UMD Library Newsletter for the Department of Art + Design
January, 2006
Welcome back. I hope everyone had a relaxing Winter break.
Library Resource News
DVD and Video list
Many people have expressed an interest in getting a list of all the DVDs and Videos available in the UMD Library. We now have a page on the library website that can give you a list of DVDs and Videos, or just a list of DVDs or just videos, or let you search the DVD/Video collection itself by keyword, subject term, or title word. This is a very handy page, and it's at:
http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/coll/videodvd.htmRelated to that, I have been programming some searches of the library catalog in clickable links. I've made a couple for the Department of Art and Design, by faculty request. They are a substitute for lists I might create manually.
A list of videos and DVD's related to Art:
http://www.d.umn.edu/~rlitwin/redirect/art-videos.htmlA list of books and other materials on design, including graphic design, typography, industrial design, etc.:
http://www.d.umn.edu/~rlitwin/redirect/design-books.htmlI can make more of these pre-programmed catalog searches if it's of interest to any of you.
JSTOR Additions
Some of you may be familiar with the JSTOR database, which provides full-text of older academic journals. You may be interested in the following recent additions:
The American Art Journal (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
Release Content: Vols. 1 - 33, 1969-2002
Moving Wall: None
Publisher: Kennedy Galleries, Inc.
ISSN: 0002-7359Architectural History (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
Release Content: Vols. 1 - 44, 1958-2001
Moving Wall: 3 years
Publisher: SAHGB Publications Limited
ISSN: 0066-622xJournal of Design History (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: Vol. 1 - Vol. 12 (1988-1999)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISSN 0952-4649Marburger Jahrbuch fur Kunstwissenschaft (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: 1. Band - 28. Band (1924-2001)
Publisher: Verlag des Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der
Philipps-Universitat Marburg ISSN 0342-121xZeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
Release Content: Bde. 1 - 62, 1932-1999
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: Deutscher Kunstverlag GmbH Munchen Berlin
ISSN: 0044-2992Oxford Art Journal (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: Vol. 1 - Vol. 22 (1978-1999)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISSN: 0142-6540Studies in Art Education (Arts & Sciences IV Collection)
New Content: Vol. 1 - Vol. 41, No. 1 (1959-1999)
Publisher: National Art Education Association
ISSN: 0039-3541Woman's Art Journal (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: Vol. 1 - Vol. 22 (1980-2001/2002)
Publisher: Woman's Art, Inc.
ISSN: 0270-7993Design Issues (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: Vol. 1 - Vol. 15 (1984-1999)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: The MIT Press
ISSN: 07479360The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: Vol. 1 - Vol. 23 (1986-1998)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: Florida International University Board of Trustees on behalf of The Wolfsonian-FIU
ISSN: 08887314
NOTE: No issues were published 1999-2001.Master Drawings (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: Vols. 1 - 37 (1963-1999)
Moving Wall: 5 years
Publisher: Master Drawings Association
ISSN: 0025-5025The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (Arts & Sciences III)
New Content: Vols. 1 - 37, Special Index Issue (1905-1942); New Series:
Vol. 1 - Vol. 58 no. 2 (1942-2000)
Moving Wall: 4 years
Publisher: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISSN: 0026-1521Metropolitan Museum Studies (Arts & Sciences III Collection)
New Content: Vols. 1 - 5 (1928-1936)
Moving Wall: n/a*
Publisher: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISSN: 1556-8725
*Title ceased publication in 1936.Of the above titles, more recent issues of Oxford Art Journal, Studies in Art Education, Woman's Art Journal, and Design Issues are available via other databases to which we subscribe. You can use the E-Journal locator to get to them:
http://wg5kj6qn2f.search.serialssolutions.com/
A word about Interlibrary Loan
I want to make sure all of the faculty are aware of what you can do with our interlibrary loan (ILL) services. Our library has about a half a million books, a few thousand videos, and access to about 20,000 periodicals, which makes it a medium-sized academic library. Very often, if you are doing some research on something specific, we won't have very much immediately available on your topic. But by using any of our databases to get abstracts of journal articles, or by using WorldCat to find out about books, you can identify items to order by Interlibrary Loan. For undergraduates, our ILL department generally doesn't look outside of Minitex (a Minnesota network) to fill requests, but for faculty and grad students they will order items from just about any library in the world that is willing to lend it. That means that there is practically no limit to what you can access for your research. This includes rare books or media items of which there may be only one or two copies held in libraries anywhere.
