[Yulpub] Great enhancements to Reference Universe

[Suzanne Lorimer]

You may remember when Reference Universe, a Paratext product, was new ? about
three years ago.  At that time it proclaimed itself to be the ?index to your
print reference collection?, providing the ability to search online the
article titles and back-of-the-book indexes of several thousand reference
titles in all subjects, with links directly to Orbis to indicate which of the
titles were owned by Yale.  The Results list also supplied links to online or
e-book editions of the sources, if subscribed to or purchased by the library,
and to reviews of the works indexed. When the database began, the links to
e-reference sources were scarce.

With the growth of electronic reference publishing in the last few years,
however, Reference Universe has undergone an impressive transformation, now
making much clearer in its Results lists which titles in what formats are owned
by a library and providing links to e-resources available through 11 vendors. 
It now provides us with an extremely useful collective index to over 15 million
authoritative citations in over 36,000 specialized print and electronic
encyclopedias ? data available in no other database, anywhere.

A list of titles included through September 2006 is available at
http://refuniv.odyssi.com/contents.htm , and a complete list of titles and
publishers currently available can be found through the database?s Browse
function. A complete current list can also be requested from the publisher at
http://www.paratext.com/trial.htm .

The e-reference collections currently included in Reference Universe's
gesamt-search capability are:

? Oxford Reference Online
? Gale Virtual Reference Library
? Routledge Reference Resources Online
? Netlibrary
? Annual Reviews
? ABC-CLIO e-books
? AccessScience
? Literature Online
? Idea Group
? Sage Publications
? Credo (formerly xrefer)

Yale currently has access to 8 of these 11 collections -- all except Routledge
Reference Resources, Idea Group, and Sage Publications (Sage E-Reference).

Paratext has just supplied a one-sheet guide to the new entry format in
Reference Universe, and I encourage you to take a minute to look at it <
http://refuniv.odyssi.com/upgrade07.pdf >.  The database is accessed through
the Database and Article Searching section of the library?s front door and
directly through http://refuniv.odyssi.com/cgi-bin/phtml?refx.htm .

-Sue

Suzanne Lorimer
Coordinator of Research Services
Sterling Memorial Library
Yale University
P.O. Box 208240
New Haven, CT 06520-8240
(203) 432-8371