Volume 10, Number 1 Fall 2000 NEWS from FONDREN A Library Newsletter to the Rice University Community IS IT EBOOKS? OR E-BOOKS? OR EBOOKS? However you want to spell them, tronic book titles for purchase netLibrary offers a level of Fondren Library has begun adding during summer 2000. Our per- intellectual access to books not online electronic books to the col- sonalized collection emphasizes previously available. The books lection. The library has chosen to computing “how to” manuals, contained in netLibrary may be begin with titles purchased from employment resources, and gen- searched across their full-text con- netLibrary. eral reference titles. tent; see the library’s Web page Founded in 1998, netLibrary is widely regarded as a leader in elec- tronic distribution of full-text elec- tronic books to libraries. netLibrary provides a wide range of scholarly, reference, and profes- SvprVvr vGvi h r7x8yyrpv Ppir ! sional titles from many of the Trh pus r7x) world’s leading commercial pub- lishers and university presses, as well as a public collection (i.e., ! ! " items not covered by copyright) of # $ % over four thousand classic works of fiction, speeches, government re- XryprrGvi h $ Uuvpyyrpvsr7x uhirrrpvhyyp rhrq ports, and other electronic texts. s h suvyvi h Fondren Library selected sev- Grh H r6i rGvi h & " eral hundred copyrighted elec- '!% & Srhqvtr7xyvr ( ) * 9yhqvtr7x r7x8yyrpv " + , Ayyrrh puvt INSIDE ISSUE netLibrary Home Page this Fondren Library Project ......... pg. 2 under “Electronic Texts” for links Did You Know? .................... pg. 3 FINDING INFORMATION that search only those books which Chinese Romanization ........... pg. 4 you may access full-text or the en- Library Goes Wireless ............. pg. 8 We are cataloging our electronic tire netLibrary collection. Using New Development Director ...... pg. 9 book purchases in the same way we the netLibrary full-text searching, Experimenting with Metadata. pg. 10 catalog our traditional books. you may be able to identify finer Collection Management ......... pg. 10 However, when using Webcat, you concepts and relationships within New Tenants ........................ pg. 11 will be able to click on the Web works than previously possible Behind the Scenes .................. pg. 12 address in the catalog record and through online databases (includ- Library Liaisons ................... pg. 13 connect directly to the work. (Do a ing the library catalog). Collection Development .......... pg. 14 keyword search on “netlibrary” to Electronic Document Delivery .. pg. 15 find a sample electronic book.) CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 FALL 2000 1 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1 FONDREN LIBRARY PROJECT UPDATE USING ELECTRONIC BOOKS Use of the library electronic book During the past six months library working groups and project differs somewhat from use of the personal electronic book, just as architects have continued to address planning and design issues use of traditional printed library books differs from use of printed of the interior spaces of the proposed expansion and renovation personal books. Some of the fea- of Fondren Library. At the same time, options for the exterior tures of this specific collection of electronic books may seem restric- design of the new library building received consideration by the tive or odd. netLibrary attributes Rice University Board of Trustees. several design decisions to con- cerns from the publishers about revenues and retention of the in- tellectual property in these works. While working with the project design architect, Robert Venturi, The electronic books pur- it became increasingly apparent to the Buildings and Grounds chased from netLibrary will be available to you from any location, Committee of the Rice University Board of Trustees that the ex- twenty-four hours per day, seven pansive scale of the new addition was far greater than originally days per week—with restrictions. Readers of electronic books may imagined. It was also felt that the traditional guidelines and ex- preview the title (multiple readers pectations for Rice architecture might not be compatible with may preview at the same time) or “check it out” (access to the book the Venturi proposal. “The last several months have been a time is restricted to one reader). The online checkout period is two of education for us,” said Kent Anderson, chairman of the com- hours. If you are informed that a mittee. “The library is, by far, the largest building on campus book is checked out by another reader, the notice should also indi- and is in a central location. Those two facts present challenges cate when the book will be avail- not present in any other project.” able once more. (The system will automatically “check in” the elec- tronic book—no overdues in the online world!) After much consideration, the Buildings and Grounds Commit- In order to check out an elec- tee concluded that alternative approaches to the design of the li- tronic book from netLibrary, you will be asked to complete a per- brary needed to be considered. Acknowledging the