ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries J u n e 1 9 9 7 / 423 In tern et Re v ie w s S a ra A m a to , e d ito r Christian Science M o n i t o r . A ccess: h t t p : / / w w w .csmonitor.com. The Christian Science Mon itor’s Web site is equal in quality to the n ew spaper. Renowned for frank, direct reporting, th e n e w s p a p e r covers national and interna­ tional news from its ow n 13 news b u re a u s th ro u g h o u t the United States and other countries. The site offers the entire daily p ap er free and without registration. Narrow columns, large type, small color graphics, and clean, easy-to-read pages have earned it a num ­ ber of prestigious Web awards. The Web Moni­ tor does offer som e features that the print can­ not, such as the columns Cybercoverage, Links Library, and Email Forum (notes from foreign correspondents). By far the m ost im portant added feature is a searchable archive o f full- text articles. Unfortunately, there is no m en­ tion of how far back the archive runs. There are three different searching tools to assist us­ ers: a d ictio n ary (su b je c t term s), “R elated Words” (thesaurus), and a “Fuzzy Match” en ­ gine that forgives spelling or transliteration er­ rors. Articles are archived in full with headline, byline, date, section, page, and text. Search terms are displayed in bold in the text of the retrieved articles. Although graphics are ex­ cluded, their captions remain. Because the Web lends itself well to text archives, new spapers have b een quick to d e­ velop sites that include searchable archives. Three papers with archives at their sites include the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post. The Boston Globe (http: / / www .boston.com /globe/glohom e.htm ) main­ tains an archive of the past 15 years of staff- written stories. Searching is free but fees are levied for retrieved text. The content of the site includes the present and preceding day’s news. There is no indication of how much of the daily is posted on the site. T h e Los A n g eles Tim es ( h t t p : / / w w w . latimes.com) hom epage also offers searchable archives (back to 1990); however, registration is necessary. Searching the archives and brow s­ ing the citation list are free, but displaying, print­ ing, or dow nloading the text results in a charge. The “Help with Archives” file states that the archives in­ clude “all news, feature and wire stories, editorials and le tte r s p u b lis h e d in th e Home Edition of the new s­ p ap er.” T h e W ash in g to n Post ( h t t p : / / w w w . w a s h i n g tonpost.com ) site offers the c o m p le te e d itio n free o f charge. Only a small amount o f material is not online. The archives are free o f charge an d p ro v id e th e full text, headline, byline, and citations to articles (in­ cluding new s wires) from the past 14 days. Archives back to 1986 are “coming soon.” Two notable new spapers w ithout archives at their Web site are the New York Times and USA Today. The New York Times (http://w w w .nytim es. com) loads most of the national edition and is available “free for a limited tim e” to registered users. The site offers a num ber of navigational aids. Those w ho are familiar with the print edi­ tion will find the list of corresponding sections most helpful. USA Today (h ttp ://w w w w .u sa to d ay.com ) loads top headlines b ut it is unclear from the site how m uch of the p ap er is available on the Web. It is probable that m any other new spapers have archives accessible through their Web sites. W eb catalogs such as Y ahoo ( h ttp :// w w w .yahoo.com ) list papers by place an d /o r subject for those needing papers with local or statewide coverage.— Kristina Anderson, Uni­ versity o f Alabama, kanderso@gorgas.lib.ua.edu L ite ra tu re O n lin e (Lion). Access: h ttp :// lion.chadwyck.com. This subscription site for English and Ameri­ can literature on the Web combines fully search­ able texts with reference works, bibliographies, and catalogs on a single site, and provides hy­ pertext links to relevant resources on other Web sites. The site is authored and edited by a team in the Chadwyck-Healey office in Cambridge, England. It was launched in Decem ber 1996 Sara Amato is automated systems librarian at Central Washington University; samato@tahoma.cwu.edu http://www.boston.com/globe/glohome.htm http://www http://www.washing http://www.nytimes http://wwww.usatoclay.com http://www.yahoo.com mailto:kanderso@gorgas.lib.ua.edu mailto:satnato@tahoma.cwu.edu 4 2 4 / C&RL News and includes nine full-text databases. Five are currently active, and the rem aining three will becom e active later within a few months. Cur­ rently available full-text databases are: English Poetry, English Drama, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, American Poetry, and African-Ameri