+ Page 1 + ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Computer Systems News Volume 4, Number 5 (1993) ISSN 1050-6004 Editors: Dana Rooks (LIBL@UHUPVM1) and Linda Thompson (LIB1J@UHUPVM1). Issued on an irregular basis by University Libraries, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-2091. ----------------------------------------------------------------- CONTENTS OCLC EXTENDS FIRSTSEARCH, EPIC, AND CURRENT CLINICAL TRIALS HOURS, 1 ART INDEX AND ARTS & HUMANITIES SEARCH NOW ON FIRSTSEARCH AND EPIC, 2 GUIDON INTERFACE IMPROVES INTERNET ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC JOURNAL, 3 SPRINGER JOURNALS PREVIEW SERVICE, 3 DYNAMIC INFORMATION IS ADDED AS DOCUMENT SUPPLIER FOR FIRSTSEARCH, 4 SPLICER FOR WINDOWS, 4 NEW BOOKLET ON OPEN SYSTEMS, 5 KNOWLEDGE INDEX MOVES TO COMPUSERVE, 5 LC SELECTS STAR, 5 VTLS OFFERS ADA-SUPPORT WORKSTATION, 6 OCLC EXTENDS FIRSTSEARCH, EPIC, AND CURRENT CLINICAL TRIALS HOURS The FirstSearch Catalog and the EPIC service, OCLC's online reference services, and the Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials are now available Sunday through Friday until midnight and on Saturday until 8 p.m. on both the OCLC Network and the Internet. The new hours are: Monday-Friday 6 a.m.-midnight (Eastern Time) Saturday 8 a.m.-8 p.m. (Eastern Time) Sunday noon-midnight (Eastern Time) Later this year, OCLC plans to make the systems available 24 hours a day. The FirstSearch Catalog is designed for library patrons, with an end-user interface that allows patrons to move easily through the online search process in just a few simple steps, without training or online searching experience. + Page 2 + EPIC, a full-featured online reference system that provides subject access, and keyword and Boolean searching to a variety of databases, is used mostly by librarians and experienced searchers. The Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials is a peer-reviewed medical journal, edited by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and distributed electronically by OCLC. For additional information contact Tam Dalrymple 614-761-5054 or Nita Dean 614-761-5002. ART INDEX AND ARTS & HUMANITIES SEARCH NOW ON FIRSTSEARCH AND EPIC Students and scholars in the arts and humanities now have two of their most valuable resources available for online searching on OCLC's FirstSearch Catalog and EPIC service. Art Index, the H. W. Wilson database of 200 leading art publications from around the world, and Arts & Humanities Search, the online equivalent of the Institute for Scientific Information's Arts and Humanities Citation Index, have recently been added to FirstSearch and EPIC. The online version of Art Index provides convenient and detailed access to major periodicals, yearbooks, museum publications, bibliographies, and reviews in various languages dating from September 1984 to the present. It offers an international perspective on the arts, ranging from archeology, architecture, art history, computer graphics, crafts, industrial design, interior design, and photography to sculpture, television, textiles, and video. It also serves as a complete record of reproductions of works of art that appear in the publications indexed. It is updated monthly. Arts & Humanities Search indexes articles from over 1,100 of the world's leading arts and humanities journals and includes relevant articles from some 5,000 journals in the physical and social sciences. Its online coverage goes from 1980 to the present. It is updated weekly. Both FirstSearch and EPIC display the three-character OCLC symbols for the libraries that own the publications cited in each entry. The online citations in both Art Index and Arts & Humanities Search have been linked to serials records that have been authenticated by CONSER participants. The CONSER program includes 19 OCLC member libraries, the Library of Congress, and the National Library of Canada. The 500,000 authoritative CONSER records represent the most widely held titles among libraries. + Page 3 + For additional information contact Tam Dalrymple 614-761-5054 or Nita Dean 614-761-5002. GUIDON INTERFACE IMPROVES INTERNET ACCESS TO ELECTRONIC JOURNAL With the release of GUIDON 1.1 software, subscribers to the Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials can now access the electronic journal's complete text and graphics through the Internet. GUIDON is a graphical user interface developed by OCLC for electronic journals. With GUIDON, subscribers view the full-text of