E-Views and Reviews: A Masterpiece in the Making

Are high gas prices keeping patrons home these days? Give them A Virtual Tour of the United Nations from the comfort of your library using Spinning Eye’s new CD-ROM (ISBN 0-9552460-0-8. $29.90). It offers over 150 interactive panoramas, 40-plus video interviews, photos, and info about the 191 UN member states. For more, go to www.spinning-eye.com.

Antiques Roadshow Fans PriceMiner (www.priceminer.com), a new online tool for the antiques and collectibles market, contains over 23 million records from eBay, GoAntiques.com, and TIAS.com, ten million pictures, and materials organized under 5200 eBay categories. Want to find out how much that Ellen Clapsaddle Santa Claus postcard you found in the attic is worth? This is the place to go. Library subscriptions start at $1,195.

Quote of the Week “We created Rotunda to deliver critical and documentary editions in digital form with the same care and quality control that [we] observe in print editions. Initially we are concentrating on...19th-century literature and culture and the American founding era.... We are working with other presses and historical societies to create an American Founding Era collection of some of the great documentary editions of the early Republic.... Only when a critical mass of such material is available in authoritative online editions will electronic scholarly communication be able to move to the next level.”—Penelope Kaiserlian, Director, Univ. of Virginia Pr.

The impressive Oxford African American Studies Center (OAASC) contains over 7500 articles culled from five Oxford encyclopedias and 18 other Oxford reference sources—including, among others, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience; Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619–1895; Black Women in America, 2d ed.; and the evolving African American National Biography—along with 1000 images (thousands more to be added), over 100 primary sources, time lines, maps, tables, and a Learning Center full of ready-reference resources. The file is updated three or four times annually and also draws on Oxford’s other web resources, including American National Biography Online and Grove Music Online.

How Does It Work? The home screen is a nicely balanced combination of visually stimulating elements, easy search access, and well-organized structures leading into content. The Feature of the Month is front and center, commanding attention. The debut Feature highlights the Civil Rights Movement, with an image of an African American child at a civil rights rally. The Feature also includes a Featured Essay, a powerful Photo Essay, a selection of related Featured Articles, and an extensive group of Primary Source Documents and Commentaries. You can also sign up to get email alerts for the Feature of the Month—and that’s just the free part!

Also on the home screen are buttons for Search, Browse, Timelines, Links, and Learning Center—the options available are simply too numerous to list here.

Can You and Your Patrons Use It? The search for “Sojourner Truth” yielded 113 results. First came five “At a Glance” summary articles from several Oxford sources, describing basic biographical information; then came other articles referencing Truth within. There were four images of Truth, including one she used on her visiting cards along with the text she had imprinted on them: “I sell the shadow to support the substance.” By clicking on text within any article you can use the “Look It Up” feature to get more information. It’s extremely simple to print and email entries, and every article includes a button with citing information. The folks at Oxford have once again thought of everything.

Subsequent searches (for Dred Scott, free states, etc.) uncovered more delightful features: searching within Eras (by clicking the Era icon and selecting a time period); limiting searches with filters that tree out from a Category icon into more detailed stems; going directly to a particular type of material (e.g., primary source documents) from the results set; and much more.

How Good Is It? There’s not enough space to extol OAASC’s virtues sufficiently. In editor Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s words, it “will enable us to reassemble the lost and scattered fragments of the African American past.” Because it is so extraordinary, the resource makes it necessary this once to raise the usual rating scale of 1 to 10 to an unprecedented 11!

What’s the Cost? Oxford offers flat-rate pricing for schools and unlimited access or concurrent user access for all other types of institutions, based on size. For universities, public libraries, and other entities, unlimited access starts at $895 for small institutions, up to a maximum of $3,795 for the largest.

The Bottom Line A remarkable achievement in accessible scholarship, Oxford African American Studies Center is strongly recommended for all libraries.