If you would like me to come to your office to show you how to use our databases or WorldCat and place Interlibrary Loan requests, just let me know.
Instruction Sessions
I've been doing some instruction sessions for Art and Design classes, getting the students reoriented to the library and how to find what we have here. It's been going well. For the Art and Design students in particular, I think our library resources are underutilized.
I do want to make sure one thing is well-understood about our instruction sessions. If we schedule a class session in one of the library instruction labs, there is no charge to your department for it. The room is paid for by the library. This may be a change from prior practice - I don't know. But there is no charge to your department if we do an instruction session in the library.
Feel free to contact me if you feel it would be useful to devote some class time to library resources. Among the things I can cover are:
- Library Databases (journal articles, etc., focusing on databases specially selected for your class)
- Library Catalog (including Inter-Library Loan)
- Reference Collection (showing off useful reference books)
- The Stacks (showing them where to go to browse the stacks and what they can find there)
These sessions can improve your students research habits by making them realize the breadth and depth of materials out there that they can use, instead of stopping with Google. As a result, their research is better and they end up approaching their work with a better informed persepective (and they get to look at much higher-quality images). I want to encourage you to schedule some instruction sessions with me if you think it would be useful.
Acquisitions
There is another deadline coming up for ordering materials: Friday, February 10th. I will be communicating with your department's liaison to the library about the specific dollar amount that should be spent by then.
I'm getting requests from a number of faculty to be updated when materials they have ordered are available to check out or place on reserve. Creating a good system to do this is one of my top priorities. I'll give you an update through your liaison person as soon as I have something ready. In the meantime, if you have asked me to let you know when a specific item has come in, please contact me to remind me. Soon I hope to share a "recent acquisitions list" for your department.
Some of you may be interested in knowing a little bit more about the acquisitions process. When I receive requests from your department, 90% of the time I pass them along to our acquisitions staff, who place the orders with a vendor. Occasionally I withhold an order. Possible reasons for that might be that we already have it in the library (happens more often than you might think); that it hasn't been published yet (in which case I keep a record of it to order it later); to prioritize remaining funds for other items that support the curriculum more directly (when we're near the end of our fund for the fiscal year); or, on rare occasions, because the item is likely not to be used by anyone other than the requestor. In those cases, I communicate the reason to the liaison or the requestor.
The acquisitions staff work with a number of vendors who specialize in the library market. Discounts from these vendors result in per-unit prices that are usually a bit better than Amazon. We can order out-of-print books from well-established vendors with a good track-record, but the acquisitions department avoids using very small, hard to trace vendors for out-of-print books. We want to use vendors who are reliable, and, most importantly, have a good return policy. This ends up ruling out some sellers that can be found on Amazon's marketplace or via bookfinder.com. Don't let that deter you from requesting out-of-print books, but don't be surprised if our acquisitions department considers an item unavailable that you know you could buy for yourself. It can be a frustrating policy from the point of view of a faculty member, but it saves a lot of pain and frustration (and $) within the library over time.
One thing worth knowing about when you order an item is that it is possible to give a request a "rush" status, which puts it at the top of the pile. One good reason to do this would be if you want to put an item on reserve for a class that starts in a month or two, and you want to make sure it arrives in time. I have not had to ask faculty for justifications for a request for "rush" status, because it hasn't been used much, but if everyone starts giving things a RUSH status then I will have to start asking for justifications.
Items that are very unusual and require originally cataloging by our technical services department are going to take longer to find their way to the shelves. Consider giving such items a "rush" status if you are going to need to access them fairly soon.
Recap
As a reminder, here are some things I've talked about in previous newsletters, that you can feel free to contact me about:
- Linking from WebCT to Library resources
- The Library website's Research Guides for students, by broad subject area
- The library's "Course Guides" service - resource lists for specific courses
- The Ask Us! service, which students can use to get research assistance from home
- Course reserves
- Requests for your syllabi
- RefWorks - web-based citation-management software
- ArtStor
The Art Department's page for the library is at http://www.d.umn.edu/~rlitwin/art-design.html
The students' resource guide for Art+Design is at http://www.d.umn.edu/lib/ref/art/
Cheers!