The AU Libraries would like to extend congratulations to all of our senior student workers. You have been a tremendous asset to the success of both libraries and to the AU campus as a whole. We thank you for your continued commitment and enthusiasm to making Herrick and Scholes welcoming and wonderful environments for both our staff and patrons. We appreciate you, we will miss you, and we wish you the very best in the future!
As a small token of appreciation, Herrick has created a book display to honor our senior student workers and their service to the library. Each book and DVD has been chosen by the seniors themselves. The display is set along the wall to the Computer Lab on the main floor of Herrick. We encourage you to check it out!

Recently I attended a library orientation session where i overheard someone talking about their strong preference for books over e-books.  When the instructor noted that most of the libraries resources are online now, he sighed.  He clearly wished that he could access to more books in paper. One of our student workers shares that love of the physical book.

I imagine the person I overheard wouldn’t enjoy reading all of a book online.  He might be a little glum, like this student worker staring at the screen like she wished she were doing something else.

Like that student and like many of us, the experience of a book is a unique pleasure.  Touching the book, holding it, smelling it and, of course, reading it are all part of the pleasure.  It has many benefits. You can take it anywhere, read without a power source, you never have to wait for it to boot up, you can get right back to the page you left off at by just leaving it open, you can leaf through the pages to spot that section you liked and you know was on the lower right page — somewhere. My basement has shelves and shelves of favorite books that I go back to savor again and again. So I’m not anti-book, but why are we focusing on expanding the electronic resources?
COST
I have to admit — I’m an administrator, so I think about cost.  A recent example of a decision we made was to add a new collection of electronic books.  The collection costs about $3,000 per year.  It has 125,000 book titles in it. So access to each of those books, for every Alfred University student, faculty member or staff member, costs about 2.5 cents a year. We bought it knowing that 75,000 titles overlapped with other collections we already owned.  So why did we buy it? Because we’re still getting 50,000 unique titles at a cost of about 6 cents a year. To put that in perspective, if we used that $3,000 and bought books in paper, assuming that the average cost of each book and its book processing at about $50, we could buy just 60 books, instead of getting access to 50,000.
ACCESSIBILITY
The physical library is open quite a bit, 108 hours a week during the semester and library users can come in and browse to their hearts content.  But the electronic resources are available all the time, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.  If you want to work at 3 in the morning, or work from off campus, or are part of the downstate programs you will only be able to access our online resources. And most, thought not all, of the libraries’ online collections are available to multiple users, so that you don’t have to wait until someone returns the book you want. Here’s another of our student workers enjoying her access to electronic materials.

CONDITION
Books that patrons like will get used, and begin to wear out.  They can get dropped in the bathtub, or a mud puddle, they can get sticky pages from people eating and reading at the same time, they can drop pages out, and sometimes patrons tear them out.  Each new person who looks at an e-book gets the same fresh copy, and the pages of an online file can’t be torn, written on, or pulled out, although you can set up a person account and mark your own personal copy of the online book.
FEATURES
While you can’t browse an e-book in the same way you browse a paper book, you can search for specific words which you can’t do with a book. OK, you can do that with a book, it just takes forever. No, I’m not forgetting about indexes in paper books, but virtually all indexes are selective, and some of them are pretty quirky. Many of the databases provide citation tools that let you build your bibliography in a specific style sheet as you find each resource for your project.  You can e-mail links of books to other members of a study or class group for the project you’re working on.  Another one of our student workers is frustrated with looking through a pile of books, when he wishes he could search online.

Books will never entirely be replaced by online resources and we continue to have extensive collections of paper books. However, in the interest of providing the best service and most extensive collections possible to Alfred University both on campus and at branch locations, our online collections make sense for us.  We do continue to buy paper books, but online has become our major focus, for so many reasons.  So enjoy both at Herrick Library!

Please share your thoughts about this topic with Steve Crandall, fcrandall@alfred.edu, I’d love to hear from you!

With all the votes in we have come down to the final two databases

JSTOR  &  Academic Search Complete

While we here at the libraries are tempted to say that these two databases are equals, awesome in their own right, and Goliaths of the search. Only one can hold the title of #1
Let’s take one last look at our competitors

JSTOR

Name: “The Non Profit”
Publishers: 900+
Disciplines Covered: 500+
Full Text Journals: 2,000+
Primary Resources: 2 Million+
Coach: Ithaca
Claim to Fame: “We Collaborate with the academic community”

Academic Search Complete

Name: “Coverage”
Temporal Coverage: 1887-Present
Indexed Journal Titles: 13,780
Full Text Journals: 9,000
Full Text Peer-Reviewed Journals: 7,850
Coach: EBSCOhost
Claim to Fame: “The world’s most comprehensive, scholarly full-text database for multidisciplinary research”
[polldaddy poll=8811706]

There is no other way to put it, YOU (whoever you are) have spoken!
Here are the winners of the first round…
Science Direct (by 7 votes)
JSTOR (by 11 votes)
Scopus (by 6 votes)
Academic Search Complete (by 10 votes)

Now for round 2!

Cast your votes and cast them soon because ONLY TWO can compete for the title of…. well…. I guess,

THE MOST DEMOCRATICALLY VOTED BEST DATABASE AT ALFRED UNIVERSITY

(that’s some serious schools spirit with the purple, even if it’s not grammatically correct)
 
Before you vote make sure to take a look at what these databases have to offer.
(seriously though we’ve got google analytics on this thing and I can tell)



 
 
OK, it’s voting time!
[polldaddy poll=8783604]
[polldaddy poll=8783609]
 

The Final Four are set and so is our bracket. These eight, elite databases, are about to battle it out for #1
Let’s see the matchups!