articles with graphics and hypertext links to references, figures, equations, and tables. GUIDON also supports sophisticated Boolean searching and a document ordering capability. OCLC plans future releases of GUIDON that will support its searching and graphic capabilities on the X-Windows and Macintosh platforms. Two interfaces are available for viewing, displaying, and printing Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials documents. GUIDON, which is sent to all subscribers, runs in the Microsoft Windows environment on an 80286 or higher PC and provides typeset-quality displays and graphics. EPS, the OCLC Electronic Publishing Service, is a command-oriented ASCII user interface which runs on a terminal or PC with software emulating a VT100 terminal. Both interfaces are now available via the Internet, the OCLC Network, and CompuServe. For additional information contact Andrea Keyhani 614-764-6474 or Nita Dean 614-761-5002. SPRINGER JOURNALS PREVIEW SERVICE Springer-Verlag has announced that it will offer the tables of contents and BiblioAbstracts of 30 scientific journals via e-mail before publication of the new issue. This service is accessible as of March 1, 1993. Tables of contents are free of charge and BiblioAbstracts are available for an annual token fee. The files supplied are in ASCII format, structured in accordance with accepted standards. They can be read on any computer without further processing and can easily be integrated into local data bases. For details send an e-mail message containing the word "help" to svjps@dhdspri6.bitnet or contact Springer-Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, New Technologies/Product Development, P.O. Box 10 52 80, W-6900 Heidelberg, Germany; e-mail: springer@dhdspri6.bitnet; fax: +49 6221 487 648 + Page 4 + DYNAMIC INFORMATION IS ADDED AS DOCUMENT SUPPLIER FOR FIRSTSEARCH Dynamic Information, based in Burlingame, Calif., has joined UMI Article Clearinghouse as a document supplier for users of the OCLC FirstSearch Catalog. This second FirstSearch Document Ordering supplier initially will provide access to serial articles found in the ArticleFirst database, which contains bibliographic citations from the table of contents page of more than 11,000 journals in science, technology, medicine, social science, business, the humanities, and popular culture. The document ordering option will later be expanded to include other FirstSearch databases. According to Dynamic Information, 97 percent of the titles contained in the ArticleFirst database will be available. Documents may be delivered by regular mail, overnight mail, or fax. Users can use existing deposit accounts or set up accounts for document purchases, or they can use credit cards. Prices displayed on the online order form are set by the supplier and include processing, delivery, and copyright and royalty fees. OCLC's document ordering system features a help screen to guide users. The help screen includes information about suppliers and toll-free telephone numbers to call for more information. Also, ArticleFirst displays libraries' holdings so users can check to make sure they don't purchase information already housed in their home libraries. For additional information contact Nita Dean 614-761-5002 or Daviess Menefee 614-764-4358. SPLICER FOR WINDOWS Research Information Systems introduces Splicer for Windows, the first of its products for Microsoft Windows. Splicer for Windows is a true Windows implementation of the retrieval portion of Reference Manager bibliographic management software. Splicer for Windows allows the user to access Reference Manager, search for references and "cut and paste" the reference identifiers into the text of a Windows word processing document. Splicer for Windows uses a new GUI and is compatible with any Reference Manager version 5.0 database. With the introduction of Splicer for Windows, users now have the flexibility of using a true Windows interface with their Windows word processor. For additional information contact Research Information Systems, 2355 Camino Vida Roble, Carlsbad CA 92009; 800-722-1227 or 619- 438-5526; fax: 619-438-5573. + Page 5 + NEW BOOKLET ON OPEN SYSTEMS A new booklet, "Open Systems and Your Library", provides a brief, but thorough, overview of emerging technologies and standards such as client/server architecture and the Z39.50 protocol, and illustrates how they can expand patron usage and streamline library activities. Available free from NOTIS Systems, Inc., the