can Poetry. Soon to be available databases are: Early English Prose Fiction, Editions and Adaptations of Shakespeare, and The Bible in English. The site includes a Master Index, w hich is a com prehensive list o f authors and w orks in L iteratu re O n lin e . It in d e x e s m o re th a n 210,000 w o rk s in C h ad w y ck -H ealey ’s d a ­ tab ase, as w ell as th o u sa n d s m o re o n o th e r W eb sites. The format is attractive and easy to use. Each screen contains large buttons for the following categories: Master Index, Literary D atabases, Dictionaries, Reference Works, W eb Resources, He lp, and Home Page. By clicking on the Dictionaries and References buttons, the user can view Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, unabridged; Bibliography o f American Literature (BAL); the King Jam es Bible, “Authorized” version; and Periodicals Contents Index: Literature. The annual bibliography of English language and literature (ABELL) is available spring 1997. O nce full-text items have b een found, us­ ers can choose to view the Contextual Table o f Contents, the text only, or the location of the first hit of their search. Works are easily searched by author, title, keyword, genre, gen­ der of author, and publication date. The longer full-text w orks are divided into sections or chapters, enabling the user to brow se easily through the work. Links to other Web resources are updated daily, and the editors are planning to have a poet in residence in the future, w ho will p u b ­ lish new poetry through Lion, write com m en­ taries and essays on other poem s in Lion, and run an online poetry w orkshop. Literature O nline is a useful and conve­ nient Internet resource, but the cost may be a major selection factor. This is a subscription- b ased site an d the separate d atabases are priced individually. The databases range in price from $150 to $3,000 per year for one concurrent user, depending on the database. For p u rch ase inform ation, sen d e-mail to: mktg@ chadwyck.com.— Mary Wise, Central Washington University, wisem@tahoma.cwu. edu N e w Z e a la n d D ig ita l L ib ra ry P roject. Access: http://w w w .cs.w aikato.ac.nz/cgi-bin/ nzdlbeta/nzdlhom e. The New Zealand Digital Library (NDZL) is a p hen o m en o n to w atch even if the collections it houses d o n ’t excite you. The site is m anaged by the University of W aikato D epartm ent of Com­ p uter Science and com bines access to eight elec­ tronic collections with information related to digi­ tal libraries in general and to the NZDL project. The hom epage is a clean, simple search engine interface w hich is the only point of entry to the collections. The “no browsing” approach is related to the purpose of the project: to build an elec­ tronic collection, develop an “automatic” access tool, and study the searching behavior of users. As for the collections themselves, they are, as a group, quite appealing to the library and infor­ mation science field: C om puter Science Techni­ cal Reports, C om puter Science G erm an Techni­ cal Reports (MeDoc), Computists’ Communique, FAQ Archive, HCI B ibliography, In d ig en o u s Peoples, Oxford Text Archive, and the Project G utenberg collection. Inform ation ab o u t each collection is available and is sufficient to intro­ duce the content without overwhelm ing the user. The library also boasts a music library com prised of a m elody index (indexed by the m elody pat­ tern rather than author or title) and a soon-to- be-available Optical Music Recognitions Service which allows the user to scan a piece o f printed music and m anipulate the electronic product. The search engine is fairly simple with the capability o f custom izing a search (ranked or Boolean, proximity levels, etc.) to suit the u ser’s needs. Keyword is the only option available, so hits are o f varying relevance even with a specific term . T h ere is as yet n o m ultip le-co llectio n searching w hich w ou ld be helpful given the closely related content o f most. Links to other digital libraries and data about NZDL itself (bug reports, press releases, FAQs, etc.) provide information to those interested in digital libraries in a general sense. Links to search engines an d m iscellaneous digital library re­ sources (follow the ETC link) such as D-LIB Magazine are also included, m aking the site as a w hole a great resource for those w ho w ant to experience a digital library as well as find re­ lated material for further study. This being a work in progress, as is the Internet in general, the NZDL will be interesting to w atch over a long period of time as new approaches and innovations are im plem ented.— Kirsten Tozer, Central Washing ton University, tozerz@tahoma.cwu.edu ■ mailto:wisem@tahoma.cwu http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/cgi-bin/ mailto:tozerz@tahoma.cwu.edu