August 30, 2001-Vol33n1: Electronic Highways

VOLUME 33, NUMBER 1

THURSDAY, August 30, 2001

BISON Databases: Getting Better All the Time

Not only is BISON's offering of databases growing (go to http://ublib.buffalo.edu and select "Databases by Title" for a complete listing), those that have been mainstays of UB's "virtual library" continue to add coverage and features. Noteworthy new databases added over the summer for UB students and researchers include:

History Resource Center: U.S. (full-text primary and secondary material on all aspects of United States history)
IEEE Xplore (selected full-text Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers journals, transactions and conference proceedings)
ProQuest Psychology Journals (full-text coverage of 300 scholarly journals)

Three ongoing databases' offerings with significant new features also have new titles. Dissertation Abstracts is now Digital Dissertations. It includes the actual digitized text of many dissertations completed and published from January 1997 to the present including University at Buffalo titles. Expanded Academic ASAP now is entitled InfoTrac OneFile and covers nearly twice as many journals as before — indexing and abstracting 6,000 journal titles, of which 3,000 are full-text. Subject coverage ranges from the arts to the sciences and everything in-between.

AP Photo Archive is now AccuNet/AP Multimedia Archive http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/units/ugl/e-resources/photo.html. Three new databases have been added to the Archive in addition to the ongoing International and the Euro/Asian photo files:

AP Audio Database (contains audio clips dating back to the 1920s)
AP Text Database (contains full-text articles as reported by Associated Press staffers)
AP Graphics Database (includes graphics, maps, illustrations and logos prepared by the Associated Press)

For example, type in the topic "cloned sheep" in the "what" box and limit to "Intl Photos" and retrieve downloadable photographs of Dolly, Britain's most famous sheep. Perhaps you require a graphical illustration depicting use of the drug Ritalin by gender and age, type 'Ritalin' in the "what" box and limit to "Graphics PDF." Or perhaps you need a sound clip from the "I have a dream" speech delivered by Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963? Type 'I have a dream' in the "what" box and limit to "Audio." Or how about AP wire stories on the HBO hit "the Sopranos?" Type 'The Sopranos' in the "What" box and limit to "Text."

Watch this column for detailed information on BISON's enhancements as the University Libraries develops a rich virtual library for use from your desktop. Those requiring immediate information on "new and/or improved" BISON databases should contact Mike Lavin, the Libraries' Electronic Collections Coordinator, at 645-3528 or mrlavin@acsu.buffalo.edu.

—Gemma DeVinney and Don Hartman, University Libraries