ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


38 / C&RL News ■ January 2004

I n t e r n e t  R e v i e w s Joni R. Robertsand Carol A. Drost, editors

S ch o e n b e rg Ce n ter fo r Ele ctro n ic Text 
a n d  Im a g e . Access: d e w e y .lib ra ry . 
u p e n n .e d u /s c e ti/.
The Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text 

and Image (SCETI) is a digital library at the 
University of Pennsylvania (UP). Created in 
1996, SCETI publishes virtual copies of rare 
books and manuscripts from the 9th through 
the 20th centuries in the UP Library’s collec­
tions. The W eb page states that its mission is 
“to m ake accessible to the global com m u­
nity of scholars a n d  researchers prim ary 
source m aterials that w ould otherw ise be 
difficult to access.”

Users can brow se the site by author, col­
lection, period (centuiy), language, and for­
mat. The site can also be searched w ith an 
extensive search screen that includes such 
choices as form at (correspondence, image, 
m anuscript, or printed book) and period. 
Searches can also be limited by the SCETI

glish Renaissance. It includes tutorials on sev­
eral works of Shakespeare (Romeo andJuliet, 
The M erchant o f  Venice, R ic h a rd  III, and 
King Lear) and information about publish­
ing during the Renaissance.

SCETI d o e s n o t analyze prim ary texts 
b u t p re s e n ts  th em  in a th o ro u g h , o rg a ­
n ize d , a n d  easily se a rc h a b le  form at for 
researchers. T he ERIC section is in d isp en s­
a b le  to a n y o n e  te a c h in g  S h a k e s p e a re ’s 
w o rk s. UP has d o n e  a b e a u tifu l job of 
digitizing its rare collections a n d  sharing 
th em  w ith th e  rest o f th e w o rld .— Delores 
Carlito, U niversity o f  A la b a m a -B ir m in g ­
ham , delo@ uab.edu

B io d iv e rs ity  & B io lo g ic a l C o lle ctio n s.
Access: w w w .biocollections.o r g /.
O ne of the oldest W eb sites to provide 

quality information about biodiversity, bio­
logical collections, and associated software,

Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text & Image

o n lin e  c o lle ctio n , su c h  as 19th-C entury 
American History; the Edgar Fahs Smith Col­
lectio n , c o n c e n tra tin g  o n  th e  h isto ry  of 
chemistry; the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Col­
lection, focusing on late m edieval and early 
m o d e r n  m a n u s c rip ts ; th e  D re is e r W eb 
Source, offering prim ary  a n d  se c o n d a ry  
sources on T heodore Dreiser; the Furness 
Shakespeare Library; and the UP Art Collec­
tion.

The art is attractively presented with full 
information about each piece (artist, title, size, 
medium, and date). The text pages are fac­
similes of the original and are easy to read. 
Text and som e image pages allow visitors to 
zoom  in or out and to arrange the page in a 
printable format. A unique feature of this 
site is the ability to view Shakespeare’s fo­
lios side-by-side.

SCETI also includes a link to UP’s En­
glish Renaissance in Context (ERIC). This site 
provides scholars and students with multi- 
m edia tools about Shakespeare and the En-

biocollections.org provides life sciences data 
to a variety of academ ic disciplines and au­
diences. Biocollections.org is m anaged by 
faculty from  b o th  the University of Texas 
and the University of Michigan, making this 
a co o p erativ e scholarly effort, w hile the 
server is housed at the Museum of Zoology 
of the University of Michigan. Additionally, 
the National Science Foundation provided 
funds in 2002 for a forthcoming major up­
grade of hardware and software for the site.

O ne of the key values of the site lies in its 
w ide array of links to authoritative informa­
tion about biological collections specimens, 
taxonom ic authority files, directories of bi­
ologists, the Delta system of encoding taxo­
nom ic descriptions for com puter process-

Joni R. Roberts is associate u n ive rsity lib ra ria n  f o r  pu b lic 
services a n d  c o lle c tio n  d e v e lo p m e n t a t W illa m e tte  
University, e-m ail: jrobe rts@ w illa m e tte .e d u , and Carol A. 
Drost is associate university librarian fo rte c h n ic a l services 
a t W illa m e tte  University, e-mail: cdrost@ willamette.edu

upenn.edu/sceti/
mailto:delo@uab.edu
http://www.biocollections.org/
biocollections.org
Biocollections.org
mailto:jroberts@willamette.edu
mailto:cdrost@willamette.edu


C&RL News ■ January 2004 /  39

ing, a n d  links to h u ndreds of biodiversity 
and collection resources. The links alone at 
the prim ary level provide access to hundreds 
of sites that th en  provide secondary access 
to thousands of quality sites.

