Fisherman have one. So do travellers. Pursuers of
lost causes have one. And now, for the very first time, cataloguers have a
patron saint. It is thought she was born in what is now the Czech Republic
and that her weary soul was laid to rest in 762 A.D. She liked
architecture and was an influential member of her convent. She might have
sung madrigals but she certainly didn't dance the tango. Her name is St.
Minutia. The only image of her known to exist ishere.
Asian databases thrill Aardvark users
Aardvark curators hope that is indeed the case since
they have been scouring the internet to link Asian databases to the
Aardvark website. And what a garden of riches awaits the discerning
librarian and researcher. More than 400 Asian databases can be reached via
Aardvark and they cover all subjects imaginable. Best of all, most of them
are free. Want to link your web page to Aardvark? Get there
fromhere.
Count yourselves lucky
We can all point fingers at out governments. We can
grumble about their policies and the latest rise in income taxes. But we
don't go to prison for voicing our opinions. Which is what has happened to
10 Cuban librarians recently sentenced to a total of 196 years in prison.
Their crime? They offered uncensored reading material to the public. Throw
your support behind the Friends of Cuban Libraries who campaign on behalf
of Cuban librarians. This outrage is reported here.
The STM market is broken
That's the belief of Prof. Mark McCabe, an economist
for 7 years at the U.S. Department of Justice where he investigated the
mergers and acquisitions of publishing companies. Often at the request of
librarians who see the consolidation of the STM publishing industry as a
threat to their library budgets. In this interview, McCabe explains the
STM publishing industry and the reactions of librarians to
it. What you want to read is here.
Sex, love, marriage and other assorted
controversies
Think about anything which divides opinion - like the
war on Iraq - and you'll be thinking new Resource Center from Gale! The
Opposing Viewpoints Resource Center tackles 170 controversial social
issues in an online environment. Don't be shocked when we tell you that
abortion, animal rights, gun control, homosexuality, narcotics control and
poverty, are on the agenda. The Resource Center is designed for high
school students and undergraduates to debate the controversies we all live
with. More here.
Fab Asian pix from the British
Library
Why is it that some of the best databases and
information services about Asia originate thousands of miles away? It
can't just be that former colonial masters carried away all the best
manuscripts and paintings. A new service from the British Library, Images
Online, offers glorious digitised pictures from their collections and many
of them are from Asia. See a sample in full colour here.
Asian databases from the National
Archives
What would we do without America? Their freedom of
information act and willingness to share information with the rest of the
world, has arguably made their libraries and websites the best places in
the world for research material on Asia. Take for example the Vietnam War.
It affected the entire region yet very little data from Australia, Hong
Kong, Singapore or China, is on the web. So we must thank the National
Archives & Records Administration for its free, online databases on
the Vietnam and Korean wars. Morehere.
Skulduggery at NISO
It's just not cricket. NISO, the standards agency for
the information community, learned in April that a company linked to an
NISO Voting Member, had filed patents which fit the description of the
OpenURL standard which was released as a draft, also in April. Cats
amongst the pigeons? You bet! The story so far ishere.
Another merger of publishers upsets
librarians
American librarians are up in arms about the latest
publisher merger. BertelsmannSpringer is to be sold to investment company
Cinven and Candover who by the way, bought Kluwer Academic in January
2003. Library groups have petitioned the U.S. Justice Department to block
the purchase. You'd like to add your voice? More
details, here.
Strong
Asia content in Alexander Street Press databases
If you think that
Alexander Street Press
databases have a classy ring to them, you'd be right. The core
of the company, who were senior managers in Chadwyck-Healey's north
America operation, brought with them years of experience
conceptualising, creating and selling the unique and slightly
rarefied C-H catalogue of products. It's pretty much a case of 'if
it ain't broke, don't fix it' because the Alexander Street databases
offer masses of full text published and unpublished documents,
spectacular indexing, academic credibility and primary source
material to tickle the terminals of professors and students
everywhere. ACCESS, wanting to know more about the Alexander Street
Press 'tickle factor', recently met its President, Stephen
Rhind-Tutt, and began by asking:
Where
did the name Alexander Street come from?