booklet was written by Gary Lee Phillips. To obtain a copy of the booklet, contact NOTIS, 1007 Church St., Evanston IL 60201; 708-866-0150. KNOWLEDGE INDEX MOVES TO COMPUSERVE Dialog Information Services, Inc. has announced a strategic partnership between Dialog and CompuServe, Inc. This new alliance includes a transfer of the Knowledge Index service to the CompuServe Information Service, effective April 1, 1993. CompuServe will provide customer support for Knowledge Index, while Dialog will continue to provide technical maintenance. Knowledge Index includes over 100 Dialog databases. As part of the CompuServe Information Service, Knowledge Index will continue to provide reduced price after-hours access to some of the most popular databases. In addition, existing Knowledge Index users will have access to CompuServe's more than 1,700 services. For additional information, contact Sales Dept., Dialog Information Services, Inc., 3460 Hillview, Palo Alto CA 94304; 800-334-2564 or 415-858-3785; fax: 415-858-7069; or CompuServe Information Service, Inc., 800-438-3690. LC SELECTS STAR The Library of Congress has awarded a $134,950 contract to Cuadra Associates for a new integrated library system to be used in its Congressional Research Service (CRS). The system will be based on Cuadra/STAR software a product of the company. STAR was selected for the integrated library system through a competitive procurement process in which offers were solicited from 64 vendors of library systems and software. As part of the contract, Cuadra Associates will convert 97,000 records presently in several formats. These and other records currently in manual form only will be merged to establish the basic catalog database for the CRS integrated library system. + Page 6 + CRS will use STAR in an environment consisting of multi-vendor IBM PC-AT and Compaq/386 compatible machines, all of which will be connected to a token ring network. The STAR software will run on a UNIX multiprocessor that may eventually support up to 130 simultaneous users. STAR is scheduled to be installed in early 1993. For additional information, contact Carlos A. Cuadra or Judith Wanger, Cuadra Associates, Inc., 11835 W. Olympic Blvd., Suite 855, Los Angeles CA 90064; 310-478-0066; fax: 310-477-1078. VTLS OFFERS ADA-SUPPORT WORKSTATION To help libraries comply with Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), VTLS Inc. has developed an option that gives users who are visually impaired equal access to the VTLS integrated library system. Configured with special VGA and voice synthesizer boards, the ADA-support workstation permits screen enlargement as well as voice output. The ADA-support interface works with any data communications package, but looks best when used with the VTLS Intelligent Workstation. The interface comes with a mouse which can be used to choose one of three modes of screen enlargement: full screen, in place, single line (ruler view), and single line at the bottom of the screen (dual view). Further enlargement or reduction is possible with another click of the mouse. One click of all three mouse buttons together reverses the polarity of white letters against a black background to black letters against a white background. For users who are totally blind, the interface features a voice board that has been customized to read aloud specific parts of the screen. For additional information, contact Gail Gulbenkian, 703-231- 3605. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Public-Access Computer Systems News is an electronic newsletter that is distributed on BITNET, Internet, and other computer networks. There is no subscription fee. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@UHUPVM1 (BITNET) or LISTSERV@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU (Internet) that says: SUBSCRIBE PACS-P First Name Last Name. PACS-P subscribers also receive two other electronic serials: Current Cites and The Public-Access Computer Systems Review. Public-Access Computer Systems News is Copyright (C) 1993 by the University Libraries, University of Houston. All Rights Reserved. + Page 7 + Copying is permitted for noncommercial use by academic computer centers, computer conferences, individual scholars, and libraries. Libraries are authorized to add the journal to their collection, in electronic or printed form, at no charge. This message must appear on all copied material. All commercial use requires permission. -----------------------------------------------------------------