NEW DATABASES

Please let me know if there is something that needs to be changed (ie spelling mistakes) - not that I make mistakes :)

I feel that I need to apologize for my long absence from this site. Taking over Leanne’s position as the Manager of Information Technologies has given me a new appreciation for Leanne as well as a better understanding of my own obvious inferiority. This being said, I plan to do my very best.

I regret to announce that we have cancelled our subscription to the Proquest database Electric Library. The usage stats simply did not justify the cost. 

However, I am happy to announce that we will soon have access to the following databases in place of the Electric Library service:

• Ebsco’s Home Improvement Reference Centre
• Ebsco’s Small Engine Repair Reference Centre
• Proquest’s Heritage Quest
• Proquest’s Ancestry Library

If any library managers are interested in viewing the trial version of these products feel free to give me a call.

The Small Engine repair and Home Improvement databases should be available on December 1st. Heritage Quest and Ancestry Library should begin in January. APLEN has kindly subsidized Heritage Quest this year. Heritage Quest is a genealogy database available to patrons at your library or from home using their library card and pin number like all of our other databases. I was a little disappointed in the lack of Canadian content in Heritage Quest; as a result, we’ve made the decision to purchase a one year subscription to Ancestry Library. Unfortunately, patrons will have to come into the library to use this valuable resource. Ancestry Library has a plethora of Canadian content in comparison to Heritage Quest.

I strongly encourage everyone to become as familiar with these two products as possible. I believe they will be in high demand at our libraries.

Finally, I just want to point out changes to The Alberta Library Core this year. They have included several new products:

New Ebsco Databases:

• Computers & Applid Sciences Complete
• Educational Research Complete
• Environment Complete
• Film & Television Literature Index with Full Text
• International Bibliography of Theater & Dance with Full Text

From Gale Cengage (Formerly Thompson Gale)

• Contemporary Authors
• Expanded Academic ASAP

And Finally World Book

• World Book Online
• World Book Kids

The Alberta Public Libraries Electronic Network (APLEN), has made it possible for us to have access to all of these databases through subsidies, contract negotiation, and technical helps like the EZproxy server. While the government has not raised levies since the early 1990s we should remember their support of libraries through exceptional programs such as TAL and APLEN.

Thank you APLEN and TAL staff for all of your hard work. I’m sure they would love to hear our success stories in regards to the databases as well as Supernet. Feel free to send me those stories here at NLLS and I’ll forward them to the appropriate people. :)