Free e-books through Gutenberg-e!

As the World Wide Web continues to expand, there is more and more ferment in the world of scholarly publishing. A person who has been especially busy is one of the great historians of the book, Robert Darnton, who has recently become the head of the library at Harvard University. Recently, it was announced that a number of books selected by the American Historical Association are now being made available through Open Access publishing.

For more information on the history of scholarly publishing and how it is changing, see The Scholarly Publication Process from the AUR Library Information Wiki.

The official announcement is on the homepage of the American Historical Society. Many people feel that open access publishing is unsustainable, but others feel that it is the unstoppable wave of the future. The announcement makes these problems clear.

Anyway, HOW DO I FIND THESE MATERIALS?
There is a list available from the AHA, but I have discovered that they are also findable through WorldCat, by searching "gutenberg-e.org" as a keyword. Currently, there are only 52 titles, but they are on all different topics, from art to culture to radium. Click on the link that says
Web Resources: gutenberg-e.org


There will probably be easier ways to find these materials in the future. They are supposed to be included in the Humanities E-Book project (AUR has a subscription), but they don't seem to be there yet.

AUR is making its own attempts at open access publishing and we hope to make an announcement soon.

First Issue of the AUR Library Newsletter

The first issue of the AUR Library's newsletter has been issued. There is a lot of news about some of initiatives we are taking. It also points out some pages of interest in the Library Information Wiki.

Download a version at the AUR Library Newsletter homepage.

Search All Catalogs in Rome with One Search!

We have added the last of the major catalogs in Rome to our Extend Search section of the catalog: the combined catalog of the Senate Library and the Chamber of Deputies. As with all of the other Extend Search options, select the search that you want to do, enter the text (or select it when possible), click Find, and a new window will open up with the search results.
Now, by selecting the options under Roman libraries, you can search all the books in all the major libraries in Rome that are available to you.

• Don't forget to click on the name of the catalog to get more information about searching, access information, and links to the websites of the individual libraries.

To get more information on how the Extend Search option works, you can always click on the link that says "How does this work?"

New Resources from Intute

We have added a search box to search Intute, a free online service that "provides access to the very best Web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources." The database currently has over 120,000 records. To search Intute (and lots of other databases) use the Extend Search function in the catalog.