WESS Newsletter
Vol. 20, No. 2 (Spring, 1997)
Column Editor: Jennifer Vinopal
NOTE: links are those in effect at the time of publication and are not systematically updated.
While most of the Internet resources featured in past columns offer information of interest to library users as well as librarians, there are an increasing number of sites on the World Wide Web aimed at making the technical side of librarianship easier: home pages for acquisitions and cataloging.
Dr. Otto Weippert at the University of Augsburg Library has set up a series of home pages for acquisitions and collection development in connection with the Kommission für Erwerbung of the Bavarian State Libraries. The general page for the commission is at: URL: http://www.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/ke His site for general issues of acquisitions and collection development is at: URL: http://www.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/ke/erwerb.html. There is also a page for the antiquarian book trade: URL: http://www.bibliothek.uni-augsburg.de/ke/antiq.html
Sem C. Sutter (ICU) comments on the relative lack of German antiquarian catalogs in the World Wide Web and one notable exception. While the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America has a home page (URL: http://www.clark.net/pub/rmharris/booknet1.html) that links to some 200 online sale catalogs from member dealers, the Verband Deutscher Antiquare Heimseite is very undeveloped by comparison. For this reason Stephen Lehmann and I were delighted recently to find that the Berlin firm of Lassig & Jeschke, with whom we both do business, has mounted a web-page (URL: http://www.nordem. com/antiq_jl). It offers pre-publication access to several catalogs.
A German site with links to home pages of antiquarian dealers and book fairs in many countries (European and non-European) is the Bibliographisches Werkzeugkasten (Bibliographic Toolbox) maintained by Hans Dieter Hartges at the Academic Library Center of North Rhine Westphalia. URL: http://www.hbz-nrw.de/novell/etc/hartges/antiq.htm
AcqWeb, the home page for library acquisitions, has a directory of publishers’ and vendors’ e-mail addresses and links to publishers’ home pages, including many European publishers. It could be a quick first place to check, even though the listings are not broken down by country. URL: http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/law/acqs/pubr.html. On the other hand, Publishers’ Catalogs Home Page, developed by Peter Scott, is broken down by country and includes almost all the Western European countries. It also lists book fairs that have home pages. URL: http://www.lights.com/publisher/
There are a number of good WWW sites for cataloging information. One that focuses specifically on cataloging of non-English- language publications is Cataloging Foreign Language Materials. URL: http://www.vt.edu:10021/B/bertel/catalog.html A comprehensive cataloging site is the cataloging section of TPOT (Technical Processing Online Tools). URL: http://tpot.uscd.edu/Cataloging/
Charles G. Spetland (MnU) has provided information on the long-awaited arrival of LIBRIS, the union catalog of Swedish libraries. Searching this database of three million titles representing the holdings of more than 160 Swedish libraries, mainly research libraries, is now free. URL: http://www.libris.kb.se/
German-Language Web Page
A number of German-language sources that may be helpful for library users seeking information, especially students, have recently been announced on German-E: There is a large new German online dictionary, Langenscheidt’s New German College Dictionary, with 200,000 words. URL: http://www.gmsmuc.de/english
Jim E. Cole (IaAS) has relayed the address of a compilation of information about the German spelling reform and its consequences, set up by the Goethe Institute in Copenhagen. URL: http://www.goethe.de/ne/kop/reschrei.htm
Elisabeth Angele at the Goethe Institute in New York has announced its German Resources Catalogue USA/Canada, available on the World Wide Web. This directory helps answer users’ (and perhaps librarians’) questions about where to order German books, magazines, videos, CDs, greeting cards, and other items. URL: http://www.goethe.de/uk/ney/library_resources/enstart.htm
Richard Hacken (UPB) recommends a new web site devoted to Austrian history and culture, named Cultural Information System AEIOU. AEIOU is an acronym associated with Habsburg Emperor Frederick III (1415-1493) who had this allegedly mystical five letter combination put on almost all of the objects he owned in addition to a number of buildings. The present-day AEIOU is an interactive multimedia system designed to provide a wide range of information on Austrian history, art, and culture. It consists of eight “albums”: four albums dedicated to different media and four “specialized” albums focusing on specific subjects. The Österreich- Lexikon, the revised version of a multi-volume encyclopedia, is the first and “core” album of the system. Other parts are devoted to music, pictures representing Austrian culture from the Middle Ages to after World War II, a video album, and a collection views of the most beautiful places in Austria. URL: http://www.aeiou.at. In addition to the German search engines for the World Wide Web mentioned Europe in Bits & Bytes in the Fall 1996 Newsletter, two more search engines are now available: Yahoo Deutschland follows the pattern of the American version, but with terminology in German. URL: http://www.yahoo.de. Another search resource is MetaGer, which is similar to MetaCrawler in the U.S. It looks up terms in ten German search engines. URL: http://meta.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/
Resources and Indexes
James Campbell (ViU) notes a new form for a familiar resource: The Library of Congress has recently begun putting its Country Handbooks series on the World Wide Web. The titles on Western European countries are a relatively recent (1993) volume on Austria, the 1987 volume on East Germany, the 1988 volume on Finland, and an undated volume on Spain. URL: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/cshome.html
Scott Stebelman (DGW) has compiled a selective list, with hyperlinks, of libraries that have placed user aids for the Modern Language Association International Bibliography on their Web sites. The aids have been grouped by vendor (FirstSearch, SilverPlatter, and Ovid). The Web User Aids site is at: URL: http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~scottlib/useraids.htm
Fred Jenkins (ODaU) calls attention to the Duke Database of Documentary Papyri in the Perseus Project home page. The Greek papyri in the database can be browsed or searched in Greek (with proper configuration of browsers) or Latin transcription. URL: http://www.perseus. tufts.edu/Texts/papyri.html The Perseus parent site offers a large number of Greek texts, English translations, and reference works from the Perseus Project. The image database appears to be the only major component of the Perseus CD-ROM that is not being made available to a wider public. URL: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/
Jenkins has also relayed information on the much needed general index to Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Pauly-Wissowa). It is a mixed-media product consisting of two volumes and a CD-ROM and can be ordered from Metzler for DM 448 (ISBN: 3-476-01193-3).
Martha Brogan (CtY) notes that the URL to Foreign Newspaper Collection at the Center for Research Libraries has changed to: http://wwwcrl.uchicago.edu/paper/webcur2.html
Roger Greenwald of the University of Toronto has installed a new, very large collection of Scandinavian links on his home page. For the many WESS members who collect material in the field of linguistics, this note from June Pachuta Farris (ICU) may be of interest. Elsevier is providing an electronic index to the 10-volume Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. The page requires registration but is free. URL: http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/ellei
New on WESSWeb
Stephen Lehmann (PU) has added a listing of publications, talks and exhibitions based on research funded by the annual Martinus Nijhoff grant since its inception of the grant in 1986 to WESSWeb. The purpose of this web page is to document the value of the grant and to promote it to potential applicants. URL: http://www.lib.virginia.edu/wess/ Specific URL for the Nijhoff publications list: http://www.library.upenn.edu/ifba/nijbib.html