When we started
the company, we decided to stay away from the dot-com-type
names that were so popular. We wanted a name that reflects our
commitment to tradition - traditional elements of publishing
and traditional librarianship. We decided on the place where
we met to found the company: our first company address, 38
Alexander
Street.
What was
the biggest hurdle in getting the company started?
The big step
was simply deciding to do it! Did the library world really
need another publishing company? But once we realized that we
could bring something entirely new to electronic publishing,
we were on our way. There were a lot of companies digitising
print and microform collections and calling them 'new'
products. The technology was at the centre. We wanted to put
librarianship back at the centre. How would people need to ask
questions of the material? How could technology play a
supporting role, allowing the content to deliver answers that
otherwise remain hidden? Once we understood that path forward,
the decision to start the company was
easy.
How long
did it take to get up and running?
Amazingly, the
company took off like a shot. We announced our first product
at ALA in Chicago in July 2000, and several librarians placed
orders on the spot. The support was phenomenal. People knew
the quality of what we'd produced in the past
[Chadwyck-Healey] and trusted us. Our mission - our story
about Semantic IndexingTM - resonated with librarians
immediately They were talking about Alexander Street Press at
collection development and special interest meetings right
there at the conference. Our company seemed to be instantly
and enthusiastically
launched.
How do
you get ideas for what to publish?
In two words:
customer collaboration. Customers provide us with ideas, and
they help us decide which ideas are worth going forward. They
help us shape products too. For example, Early Encounters in
North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment was
originally conceived as a collection about explorers and
settlers. Alice Schreyer, a librarian at the University of
Chicago, suggested that this wasn't a useful project. In her
words, "We don't need another database of dead, old, white
men." Instead, she pointed to the need for cross-cultural
materials, especially about Native Americans. Customers also
pointed out that the material we'd gathered was rich in
environmental history, geographical data, cross-cultural
information, and prints and images. We shifted emphasis and
focused on indexing the material so that it could yield new
research. We expanded the bibliography and revised the
indexing specification. Later, customers persuaded us to
redesign the product to include whole, downloadable
books.
Once
published, is a collection static? Put another way, will your
editorial staff add to collections as and when data is
discovered?
We set a target
size for each product and build as quickly as we can to
target. In the case of North American Women's Letters and
Diaries, for example, the original target was 100,000 pages.
Later we decided to increase the target to 150,000 pages.
After we reach target, we deliver the archival copy of the
database to the customer who has bought perpetual rights. For
most collections, additional information will be added to the
website over time as we identify quality content, but at a
much slower
rate.
Several
publishers have collections similar in nature to yours.
Chadwyck-Healey and Gale come to mind. In what ways would you
say yours are superior?
Our collections
are distinguished several ways. Alexander Street collections
don't contain just published material. Black Drama, for
example, has more than 400 previously unpublished plays -
works that researchers will never see anywhere else, given to
us by the playwrights themselves in most instances. Our
collections are not electronic reprints of old bibliographies
or microfilm collections. They are developed to answer a need
in a given subject area, with materials drawn from every
possible source and format - archives, private collections,
museums, book dealers, microform, print, image collections,
oral histories, rare and unpublished material, and content
licensed from literally hundreds of estates, agents, and
publishers. In some cases a collection is close to 100 percent
in
copyright.
We apply our Semantic IndexingTM
to each collection. The content is engineered to answer
questions at a wholly different level from anything before
now. For example, every letter in our collections of women's
letters and diaries is indexed to provide more than 80
different search fields. For the first time, scholars can see,
with one or two clicks in British and Irish Women's Letters
and Diaries, all letters written by single women, born in
England in the 1920s, who travelled to Japan and wrote on the
subject of religion. Researchers using American Film Scripts
Online can quickly find all scenes of violence in which
children are the victims.
Who does
all that indexing?
