December 5th, 2011
Preview by CCL-EAR Committee
World eBook Library originated in 1995 and claims to be “Where the world goes to read.” The collection currently comprises 2,100,000 books in PDF, 10,000 audiobook MP3 files, and is adding over 55,000 resources each month.
It seems as though the bulk of this enormous collection is freely available, and more readily found and read, on the Internet. World eBook Library’s MARC records does permits a library to integrate individual ebooks, or the entire World eBook Library, into its catalog.
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June 21st, 2011
Review by CCL-EAR Committee
ebrary, a product offered by ProQuest, is an aggregator of ebooks and journals. The consortium currently offers a product called Community and Career Collection.
While the collection does not include ebooks with perpetual access rights, ebrary’s subscription model allows libraries to have immediate access to a collection of over 23,000 ebooks, all with multiple access rights. The database offers users two different feature-rich reading applications that enhance the online reading experience.
ebrary’s scope, content, and currency make it a good choice for community college libraries.
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Committee’s Overall Assessment:
Committee’s Standard Evaluation Chart:
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VN:RO [1.8.8_1072]
Rating: 2.0/4 (1 vote cast)
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Tags: ebrary, ProQuest
Posted in Comprehensive Review | 1 Comment »
June 8th, 2011
Review by CCL-EAR Committee
Music Online Listening, a product offered by Alexander Street Press is an extensive collection of streaming audio covering jazz, global, contemporary, classical and American music. It is clear that this product could be of definite value in supporting all levels of music theory, performance and appreciations courses.
Reviewers conducted numerous searches across the databases and sometimes found uneven coverage. Reviewers were also frustrated by some of the search features and the load time for search terms and browse categories.
Authenticated users may listen to tracks while accessing the database or they can “borrow” any recording in the database package for 48 hours by sending a shortlink to their mobile device with a 3G connection or better.
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Committee’s Overall Assessment:
Committee’s Standard Evaluation Chart:
| Database Content | |
| Search Interface | |
| User Support Services | |
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| Accessibility/Availability of Service | |
VN:RO [1.8.8_1072]
Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast)
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Tags: Alexander Street Press
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June 8th, 2011
Review by CCL-EAR Committee
ScienceDirect Health & Life Sciences, a product offered by Elsevier is a collection of high quality, full-text peer-reviewed research journals. Community Colleges requiring in-depth coverage of science titles for transfer-level academic coursework are unlikely to find a comparable package elsewhere.
The database may not meet the needs of community college students who may be inexperienced database serchers. Several idiosyncrasies associated with the interface may frustrate even the most experienced searcher.
Download the full text of our review for more details.
Committee’s Overall Assessment:
Committee’s Standard Evaluation Chart:
| Database Content | |
| Search Interface | |
| User Support Services | |
| Cost | |
| Accessibility/Availability of Service | |
VN:RO [1.8.8_1072]
Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast)
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Tags: Elsevier
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May 13th, 2011
AccessScience, a product offered by McGraw Hill, offers articles, biographies, definitions, images and multimedia including animations and videos in the science disciplines. It also covers disciplines such as anthropology & archeology and psychiatry & psychology.
AccessScience contains 8,500+ encyclopedia and research update articles from the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Science & Technology (10th Edition) and McGraw-Hill Yearbook of Science & Technology respectively. It offers over 110,000 definitions from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific Technical Terms and over 2,000 biographies from the Hutchinson Dictionary of Scientific Biography. The biographies cover well-known scientists, Nobel Prize winners, Fields Medal winners (officially known as the International Medal for Outstanding Discoveries in Mathematics) and Franklin Institute Award winners.
If McGraw-Hill has a formal accessibility statement about its commitment to ADA compliance, the reviewers were unable to find it. On the positive side, video biographies and multimedia animations are captioned.
Download the full text of our review for more details.
Committee’s Overall Assessment:
Committee’s Standard Evaluation Chart:
| Database Content | |
| Search Interface | |
| User Support Services | |
| Cost | |
| Accessibility/Availability of Service | |
VN:RO [1.8.8_1072]
Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast)
If you have any experience with this product, please leave a comment and rate it’s appropriateness for use in a community college environment.
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March 26th, 2011
Content Comparison by CCL-EAR Committee
- The content of all three encyclopedias is solid and each would be an appropriate resource for a community college library, but each has its strengths and weaknesses.
Encyclopedia Americana consists of more than 100,000 articles covering history, science and the arts. Grolier combines the traditional Americana content with a few interesting tools and additional information resources. Unfortunately a difficult user interface makes it hard to get at the content.
Britannica Online comprises original, authored articles, links to over 500 journals and magazines from EBSCO databases, and links to eBooks that are provided through Project Gutenberg.
As a basic encyclopedia World Book Complete Suite is a good choice for college libraries serving a large population of under-prepared students. However, due to reviewer concerns about entries for Ebooks and primary sources, some libraries may wish to make World Book Student as the default home page, as this interface does not have links to the problematic features.
Committee’s Overall Assessment:
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VN:RO [1.8.8_1072]
Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast)
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Tags: Britannica, Grolier, World Book
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February 7th, 2011
Preview by CCL-EAR Committee
Reference Shelf Plus, a product offered by HW Wilson. Reference Shelf Plus (RSP) provides access to full-text articles selected for their relevance to a given topic. Modeled after the long established print series The Reference Shelf, RSP is a hot topics database that aims to provide a broad sampling of views on individual topics. While it does not have pro/con section or layout, each theme includes articles from multiple sources that theoretically represent differing viewpoints. According to the vendor, RSP currently contains more than 145 issues organized into 875 topics.
It does not appear possible to browse the collection by date and/or by issue, which diminishes its searchability. It is not clear where the images within the database originate from. If a user wanted to reproduce these images, it would be difficult for them to attribute the source.
Download the full text of our preview evaluation for more details.
VN:RO [1.8.8_1072]
Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast)
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Tags: HW Wilson
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December 20th, 2010
Preview by CCL-EAR Committee
Nursing Resource Center, a product offered by Gale, is a reference database combining content from nursing and allied health textbooks, encyclopedias, drug monographs, and multimedia, as well as citations to relevant journal articles.
NRC would be a worthwhile purchase for two-year colleges with nursing programs and particularly for beginning nusring students who require an introduction to the nursing process. But subscribers to this product will not have full text content from nursing and allied health journals unless they purchase the the Gale Nursing and Allied Health Collection or NRC along with another database collection that does provide full-text, peer-reviewed journal content.
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Tags: Gale
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December 6th, 2010
Comparison Review by the CCL-EAR Committee
Databases reviewed in this comparison were EBSCO Newspaper Source Plus, ProQuest Newsstand and NewsBank’s customized database offering.
The review team recommends either ProQuest Newsstand or Newsbank’s customized offering. We do not recommend EBSCO Newspaper Source Plus. Overall, ProQuest offers the broadest range of titles, while NewsBank has more extensive coverage of local California newspapers.
Download the full text of our comparison for more details.
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Tags: EBSCO, NewsBank, ProQuest
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December 6th, 2010
Comparison Review by CCL-EAR Committee
This was a comparison review of the ProQuest 5000, EBSCO Academic Search Premier, and Gale Academic OneFile. We looked at title lists, search results, and search interfaces. Through our analysis, we felt that the most important criteria in making our final recommendation was the number of current, full-text, peer reviewed journals.
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If you have any experience with this product, please leave a comment and rate it’s appropriateness for use in a community college environment.
Tags: EBSCO, Gale, ProQuest
Posted in Content Comparison | 2 Comments »