       VS          
 
Overview:
This matchup was completely unexpected! With LexisNexis unexpectedly taking the eighth seed, they look to be a underrated opponent.
Heard around the water cooler:
“I was shocked, I mean, an eight seed? What were they thinking?! If anything I’d have to give em at least a five seed. ” – Anonymous AU Librarian
“I just started laughing. I mean ya, LexisNexis is a great database, but have you seen its interface? No competition bro.” – Scholes student worker
See their stats —> Click on their Logos above to check them out  —-> VOTE
[polldaddy poll=8769280]
 
 
 
    VS   
Overview:
Talk about DRAMA! We’ve got two MAJOR fan favorites here. While both cover completely different areas, this should be a close matchup.
Heard around the water cooler:
“Man… (shakes head) how do I choose? Why would they put these two in the same bracket? I’m going to need another cup of coffee ” – Engineering/History double major 
“This AGAIN just verifies that the selection committee pulled an all nighter before choosing matchups….. seriously though ” – Herrick student worker
See their stats —> Click on their Logos above to check them out  —-> VOTE
[polldaddy poll=8769299]
 
 
 
    VS   
Overview:
Read all about it! Newspaper Source Plus vs Scopus! Again another hard matchup, but an interesting one since Scopus is the new database in town.
Heard around the water cooler:
“Not only would I bet the game, I say Scopus takes it all. I mean who reads newspapers? Plus, h-index is the new black.” – Overheard in Macmahon
“Just because I’m an Engineer doesn’t mean I HAVE to vote Scopus, does it? I mean NSP’s got my hometown newspaper, and I’m from ALBUQUERQUE.” – Scholes Librarian
See their stats —> Click on their Logos above to check them out  —-> VOTE
[polldaddy poll=8769315]
 
 
 
     VS    
Overview:
The two heavyweights battle it out here in a matchup that could have possibly been for the championship, a lot to look forward to here.
Heard around the water cooler:
“Great! Two of my favorite databases against each other in the first round!? Think I’ll just flip a coin.” – Herrick student worker
“Wait what? That’s legit.” – AU Liberal Arts & Science Faculty Member
See their stats —> Click on their Logos above to check them out  —-> VOTE
[polldaddy poll=8769325]

Here at Scholes March Madness is in full swing so in the spirit brackets we’ve decided to provide our own bracket of sorts. We’ll break down the numbers and analyze the data over the course of March Madness, each week matching up a couple of our databases in a resource showdown. Stay tuned for the matchups!!!!
Official NCLA (National Collegiate Library Association) Sanctioned MADNESS

Let’s introduce the teams and provide some stats….

Name: “The Freshman” –SCOPUS
Temporal Coverage: 1995-Present
Journal Titles: 21,000
Publishers: 5,000
Books: 70,000
Conference Papers: 6.5 Million
Patents: 24 Million
Coach: Elsevier
Claim to Fame: “The largest abstract and citation database of peer reviewed literature: scientific journals, books and conference proceedings”

Name: “Quarter” –ScienceDirect
Temporal Coverage: 1823-Present
Journal Titles: 2,500
Articles: 13,000
Full Text: Yes
Books: 26,000
Coach: Elsevier
Claim to Fame: “Home to almost one-quarter of the world’s peer reviewed full text scientific, technical and medical content”

Name: “Coverage” –Academic Search Complete
Temporal Coverage: 1887-Present
Indexed Journal Titles: 13,780
Full Text Journals: 9,000
Full Text Peer-Reviewed Journals: 7,850
Coach: EBSCOhost
Claim to Fame: “The world’s most comprehensive, scholarly full-text database for multidisciplinary research”

Name: “Compendex” –Engineering Village
Temporal Coverage: 1884-Present
Engineering Disciplines: 190
Publishers: 1,998
Journals: 3,800+
Trade Magazines: 117
Conference Proceedings: 80,000+
Databases Include: Compendex, NTIS, Chimica, GeoRef (12 in all)
Coach: Elsevier
Claim to Fame: “Engineering Village is the definitive “go to” resource for engineering information for academia”

Name: “The Non Profit” –JSTOR
Publishers: 900+
Disciplines Covered: 500+
Full Text Journals: 2,000+
Primary Resources: 2 Million+
Coach: Ithaca
Claim to Fame: “We Collaborate with the academic community”

Name: “Jr” –LexisNexis Academic
Temporal Coverage: 1790-Present
Newspapers: 3,000+
Magazines: 2,000+
Full Text Sources: 15,000+
Legal Research Coverage: Federal & State
Coach: LexisNexis
Claim to Fame: “Powerful, easy, vetted”

Name: “Newsboy” –Newspaper Source Plus
Full Text News Articles: 58 Million+
Newspaper Coverage: 1,200+
Media Coverage: TV & Radio broadcast transcripts
Coach: EBSCOhost
Claim to Fame: “Today’s news today”

Name: “The Quest” –ProQuest Central
Subject Areas: 160+
Full text Dissertations: 50,000+
Market Reports: 43 Industries
Coach: ProQuest
Claim to Fame: “The Ultimate cross-disciplinary research tool”