wisc.edu
WiLS ILL—728 State Street, Room B106B, Madison, WI 53706