Library News

May 9, 2008
FEATURED RESOURCE - Literary Criticism Online

Literature Criticism Online is designed to provide easy access for readers of all ages and skill levels. Beginning-level users may simply enter an author or title and find a wealth of content, while experienced researchers may broaden or narrow their results via cross-searches on names of critics, journal titles, topics and more.

The 7 individual Gale series that comprise Literature Criticism Online represent a range of modern and historical views on authors and their works across regions, eras and genres:

Contemporary Literary Criticism
A reference staple! Each volume profiles influential writers via excerpted passages from selected criticism. "An indispensable source for both public and academic libraries." —ARBA

Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism
This highly useful series presents substantial excerpts from the best criticism on the major literary figures and nonfiction writers of 1900 to 1999—the era most frequently studied in high schools.

Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism
Each volume presents overviews of four to eight authors of 1800 through 1899 with chronologically arranged criticism representing the entire range of response to each author.

Shakespeare Criticism
This comprehensive survey of the Bard includes general and specific critical interpretations from the 17th century to the present.

Literature Criticism 1400-1800
This authoritative resource on the greatest writers of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance and the Restoration eras fulfills a need for information on historical periods, literary trends and topics, and the achievements of noteworthy individuals.

Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism
As a convenient source of critical opinion on early literature, this series excerpts criticism on the works of philosophers, poets and playwrights, political leaders, scientists and writers from other genres.

Short Story Criticism
The most-studied short story writers of yesterday and today are profiled in volumes that deliver a historical survey of the critical response to their work.

May 9, 2008
The new JSTOR!

JSTOR has made some major changes to its searching capabilities and results list. Following is some basic information about these changes.

MyJSTOR

"MyJSTOR" is the first step in providing greater personal customization for users throughout the site. With this first release, users can:

• Manage citations over time by saving them to a MyJSTOR account, where they can be stored indefinitely. Users will need to create an account in order to save or send citations, as well as to save them to bibliographic software.
  
• Accept JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use once, rather than being prompted to respond with each article print or download

Searching JSTOR

The following enhancements have been made to JSTOR searching:

Basic Search

• Basic searches, which search the full-text of all journals, can be entered directly from the home page by authorized users.
  
• Basic searches can be limited by discipline.

Advanced Search

• Searches can be limited by selecting discipline(s) or specific journal titles, or by directly entering a specific title into the form.
  
• Proximity search is now available in the Advanced Search form, using NEAR 5, NEAR 10, NEAR 25 operators in the Boolean pull-down menus.

Basic and Advanced Searches

• Searches from an individual session are saved, and they can be rerun from a dropdown menu at the bottom of each of these search forms.
  
• Users are able to search for both the singular and plural versions of a word by adding an ampersand (&) to the end of the singular form of the word. Plurals now identify both regular (cat/cats) and irregular (knife/knives) plural forms.
  
• Users have the option to apply stemming to their search by appending the "#" character at the end of their search term, e.g., "operate#".
  
• The "Images in JSTOR" and "Images in ARTstor" tabs appear in the results from all search forms.

Search Results

• The "search within these results" feature allows users to run a new search that restricts the content being searched to the results of their most recent search.

Article Page Viewing

• Thumbnail images of articles make it easier to see articles at a glance and to select pages within articles.

Simplified Printing and Viewing of Article PDF Files

• JSTOR now offers articles in a single, improved format of PDF for printing.
  
• The PDF versions of articles provide bookmarks for easier navigation, both throughout the article as well as the entire issue.