The links to ichthyology resources, for 
exam ple, lead a user to the Ichthyology Col­
lection of the Academy of Natural Sciences 
of Philadelphia (ANSP), w hich in turn has a 
link to an ANSP database containing 124,784 
records of specim ens in its ichthyology d e ­
partm ent collections.

The set of links to conservation W eb sites 
provides, am ong other topical resources, a 
link to M onarch Watch, a University of Kan­
sas W eb site show casing a cooperative n et­
w o rk  dedicated to the study of the M onarch 
butterfly. The 81 “Biological Collections” links 
provide a w ealth of links to m useum  collec­
tions across the United States and Great Brit­
ain, w hich in turn give access to online in­
form ation on  hundreds of thousands of bio­
logical specim ens across m ost living species.

“C o n fe re n c e s” pro v id es n ew s a n d  u p ­
dates on a w ide variety of life sciences con­
ferences, including prim atology, m am m al­
ogy, ornithology, a n d  parisitology meetings. 
“Directories and Publications” highlights in­
form ation on a variety of U.S. and interna­
tional journals across the life sciences. “Col­
lection D atabases” offers entry into a w o n ­
d erful v ariety  of in te rn atio n a l o n lin e  re ­
sources users might not readily find on other 
life sciences W eb sites. Exam ples include 
the Tulane University M useum of Natural His­
tory collection of 7 million fish specim ens 
in 200,000 lots; the O rnithology Collection 
of C ornell University’s M useum  o f V erte­
brates, w ith w orldw ide coverage and speci­
m ens from  all continents and m ore than 134 
different countries; and th e botanical data­
bases from the D epartm ent of Botany at the 
Natural History M useum in London. This site 
is recom m ended for all higher education in­
stitutions from com m unity college to gradu­
ate level a n d  a d d re sse s faculty re s e a rc h  
n e e d s.—J o h n  Creech, C entral W ashington 
University, creechj@ cwu.edu

C o ld  W ar In ternational H istory Project.
Access: w w ic s .s i.e d u / in d e x .cfm ?topic_ 
id=l409&fuseaction=topics.home.
Since the e n d  of the Cold War, previously 

classified docum ents, especially those from

“behind the Iron Curtain,” have becom e avail­
able to the public for the first time. The dis­
covery of these new  sources of information 
has had a major impact in changing the way 
scholars interpret events from the end of World 
War II to the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The Cold War International History Project 
(CWIHP), a program  of the W oodrow Wilson 
International Center for Scholars, has been  a 
primary agent in helping to make these new  
sources of information accessible to Cold War 
researchers. CWIHP “seeks to accelerate the 
process of integrating new  sources, materials, 
and perspectives from the former ‘Commu­
nist bloc’ with the historiography of the Cold 
War which has been written over the past few 
decades largely by W estern scholars reliant 
on W estern archival sources.”

CWIHP’s publications are available online 
in full-text format. Each issue of the Cold War 
International History Project Bulletin, CWHIP 
Working Paper Series, and CWHIP e-Dossier 
Series focus o n  specific them es or archival 
sources, such as “The KGB in Afghanistan” 
or “From the Russian Archives.” The research 
articles, co n trib u ted  by  leading Cold W ar 
scholars, are supplem ented with analyses and 
English translations of excerpts from previ­
ously declassified archival documents. O ne 
example of this can be seen in “Declassified 
Materials from CPSU Central Committee Ple­
num: Sources, Context, Highlights.”

The site’s “Virtual Archive” is searchable 
by keyw ord, using Boolean operators and 
truncation, and the search engine appears 
to search the entire text of the online docu­
ments. However, keyw ord searches seem ed 
to retrieve a m axim um  of 31 results in all 
cases. T he “Virtual A rchive” can also be 
b row sed by a list of keyw ords, keyw ords 
subject, keyw ords year, publications, collec­
tion, a n d  geographic subject. Each online 
docum ent has a link at the bottom  of the 
page to a printer-friendly version.

Primaiy source materials, especially those 
from foreign countries, can b e  especially dif­
ficult to locate. The CWIHP W eb site does a 
terrific job of m aking these previously inac­
cessible archival materials available to any­
one w h o  w ants to learn m ore abo u t the Cold 
War. This site is highly recom m ended for 
s tu d e n t a n d  fa c u lty  r e s e a r c h e r s .— Gerri 
Foudy, University o f  M aryland, gf48@umail. 
u m d .e d u  ■

mailto:creechj@cwu.edu
umd.edu