The Region 4 collaborative virtual reference project

In May 2002, the Denison Memorial Library at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and the J. Otto Lottes Health Sciences Library at the University of Missouri-Columbia, with funding from the National Network of Libraries of Medicine-Midcontinental Region, embarked on a collaborative, real-time reference project using the 24/7 Reference, Inc., software package. This paper describes how the project was conceived, and includes details on the service hours, staffing, training, marketing, lessons learned, and future plans for the service.     

Historical research as a foundation for teaching applied issues in publishing

Historical research benefits students of publishing in three ways. First, it provides an accurate account of what happened in the past. Second, by setting contemporary issues in a historical context, it helps identify trends. Finally, it encourages curiosity and learning about one’s cultural and intellectual heritage. Parker provides examples of research that serve these purposes. George L. Parker is professor and head of the Department of English and Philosophy at the Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, Ontario. He teaches Canadian and American literature, has coedited an anthology,The Evolution of Canadian Literature in English: Beginnings to 1970, has contributed to theDictionary of Canadian Biography, and has publishedThe Beginnings of The Book Trade in Canada (1985).     

A symposium on “speech act theory in mainstream communication research”: An introduction

The referential, sequential, and inferential dimensions of discourse are explicated and discussed in order to obtain a vantage point from which to view the contributions of speech‐act theory to our understanding of human communication processes. A preview is then provided of four papers, each of which explores the intersection of two or more of these dimensions in order to enrich our understanding of speech‐act theory.     

Use of machine-readable databases to support a large SDI service

The current awareness [or selective dissemination of information (SDI)] services of AT&T Bell Laboratories are described. Several bulletins announcing over 80,000 externally published items/year are issued at regular intervals and sent to about 6100 subscribers. Production is done by the BELLPAR (Bell Laboratories Publication, Alerting, and Retrieval) system, which processes four commercial machine-readable databases and prepares camera-ready bulletin copy. A photocopy service processing some 10,000 requests/month provides document delivery for items announced in the bulletins. Subscribers may order photocopies electronically if they wish. A “captive” journal collection supports the copying operation; non-journal articles, such as conference proceedings and technical reports, are ordered from external suppliers. Improvements in the SDI service include electronic bulletins, more focused bulletins and additional databases as input.