Semantic
IndexingTM isn't something that can be outsourced. We have a
staff of in-house indexers, hired for their indexing skills
and their subject knowledge. We train them to read every word
on every page and index up to several hundred index fields for
some products. It's important that someone knowledgeable is
doing this kind of indexing! If the letter is referring to
George and his troops marching up the river, it takes an
historian to know that it should be indexed for George
Washington and Potomac River. This is how we get the level of
detail that our customers value in the
collections.
*Stephen
Rhind-Tutt, President, Alexander Street Press
Who and
where do you consider Alexander Street's prime market to
be?
Our collections
are aimed at academic libraries. We began with a collection of
interest to the North American market, but subsequent projects
have appeal in other parts of the world. Black Drama, for
example, includes plays from 17 countries, including
Australia, Africa, Europe and South America. Our forthcoming
Oral History Index will cover English language oral histories
from around the globe. American Film Scripts Online seems to
be of interest everywhere. Asian American Drama has appeal in
the Asian world. British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries
interests people in former British colonies, and there is also
a great deal of travel writing in there that has broad
appeal.
Do you
provide MARC records? How are they structured - individual
movie scripts for example? Are MARC records as important as
they once were?
We see MARC
records as an essential tool. We want customers to find their
way into our databases and to specific content via the OPAC.
As more and more electronic resources are developed, the OPAC
will provide a 'plain vanilla' way of accessing them. The
level of MARC records varies by collection. For American Film
Scripts Online, the record will point to the script; and
similarly for Black Drama, to the play. For North American
Women's Letters and Diaries, access is to the author level,
because in a sense we've created new publications for the
women. For example, we've gathered together all the
correspondence of Gertrude Stein from many sources, so the
MARC record will be for 'the letters of Gertrude Stein' as
published by Alexander Street Press. When users click the 856
field, they will link to the stable URL in the database that
lists all of Stein's letters. And by the way, we will provide
free MARC records to our customers. This service is being put
together right now and will roll out
shortly.
Any
librarians on your staff?
Yes, of course.
Our Vice President of Production holds an MLS degree, and many
of our editors are librarians. We match editors and indexers
to the projects they're working on. The editors for the drama
and film collections have master's degrees in theatre arts,
for example. A number of librarians are experts in the
development of controlled vocabularies. Librarians sit on our
editorial boards. We visit more than 100 libraries a year. As
mentioned earlier, we regard librarians as essential partners.
Personally, I've been developing products for libraries for
more than fifteen years with companies like Gale,
SilverPlatter, and Chadwyck-Healey. Our mission statement
promises 'to bring the best of librarianship and technology'
to our
products.
Which of
your collections has a strong Asian content?
Asian American
Drama is the strongest. Oral History Index will also have a
substantive Asian and Australian component. North American
Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories is especially
attentive to the stories of Asians who have immigrated to
America. So far, the bibliography has 9,000 pages of writings
drawn from 54 works. We have an advisor to the project
dedicated to identifying Asian material. North American
Women's Letters and Diaries and British and Irish Women's
Letters and Diaries contain many travel dairies detailing
observations and experiences in
Asia.
Are you
open to publishing collections from Asia, for example,
antiquarian accounts of Asian travels and cultures by colonial
bureaucrats and intrepid explorers?
Yes! We would
love to hear from any librarians who would like to co-publish
a collection in this
area.
What
will the company be doing 3 years from now?
We will continue
to build strength in our core areas - gender, diversity, and
ethnic studies, history, literature, film, and drama - through
the large collections that launched the company. We'll
continue to offer these collections through either one-time
purchase of perpetual rights or through annual subscriptions.
We'll also be producing more products that are subscriptions
such as Oral History Index and Women and Social Movements,
which are small and affordable subscription projects. Our
great strength in academic libraries will continue, and our
databases will also be part of public school curricula. We'll
have a very strong international presence, already begun today
through the efforts of iGroup and our other distributors
around the
world.
Where
did the name Alexander Street come from?
