Number 52,September 1997
BOOK RECOMMENDATION ONLINE
We are pleased to announce a new database and service, "Book Recommendation Online" (BRO), to allow online placement of book recommendations to the library. Through this enhanced book alerting service, faculty can more quickly and precisely identify those titles they wish to recommend from BRO's database as well as expediting the resulting purchase order online. Recommendations for titles not found in this database can also be placed online. The database has been created from announcements of new titles received from Blackwell North America. BRO is mounted on a Unix server, and can be accessed in a Web interface at http://asterix.lib.hku.hk:7777, or our Libraries Homepage under "Highlighted Features".
This service is now available to HKU faculty. Instructions for how to use and register for this service has been sent to each department.
Several open sessions (at 4 p.m., September 22, 23, 24) will be held at Rm G-02, Main Library to introduce the functionalities of this system. Please call Ext.2203 or 7010 if you wish to attend.
TABLE-OF-CONTENTS (TOC) DATA
In order to make our OPAC more helpful and informative to our users, we have been steadily adding TOC data to records published after 1991. It is now possible to search on, and display the chapter headings and authors in approximately 52,000 online records. This TOC data, available for English monographs published after 1991 only, was purchased by the Libraries from Blackwell North America, and extracted from their database. Users may search for these TOC enhanced records using the following option on the Libraries' OPAC: "U > Table of Contents". After a record is retrieved, users must type,"K > Display TABLE OF CONTENTS" to display this information.
With such TOC information, as well as the chapter summaries which appear in some records, our users should be able to more accurately determine if the online record represents an item they would like to study, without actually going to the shelf to look for the physical item.
ELSEVIER ELECTRONIC JOURNALS
Some 500 electronic journal titles by Elsevier Science are now accessible from the HKU Libraries Homepage.
Most of these journals focus on the science discipline, namely agriculture, astronomy, biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, environmental studies, geoscience, information science, mathematics, medicine, pharmacology, physics, and psychology.
Full text of these journals can be retrieved in text or image format, the latter of which includes any graphs, pictures and diagrams in the article.
Faculty and students are encouraged to take advantage of the speedy retrieval of research information from these electronic journals mounted locally at HKU. To access these journals, simplypoint to <http://www.hku.hk/lib>and click on <Electronic Resources> / <Electronic Journals> / <Elsevier Electronic Subscription>.
IMPORTANT: Remote access to these journals is by authentication and are restricted to current members of the University logging on using a HKU PPP account. As such, users accessing from a non-HKU account will be strictly prohibited.
BBC SERIES: THE LAST GOVERNOR
The Libraries have recently received from Glebe Productions Ltd resource materials collected and used for the making of the BBC series The Last Governor. All the materials will be housed in the Dr William M W Mong Collection in the AV section in recognition of Dr Mong's generous donation.
The resource materials comprise 795 video tapes and 501 cassette tapes plus a 96-page shotlist and 11 diskettes of computer files on transcripts of interviews conducted between 1992-1997 with famous personalities in Hong Kong. These are now being processed. No doubt they will be valuable additions to our collections and excellent resources for research on Hong Kong studies.
The Libraries have also acquired 3 copies of Jonathan Dimbleby's book: The Last Governor. Based on primary information collected during the production of the BBC series, the book unfolds the remarkable political drama which happened during the governorship of Chris Patten, adding new insights to the contemporary history of Hong Kong and the transfer of sovereignty to China.
ORIENTATION PROGRAMME
New students were introduced to the services and facilities available in the Main Library through an orientation programme which began from September 1 to September 13 on a faculty by faculty basis. Library courses on online public access catalogue and library research techniques will be arranged in mid-September. Specialized subject instruction on literature searching and resources may also be arranged. Please contact the Reference Librarian, Miss Rebecca Yeung at Ext. 2203 or 7010.
RESOURCES ON STOCK PRICE DATA
The Libraries have recently purchased various stock price data for research purposes.
TEJ China Bank contains:
1. 1,400 companies profile data - financial data, shareholding data, company attribute data, investment data
2. Equity price data - stock price data, capital change data, dividends data
TAQ database (Trade and quote database) contains intraday transactions data (trades and quotes) for all securities listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and American Stock Exchange (AMEX), as well as Nasdaq National Market System (NMS) and SmallCap issues.
OTHER NEW ELECTRONIC DATABASES
Arts & Humanities and the Social Sciences
Der Spiegel
Profiles in Business and Management
Sciences
ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems
CA on CD
Computerized Index to Journal of Chemical Education
Physical Review C. Nuclear Physics
Physics-Uspekhi
Reference
Archives USA
Encarta 97 Encyclopedia
Illustrated Book of World Rankings
Multimedia Chinese-English Dictionary
World Development Indicators
The Libraries have subscribed to Dialog@Carl which is a new information service providing remote online access via the Internet to over 300 databases covering a wide range of subject areas including Architecture Database, Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology Abstracts, Consumer Reports, Disclosure, South China Morning Post, US Patents Fulltext, Xinhua News etc.
