ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries March 1994/159 Beethoven Bibliography Database. Access: telnet:// sjsulibl.sjsu.edu or telnet:// 130.65.100.1. Login: lib. Se­ lected on main menu. Select Beethoven Bibliography Da­ tabase. This is a little jew el o f a bibliographic database, 3,000 records strong at present and counting. T h e B eeth o ven Research Center at San Jose State University, which o p ­ erates administratively as a special departm ent o f the College o f Humanities and the Arts, has under­ taken the project o f creating an Internet-acces­ sible database to provide universal access to its collection. This collection consists o f com ­ prehensive holdings o f scores, secondary lit­ erature, and manuscript materials relating to Ludwig van Beethoven. Secondary literature indexed is both monographic and periodical, in all languages and for all time periods. Peri­ odicals indexed include not only music peri­ odicals but those from other fields such as medicine, art, and literature. The center’s net is spread as w idely as possible, in other words, in the ocean o f print. Recorded sound is not collected by the center, nor are there any plans at present to collect MIDI files. Center staff in­ dicate that this is the largest Beethoven collec­ tion in the United States. The project has been under w ay for a year with NEH funding, and retrospective conver­ sion is expected to take until the year 2004 and to result in about 22,000 records. At that point the database w ill be maintained with records for all n ew additions. Records for printed secondary materials are being created in phase one. Phase tw o w ill include first edi­ tions o f scores and important early editions. The center w ill attempt to include records for important editions that it does not itself ow n with information on where they are held. The third phase will create records for the center’s manuscript collections. As with any special col­ lection, loans o f w h ole items are not available, but center staff w ill gladly photocopy for re­ mote researchers at 20 cents per page, even from scores. A telephone number for accessing the center is included in the brief introductory i n f o r m a t i o n o n l i n e T h e database search e n g in e is th e lib r a r y ’s IN N O P A Q public catalog and th e p ro je c t is w e ll staffed so that the interface is wonderfully professional. A ll usual lib ra ry access poin ts are a v a ila b le fo r records and some additional ones as well. Music special­ ists benefit from access to special com position num­ bers, standard numbers, musical genres, and even RISM location, as w ell as from the ability to browse for related editions through the shelflist. Researchers from all fields working with this time period can use the en­ hanced indexing to satisfy quite specific infor­ mation needs, for example on Beethoven’s sui­ cidal episodes, romantic relationships, or health. In addition, contents notes are being entered for documents, which consist o f tables o f con­ tents as w ell as an abstract for books, and ab­ stracts for articles, searchable through keyword searches o f the notes field. For a multilanguage database, keyword searching has to be used judiciously, but it surely extends the user’s op ­ tions to retrieve references on very specific top­ ics. Center staff prepared a user manual for sale this winter at a cost o f approximately $40. This is a wonderful resource, one which I hope w ill inspire many similar efforts on other important figures in music and other areas o f the humanities.— Mary H. Kay, acquisitions/ collection development librarian, Humboldt State University; kaym@hsuseq.humboldt.edu Electronic Newsstand. Access: gopher:// gopher.internet.com:2100/l/l/ Electronic Newsstand (Enews), a joint ven­ ture between the Internet Company, a provider o f commercial internet services, and the New Republic, offers tables o f contents and selected full-text feature articles from approximately 50 news, general interest, special interest, and academic periodicals. Using the familiar gopher menus and commands, users can browse the periodicals (in both alphabetical and subject- classified lists), read tables o f contents and the Sara Amato is systems librarian at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon; e-mail: samato@willamette.edu Internet Reviews S ara A m a to , e d ito r mailto:kaym@hsuseq.humboldt.edu mailto:samato@willamette.edu 160/C&RL News full-text o f some articles (current or archive), and, if they desire, perform easily executed key­ w ord searches to locate articles. Upon select­ ing a periodical title, one can place a personal subscription order at special reduced rates. In the one-stop style o f Freenet or a provider such as Prodigy, Enews also offers arts, entertain­ ment, and book reviews, as w ell as synopses o f recent selected articles in a section called “Best o f the Newsstand.” Other menu choices give information about Enews and the Internet Company and provide e-mail addresses for sending questions and com­ ments about the services. While clearly not large or specialized enough for in-depth literature searches, this free-to-use network resource can be used to find informa­ tion on a range o f topics. As more journals are added and the archives deepen, its value will grow. Designed primarily to invite browsing, it’s a great w ay to introduce novices to the In­ ternet. There are network resources based at educational institutions which contain much larger numbers o f full-text periodicals, notably the CICNet Electronic Journals Project (gopher:/ /gopher.cic.net:70/l/l/e-serials), with approxi­ mately 750 titles; and the connection maintained at SUNY Morrisville to approximately 250 titles ( g o p h e r:/ / s n ym o rv b .c s .sn ym o r.e d u :7 0 / l/ lg o p h e r _ r o o t l / [lib r a r y d o c s .e le c t r o n ic _ journals]). These resources d o not allow key­ w ord searching, however, and are less consis­ tent and selective than Enews, which is the source site for all its periodical connections. With the inevitable participation o f commer­ cial enterprises in the Internet, it is g o o d to see one like Electronic Newsstand which seems to offer the best o f both worlds— a desire to pro­ vide useful information for free, and corporate support to foster growth, developm ent, and extra features. Enews’ plans to support mail list access to the publishers, editors, and au­ thors o f the included publications promises an­ other step in the direction o f bringing publish­ ers an d th e In te rn e t c o m m u n ity c lo s e r together.— Joseph A. LaRose, reference librar­ ian, University of Akron; JoeLaRose@uakron.edu World Health Organization Gopher. Access: gopher://gopher.who.ch:70/l or telnet:/ /gopher.who.ch:23/ login: gopher. Producer: W H O Internet Gopher Root Server Adminis­ trator Information T ech n o logy O ffice (IT O ) W orld Health Organization (W H O ) Headquar­ ters CH-1211 G eneva 27 Switzerland Health policy analysts have been given a powerful new tool in the form o f the W orld Health O rganization (W H O ) gop h er server. Although many areas o f this server are still un­ der development, it is already a significant in­ formation source for health policy and interna­ tional health researchers. Highlights include W H O press releases, immunization statistics, AIDS information, com ­ municable disease incidence information, and a database o f W H O documents (many o f which are not available in print form). Oriented to the health policy watcher, the W H O go p h er server organizes inform ation largely by program, although there are signifi­ cant menu structures on news and the W H O itself. There is some redundancy in the server’s organization— in the press releases and some o f the statistical information— but the arrange­ ment by program can be misleading for the user w h o is unfamiliar with the W H O organi­ zational structure. For instance, immunization information occurs under tw o different pro­ grams, “Communicable Diseases (CDS)” and the “Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI).” Despite this difficulty (frequently encoun­ tered by gopher users), the W H O gopher server has much to offer users w h o are not health policy mavens. Librarians as w ell as policy ana­ lysts will find the W H O Bibliographic Database a useful resource for identifying or verifying a w ide range o f W H O publications dating as far back as the mid-eighties and including many unpublished sources. Demographers and epi­ demiologists w ill be pleased by the wealth o f statistical information provided on disease in­ cidence, immunization (mentioned previously), family planning, and tropical diseases. The only difficulty is that the tables cannot be reason­ ably view ed by most gopher clients but must be either sent to an account via e-mail or dow n­ loaded for viewing. Those monitoring the glo ­ bal AIDS epidem ic w ill find abundant sources o f information here including a searchable da­ tabase o f AIDS-related W H O publications. Finally, the wealth o f news information in the form o f press releases, statements, news­ letters, and a variety o f other items w ill pro­ vide something for just about anyone looking for source material on current events. In total these diverse resources provide a basis for many lines o f research by many types o f scholars and students.— Karla L. Hahn, Internet services li­ brarian, Johns Hopkins University; khahn@ library.welch.jhu.edu ■ gopher://snymorvb.cs.snymor.edu:70/l/ mailto:JoeLaRose@uakron.edu gopher://gopher.who.ch:70/l