Scheduled computer outage on July 30

UCS has posted a notice that the main computer room will undergo an electrical infrastructure upgrade this Sunday, July 30, from 12:00 a.m. until 6:00 a.m. This upgrade requires a complete power outage; all computing resources in the computer room will be shutdown during this time. Internet connectivity, e-mail, all Ball State websites, and the IBM mainframe will be unavailable during this outage.

Several online services will not be available at the University Libraries during this time. These include CardCat, ILLiad, and other web-based services. The University Libraries will have someone available to troubleshoot any problems if the system does not resume as scheduled on Sunday morning.

RSS feeds and other offerings from Project Muse

From a database's recent news release:

Project MUSE is very pleased to announce the implementation of RSS feeds for all journals in MUSE. The RSS feed is an alert tool that provides users with instant notification about news, updates and additions to titles within the MUSE collection. The RSS feeds complement our e-mail journal alert service. Both offer students, librarians, researchers and faculty valuable tools for staying current with information about their favorite titles from the over 300 journals in the MUSE collection. The new RSS feed for Latest Issues enables users to easily survey the contents of the four most recent issues of a journal by linking to the corresponding Tables of Contents. MUSE subscribers have direct access to the full text articles from the RSS feeds. Information about subscribing to the feeds is found at the Project MUSE RSS Syndication page (http://feeds.muse.jhu.edu). Please visit this page often, as additional feeds will be added soon.

Journal titles available in the Project Muse database of interest to journalism and communication faculty may include:

• Advertising and Society Review
• Discourse
• Harvard International Journal of Press/politics
• Human Rights Quarterly
• Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies
• Journal of Democracy
• Journal of Scholarly Publishing
• Rhetoric and Public Affairs
• World Politics
  

A complete list of titles available in this database can be found at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/.

To find out more about subscribing to RSS feeds, please see the previous blog post about using RSS feeds. Other databases offer RSS alert services, including Communication and Mass Media Complete as well as other databases provided by EBSCO.

If you need help using databases or subscribing to RSS feeds, please let Stacy know!

Interlibrary loan: An easy way to get more resources from your library

On the About Us webpage on the University Libraries website, you will read:

Our collections consist of 1.5 million print volumes, over 2,900 periodical subscriptions, over 1 million microforms, nearly 98,000 government documents, and over 120,000 maps.

Despite all the books, journals, microforms, documents, maps and other materials available at the University Libraries, you may still find times when you need to interlibrary loan resources from other libraries.

Interlibrary loan at the University Libraries allows Ball State users to request materials from other libraries across the world. The University Libraries will process your requests and make the materials easily available, usually at no cost to you. By using resources like WorldCat and other databases, you can identify other books and materials that may help you in your research. By using interlibrary loan, you will find a nearly limitless supply of library resources made available to you by the University Libraries.

The University Libraries recently re-launched their electronic request system for interlibrary loan, called ILLiad. This system allows you to easily request books, articles, and other materials from other libraries using your own computer. You can access ILLiad and read more about interlibrary loan at http://www.bsu.edu/library/collections/ill/.

What titles will you request?

[Categories: News, Resources, Tell Students]

Government may add restrictions to FOIA

According to a July 5, 2006, article in USA Today:

The federal government will pay a Texas law school $1 million to do research aimed at rolling back the amount of sensitive data available to the press and public through freedom-of-information requests. (R. Willing, “Tax dollars to fund study on restricting public data,” available at www.usatoday.com.)

Depending on the results of the research, requesters may find less information available to them through the use of the Freedom of Information Act.

Making the connection with books

Help support the common reader discussions at Ball State University by volunteering to serve as a study group leader. This year's selected title, First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung, provides for many opportunities to discuss the social and political aspects of warfare, among other topics.

According to Melinda Messineo, assistant professor, 30 faculty and staff volunteers are still needed to lead discussions on the afternoon of August 20, 2006. You can contact her for more information.

Scheduled maintenance for features in CSA databases

From a Cambridge Scientific Abstracts (CSA) alert:

As a result of CSA's product expansion, CSA will be performing scheduled server maintenance on Saturday, July 15, 2006. The Administrative Tools module, Saved Searches, Search Alerts, and Journal Issue Alerts may be unavailable from approximately 8 a.m. EST to 8 p.m. EST.

This maintenance will provide CSA with the appropriate infrastructure to continue servicing your needs now and in the future. We do not anticipate this scheduled maintenance to affect your access to searching on the CSA Illumina platform.

Please email support@csa.com if you have any questions.

CSA databases include ERIC, PAIS, Sociological Abstracts, and others. Please, plan around this scheduled maintenance. Thank you!

The history of FOIA

George Washington University's National Security Archives revisited the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in an article available at http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/NSAEBB NSAEBB194/index.htm (Blanton, 4 July 2006). The article included a look at the political culture surrounding President Johnson's signing of the FOIA over forty years ago.

The FOIA provided journalists and others with a process by which they could request access to previously guarded government information. For more information about the act, see the U. S. Department of Justice's FOIA website at http://www.usdoj.gov/04foia/.