Thursday, August 23, 2007

Weighty Web Sites

PC Magazine's Top 100 Classic Web Sites in 2007 may be the very sites you need to speed you on your way in research, keeping current, making plans, or taking time out for music, movies, and other leisure pursuits. Check out the best of the Internet in list, in slideshow, or by downloading directly as bookmarks. For the curious, see the criteria applied to select Web sites recognized as superior in their categories.

Wednesday, August 08, 2007

New libraries join OhioLINK

OhioLINK has grown! Nine new libraries are joining the current band of OhioLINK libraries, for a grand total of 93 institutions.

Three seminaries have just joined, and already have their collections available for borrowing:

  • Methodist Theological School in Ohio
  • Pontifical College Josephinum
  • Trinity Lutheran Seminary

    Six public libraries will join and become operational in September:

  • Cuyahoga Falls Public Library
  • Greene County Public Library
  • Portage County District Library
  • Toledo-Lucas County Public Library
  • Warren-Trumbull County Public Library
  • Public Library of Youngstown & Mahoning County

    That will be a lot more materials to browse through, order to have on hand in 3-4 business days, and hang on to for up to 15 weeks!
  • OhioLINK Electronic Book Center debuts

    OhioLINK has made the following announcement regarding the new Electronic Book Center. This is an exciting addition to our resources:

    "The new Electronic Book Center is now available at http://ebooks.ohiolink.edu

    We have loaded 5000 e-books from Oxford University Press and Springer.
    Additional books are coming from these publishers, but we want to make the E-Book Center available now, even without 100% of the books loaded.

    We currently access the Oxford books through Oxford Scholarship Online. We will continue to have access to Oxford's OSO interface, but our own interface makes the same books available within a multi-publisher environment.

    We have had access to Springer books at springerlink.com, but this was an interim solution until our own E-Book Center is available.

    For the time being, ABC-CLIO reference books remain on a separate interface
    at: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/ebooks/reference/home

    We will move ABC-CLIO books over to the new system in September, and then the old "Electronic Reference Books" system will superseded.

    These e-books will be accessible from the catalog. From the catalog record for each book, a "rave" URL links to the e-book itself. Catalog records for Springer and Oxford books are in process. Existing "rave" URL's for ABC-CLIO books will point over to the new system, once that migration is complete."

    Region-free DVD Players Available

    The Library has added two region-free DVD players for use in playing DVDs produced in any region in the world. One is set up with a monitor in our IMC room. The other is available at our Circulation Desk for checkout (on a 7-day loan).

    We added the region-free DVD players to increase our community's ability to use DVD materials produced worldwide. We also hope to free ourselves from United States release delays of international films. For a brief overview of the whole region issue, please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD_region_code.

    If you would be interested in ordering DVDs that are not available in our region, please be sure to contact the library.