BOOK DROP SERVICE
Starting September 1, a book drop service has been introduced at the Main Library. Library users will no doubt enjoy the convenience of being able to return non-overdue books and periodicals borrowed from the Main and Fung Ping Shan Libraries to the book drop 24 hours a day. Materials checked out from the branch libraries, AV section, Reserve Book Room, Special Collections and UGC libraries should be returned directly to those locations. Overdue fines will be imposed for late returns as usual. For materials cleared at 9 a.m., return dates will be adjusted to the previous working day.
INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION
The University of Hong Kong Libraries have been invited to join the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance whose membership include major academic libraries of institutions such as Peking University, Zhongshan University, Keio University, Australian National University, National University of Singapore, Universityof California, Berkeley and San Diego, University of Washington and University of British Columbia. We are the sole library in Hong Kong invited to join this group.
DENTAL LIBRARY
During the summer, the overcrowded condition of the Dental Library book stacks has been relieved with the installation of additional book stacks and the rearrangement of much of the book and journal collection. More signage in the library will be added to improve direction to users to the newly arranged book collections.
The Dental Library's Homepage on the World Wide Web has recently been updated and improved. Many new links, especially electronic journals, have been added. Subject coverage has also been expanded to reflect the new teaching, learning and research interests of staff and students.
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
To celebrate their 25th anniversary of graduation, graduates of the Class of '72, HKU, donated HK$1 million to the University of Hong Kong Foundation for Educational Development & Research for use by the University Libraries, in support of the Table of Contents Project for Hong Kong materials held in the Hong Kong Collection. This project will initially focus on proceedings of conferences held in Hong Kong and books about Hong Kong compiled under editorship. Bibliographic data, including author, title and page numbers, of conference papers and book chapters will be added into the Libraries' online catalogue. Users will soon be able to retrieve citations of conference papers and book chapters by author, title or keyword from the OPAC or WebPac on the Libraries' Homepage.
A Hong Kong Tourist Association (HKTA) Collection has been setup at the Special Collections. To facilitate the use of materials in this Collection, including some 180 boxes of HKTA publications, 510 rolls of posters and 854 film and video titles, a subject index has been compiled by Special Collections staff and is available to users for consultation.
A variety of Hong Kong-related CD-ROM titles has been received recently. Notable ones include the following:
Air quality in Hong Kong, 1986-95
Directory of Hong Kong industrial suppliers, 1996/97
History of Hong Kong, 1842-1984
Hong Kong external trade, 1992-97
South China morning post, 1993-95
CONFERENCES
In June, David Palmer, Systems Librarian, and Shirley Sin, Sub-Librarian (Administration), attended a meeting, at the University of California, San Diego, with other representatives from libraries around the Pacific. One of the results was the creation of the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance (PRDLA) for the sharing and joint production of library resources within this group. After this meeting, Mr Palmer went to San Francisco to attend the American Library Association conference, which is thelargest library conference in the world. While there, and also atthe University of California, Berkeley, he participated in discussions on the creation of digital libraries.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
The Librarian and senior Libraries staff attended the Opening Ceremony of the 8th Hong Kong Book Fair on July 23. Fung Ping Shan Library staff took the opportunity to visit the exhibits, made contacts with publishers and succeeded to acquire many useful items from the mainland and Taiwan.
VISITORS
| Date | Visitors/Institutions |
| June 5, 1997 | Vice Presidents, Professor Gong Zhenbang, Professor Zhuang Yunqun from Shanghai University . |
| June 6, 1997 | Professor Zhou Xingliang, Head, Faculty of Social Sciences, Zhongshan University . |
| June 17, 1997 | Professor Zhao Yanqun, Librarian, Zhongshan University. |
| June 18, 1997 | Mr Cheng Heng-hsiung, Head, Department of Cataloguing, National Central Library, Taipei. |
| June 19, 1997 | Mr Tom Buchanan, Director and Ms Elizabeth Townson, Assistant Director (Information), British Council, Hong Kong. |
| June 23, 1997 | Dr Nancy Lee, Head, and Mr Peter Tung, Assistant Secretary (Research), Support Unit, Standing Committee on Language Education and Research of the Education and Manpower Branch. |
| July 22, 1997 | Visitors from Beijing Normal University including Professor Bao Huaying, Professor Cheng Zhengmin and Professor Zhang Rui. |
| July 24, 1997 | Professor Wang Shiwei, Deputy Director, Shanghai Library. |
| July 29, 1997 | Visitors from National Library of China led by the Deputy Director, Professor Sun Chengjian and accompanied by the Chief Curator of the Hong Kong Museum of History, Dr Joseph S.D. Ting. |
| July 29, 1997 | Mr Daniel C. Tsang, Bibliographer and Data Files Librarian, University of California, Irvine. |
| August 1, 1997 | A delegation from the Guangdong College of Education led by the Director of General Affairs, Mr Hong Huajing. |
| August 8, 1997 | Mrs Hsiung Lai-ying, Head of Technical Services, Dalhousie University Library, Canada. |
| August 20, 1997 | Visitors from the Jing Tang Library, Xinhui Shi, Guangdong including Mr Tang Sheng-jian. |
FOCUS ON YOUR LIBRARY
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