Mary Whiting, Cataloging
Although the Libraries' home page has been available for nearly one year, it has evolved in substance and design. The "new" home page released this fall continues the collaboration with Computing & Communications, and strengthens the Libraries' commitment to celebrate its collections.
The Welcome and Introduction section of the home page features a "What's New" category telling you what has been recently added to the page. You will also find information about the Libraries, its branches and divisions, along with the Guide to the University of Washington Libraries and the publication you are reading now, Library Directions.
You can search the UW Libraries Catalog, the UW Law Library Catalog and view a clickable map of all libraries complete with information about hours. UW Libraries databases are also accessible, including Business Index, MLA Bibliography, National Newspaper Index, Nursing & Allied Health, MEDLINE, and OCLC Worldcat to name a few. Selected online journals are also available.
Libraries on the Internet includes the Library of Congress, Center for Research Libraries, University of California catalog, Public CARL (Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries) databases, as well as Seattle Public Library and King County Library system.
Under Resources by Subject you will find links to local and remote Web sites selected by UW Libraries subject specialists. Some links connect to electronic texts while others provide information on printed sources. Currently available are links for Business, Canadian Studies, Current Index to Statistics, Curriculum and Children's Literature, Health Sciences (HealthLinks), Law, Music, Near East Studies, and Slavic and East European resources.
For an example of how far-reaching a subject page can be, browse through the Music Library Reference Desk - Internet Resources page created at the Music Library. Music librarian John Gibbs has assembled sources that run the gamut from hiphop to opera. The opera page links to information about opera houses and companies. You can also connect to an Opera Schedule Server to find out what operas are playing in cities such as New York, Vienna and Budapest. Jazz buffs can connect to the jazz and blues page to hear sounds by Miles Davis and others, or to look at the Ray Avery jazz photography collection for a picture of Miles when he played that famous trumpet with the Lighthouse All-Stars at Hermosa Beach and Laguna Beach in the 1950s.
The Resources page contains, among other databases, the EIS (Environmental Impact Statements) Database and the Microform Sets Database indexing over 100 sets held by the Microforms and Newspapers Collection. For selected subject search tools developed and maintained at different sites around the Web, connect to the Virtual Library at CERN (European Laboratory for Particle Physics), Lycos at Carnegie Mellon, Yahoo, or the UW's own MetaCrawler.
The home page also allows certain tasks to be completed online; it is now possible to do business with the libraries by clicking the Requests button. You can activate forms to renew a book, request a purchase, or obtain materials through the Interlibrary Borrowing Service.
Finally, the home page has an Instruction section where you can find out about classes on how to search from home or office, or how to do Nexis/Lexis searching. The Internet Series provides eleven guides for users of the Internet including ftp, gopher/archie/veronica, telnet and the World Wide Web. The Patent and Trademark Research guide helps you conduct research at the Engineering Library.
This article has given an overview, and it is only an inkling of what is available. Connect to http://www.lib.washington.edu and explore for yourself. The Libraries home page is linked to the University of Washington home page to complement your travels.