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LIBRARY BULLETINApril 2001 Acquisition of Information Resources for the Library
In keeping with its mission, the Library’s resources continue to be focused on meeting the information demands of the staff and students of SUNY Downstate. These include clinical, research, and administrative faculty and the students of the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Health Related Professions, and the Graduate School. Since these needs and demands are constantly changing in the current environment, it has become imperative to develop a suitable model which involves not only the selection of material, but also the method of delivery of these resources. The Library constantly seeks the involvement of its users and some faculty have been pro-actively involved in recommending resources for the library in conjunction with the Collection Development Manager. The Collection Development Manager accepts these requests, which may be made online, by filling in a printed form, or contacting him at extension 7426. The requests should meet the following basic criteria: pertain to the delivery of health care or research; support curricula demands; be available in a format which would enable wide and ready availability. The acquisition of information resources goes beyond the traditional
buying of printed material. Delivery of full text resources The Library constantly looks to the usage statistics of its resources,
printed and electronic, to justify the expenditure of funds. Usage statistics
help us to determine whether the money could be better spent on other
resources which might be in higher demand. Statistics are
generated electronically as well as manually. Every year, beginning
in August, the Library evaluates its serials collections prior to renewing
titles for the next year. This provides a chance to discontinue
titles which are seldom (if ever) used and also provides a suitable
time for faculty to make recommendations for titles which we do not
own. Borrowing statistics from Inter-Library Loan also play a
part in this decision-making process. The addition or discontinuation
of programs and courses also help in deciding what resources to acquire.
User input is always needed if the collection is to be relevant and
useful to the clientele. Another Set of Library Cards Printing from Library computers. Making photocopies. Each of these processes requires a card. However, the two cards are not interchangeable. Printing from Library computers requires a blue and white debitek card. These cards are available from vending machines at the Reference desk on the first floor of the Library and in the 24-Hour Room in the LRC at a cost of $1.00 per card. Printouts cost 10 cents per page. Should anything go wrong, you can fill out an incident report (submitting the bad printouts) and receive substitute printouts. The Library does not provide refunds on debitek cards. Photocopy cards are provided by State Continental Copy Products, Ltd from the vending machine in the Photocopy Room on the first floor of the Library. Copies using the copy card are fourteen cents per page. Should anything go wrong, report the problem to the attendant in the photocopy room and, should circumstances warrant, a refund will be provided. Funds cannot be transferred between the two cards. Equipment Upgrades in the Library By David Solomonoff Recently you may have noticed that some of the library computer systems were not available, particularly on weekends. This downtime was necessary for major upgrades to our systems that will allow us to provide better services. Some of the upgrades and changes have included: Corrections to bibliographic data and subject headings in our online catalog to make library documents easier to locate. This was done with the assistance of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) who were given the entire contents of our online catalog. After making the corrections, the entire catalog was reloaded into our system. The installation of new furniture in our server room which allows us to have two to three times the number of computers in the same space with better ventilation and easier access to equipment when servicing is needed. Every server needed to be shut down, disconnected, moved, reconnected and rebooted. Upgrade of the BMEC mail server. The new server, a Sun Microsystems Ultra 30 is faster, more reliable and has more disk space than our old Sun Sparc 20. The new machine needed to be installed, configured and then all user accounts copied from the old system. While we are coming down the home stretch there is one last project that may still cause some brief disruptions. We recently completed building a new computer network for the library which involved installing new cabling and wall jacks, new data communications hardware and new cabinets in our wiring closets. Bringing this new network online will now require changing network addresses for all computers in library. Your patience is appreciated during these temporary outages.
Presentation Schedule for April 2001 How to register for Library Informatics classes: 1. Pick up a registration form at the Library’s Information Desk, M-F,
9-7, OR click on any of the classes under “Online Instruction” on the
Library’s web page and print out a form. #109 Medline Tutorials #111 Evidence Based Medicine #116 Academic Universe #118 Introduction to Full-Text Online Resources #122 Introduction to ScienceDirect #103 Word Processing I #104 Word Processing II #105 PowerPoint I #106 PowerPoint II #121 Excel NEW PRINT TITLES List Compiled by Cheryl Perkins MONOGRAPHS PERIODICALS The Electronic Full Text Version of the following titles can be accessed
from the Serials List on the Library’s web site:
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