Belinda Weaver

Weaver's web

A new deal

If the ARLIN Project gets up and running, will document delivery staff be out of a job? It is a question worth asking, as the project is about students and staff in higher education dealing directly with libraries who can meet their inter-library loan needs. This type of unmediated access is something new, and the project is being funded by a grant from the Australian Research Council. The aim is to develop an academic libraries network that can simplify access to electronic resources and make document delivery faster and more efficient. Rather than send requests to their home library, staff and students will be able to use a central database to identify the holder of the material they seek and ask directly for such items to be sent to them. ARLIN seeks to develop a simultaneous searching function, which would target online catalogues, citation and full-text databases, the KINETICA database, subject gateways, and other web search engines. The project offers libraries the chance to make a seamless offering to users of all collections, including commercial full-text databases and freely-available Web resources. This approach should improve access to full-text data by increasing public awareness of the availability of certain resources and by deep-linking directly to electronic resources. The service will need to be paid for in some way; the project will look at options for that. http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/arlin.

A big job...

With new online digital collections going up on the Web all the time, it would take a very game person to try to catalogue them. ExLibris is having a go, however, and we can only be grateful. The aim is create a directory of special collections, such as digitised manuscripts, art images and texts, that are now being made available over the internet. Only freely available collections are being included in the directory. And directory it is - there is no search facility available. One can only browse through the categories that include a general section, followed by history (broken down by region, for example, Europe, or by topic, for example, science), and then by other topics such as political science, religion, music, and so on. There is also a browse collection for e-texts and online catalogues. Within each category, there is a link to each online collection, and a very brief summary of its content. Not a lot here yet, but if it grows, it will turn out to be very handy. http://www.exlib.org.

Asia currents

If you are looking for Asian journals, or for topics that would be covered by Asian academic or current affairs journals, then the Southeast Asian Serials Index (SASI) is a good place too look [http://database.anu.edu.au/asia/indo]. SASI is an index to such journals, and the interface is simple and easy to use. You can search within one particular journal, for example, The Indonesian quarterly, or search for topics more generally. Topical searches can be restricted to particular journals, if required, and other limiting fields include title, author and issue number. There are currently 122 journals indexed by SASI; there is a numbered alphabetical list. Records provide the holding institution which should be useful for document delivery, as the database does not offer full-text delivery. SASI is a co-operative project of the Library of the Asia-Pacific Cluster, the Australian National University and the Library of the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology of Leiden, The Netherlands. Journals in the database come from countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, and The Netherlands.

UK company reports

It can often be difficult to track down company annual reports, and the information generally has to be paid for when found. Connect 4 (http://www.connect4.com.au) has a good subscription service for finding both the current and past annual reports of the top 500 Australian public companies. Now the Free Pint portal [http://www.freepint.com/icc/] has set up a service for getting United Kingdom company reports. The good news here is that the basic information is free of charge, and you only need to pay for more detailed information. Searching the database, which includes statutory and financial information for more than 1.6 million British companies, is also free. Reports can be bought as one-offs; you do not need to subscribe for a set period to get information. Sample reports and prices are available at the site.

And countries too...

Free Pint also has country information on its Free Pint portal. You can start with regions or countries from there. Free Pint has already done some work for you by linking directly to the country-specific section of existing Web resources such as the CIA World Fact Book, the exceptionally good corporateinformation.com, and other statistical or economic resources. http://www.freepint.com/portal.

Fee or free

With so many journals offering a bewildering array of free trials online, it is good to find Free Medical Journals, [http://www.freemedicaljournals.com] a site that will keep on top of part of this changing landscape for you. The site maintains a list of journals that are completely free, free after a certain time has elapsed, for example, twelve months, or which are offering a free trial period. There is also a listing of publications that have ceased to be free, or whose trials have ended. You can look for publications alphabetically, or by specialty. Just click on the desired link to do directly to a journal's website. The site also offers an alerting service which will notify you when new, free medical journals go online.

On the starting blocks

Not a lot there yet apart from news, but the Indigenous Australia Internet Portal [http://www.indigenousaustralia.com.au] may be one to bookmark for the future. The site aims to develop as a one-stop shop for information on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and their diverse cultures. You can click on regions, for example, Queensland, but you will not find too much there at the moment. When fully operational, it should be a useful gateway to organisations, events and news. The site has been set up by the National Indigenous Media Association of Australia (which also has its own website at http://www.nimaa.org.au). There is also a National Indigenous Radio Service (http://www.nirs.org.au).

Live talk

Speeches are always a nightmare to find, so it is good to see a growth in archived speeches and transcripts on [http://database.library.northwestern.edu/hpol/search.asp] the web. History and Politics Out Loud is a searchable archive of audio materials considered politically significant. If you get people in who want to hear Martin Luther King say 'I have a dream' or hear Winston Churchill say he'll fight them on the beaches, then this is the site to visit. It is possible to search by person (the speaker), by date or by topic.

Reviewed material

With so much pop music out there online, it is nice to see something turning up for the classical music fans. Gramophone has released a searchable database, Gramofile, of more than a quarter of a million classical music reviews which have appeared in the magazine over time. It is possible to narrow searches down by composer, orchestra, the title of a work, solo artist, conductor or record label. It is also possible to search by a specific reviewer's name, or you can keyword search. http://www.gramophone.co.uk/reviews/default.asp.

Nerd reader?

If you thought archives of newsgroups were a nerd's paradise, think again. Bulletin boards and Web forums are also geeky hangouts, and there is now a search tool just for them. BoardReader is a search engine that targets these odd byways of cyberspace more efficiently than other tools can. One to add to your library's list of highly specific search tools. http://www.boardreader.com.

Search engine meta-site

It is often fun looking at sites that list search engines as you stumble across tools you have never heard of or could never imagine yourself needing. It's a good lesson in diversity as someone somewhere must have wanted these tools or they would not have been developed. The tools at LLEK are styled scientific search engines, but the science is fairly broad and includes social science. You can start either by region (and lots of people want region-specific tools) or by a theme such as humanities. You may have to choose a subdivision, for example, history, to see what is on offer. Journals are offered first, followed by search tools, and links to further resources. It can be hard to tell what's a link and what's not, but just use your mouse as a guide - if the arrow turns into a hand, you are hovering over a link. Within sections, go for the English tools. http://www.scientific-search-engines.com.