leadership of sonal registration process. As part Robert Venturi in this planning process, the trustees plan to ex- of this process, you may ask the sys- tem to notify you by e-mail about plore alternatives with other prominent architects. Although the new books on subjects of interest. project time line could be affected somewhat, the library project netLibrary has developed mechanisms for limiting the copy- continues to move forward as extensive planning continues. ing and printing of electronic books. Readers can copy or print Sally Reynolds single pages, just as people can [email protected] photocopy single pages of a printed book. If a user is rapidly viewing multiple pages of an elec- NEWS from FONDREN 2 tronic book—a pattern that indi- cates the possibility of page-by- DID you KNOW? page printing—netLibrary will dis- play a copyright notice and Per the most recently published federal survey*: instruct the user to discontinue his or her actions. If the pattern con- • Academic libraries reported a gate count of about 16.5 million visitors tinues, netLibrary will disable the per week (about 1.6 visits per total FTE enrollment). By comparison, account for a period of time. Fondren Library’s gate count equates to 3 visits per FTE enrollment. See http://www.netlibrary.com /overview.asp or contact Fondren • The median number of volumes held per FTE student by academic li- Library for more information braries was 58.2. The median ranged from 19 volumes per FTE in in- about netLibrary’s features. stitutions offering less than four years of study to 111.2 in doctorate- granting institutions. By comparison, Fondren Library has 492 THE FUTURE IS ... ? volumes per FTE. • The three largest expenditure items for all academic libraries were Fondren Library will be track- salaries/wages (50 percent), current serial subscriptions (18 percent), ing the use and benefits/chal- and books (11 percent). By comparison, Fondren Library spent 34.8 lenges of providing electronic percent on salaries/wages, 27.9 percent on current serial subscrip- books. We speculate that this me- tions, and 19.6 percent on books for the collection. dium will help address specific * Source of comparison data: National Center for Education Statistics, Library needs for the Rice community, Statistics Program. such as reducing frustration about accessing certain popular materi- als. The library cannot, for ex- It is possible to link from some of the library’s journal indexes to the full ample, seem to buy a large enough text of the journal online. Examples include linking from the FirstSearch quantity of O’Reilly and Associ- indexes to a variety of humanities and social science journals and linking ates’ books. Perhaps online access, from Current Contents to many science and engineering journals. combined with a two-hour maxi- Some of these links are easy to achieve, as when the index and mum “check out,” will improve online journal are available from the same source (e.g., FirstSearch), but the odds of a would-be Java or others require Fondren Library to work through the technical and mar- Perl student getting programming ket barriers of linking multiple information vendors (e.g., OVID and questions answered. Academic Press). We continue to strive, however, to make your informa- We also hope for increased in- tion gathering more straightforward. tellectual access to scholarly and professional books through the full-text indexing offered by this A variety of new literature databases is available, including Contemporary medium. The potential impact on Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Dictionary of Literary Biography, the character of scholarly inquiry and What Do I Read Next? The state of Texas’s Texshare system has made could transform the electronic these databases—as well as Biography & Genealogy Master Index, Discovering book collection from a mere con- Science, Texas Almanac, InfoTrac News, and a new interface to Books In Print venience to a serious research tool. (which often includes book reviews)—available to all Texas libraries. We look to Rice faculty and stu- dents to help quantify the utility and nature of electronic books and Fondren Library is now benefiting from several new endowments. They to guide development of this latest include: library collection. • Adele Cambielh and Charles Arthur Gehret Kerry Keck Assistant University Librarian, • Lackner Endowment for Special Collections Collections • Francis Loewenheim Endowment [email protected] • Schiffick Endowment for Scholarly Materials FALL 2000 3 CHINESE ROMANIZATION SYSTEM CHANGES Fondren Library gogical tool to teach and other American students to read Chi- libraries, in coop- nese script. Books, eration with the dictionaries, maps, Library of Congress etc., coming out of (LC), are currently China use the Pinyin in the process of system for roman- converting Chinese ization of Chinese names and Chinese- characters. Pinyin is language catalog what Western tourists records from the see written on street existing Wade-Giles signs below the Chi- spelling to the spell- nese script street ing used in the names.