On Sunday July 15, the University System of Maryland (USM) upgraded the software that runs the catalog for all USM libraries, including that of Langsdale.

The differences in the new version are fairly minor. So minor, that you probably did not even know there was a catalog upgrade unless you tried searching it while it was down overnight for the upgrade. The main improvement is a new login screen that looks the same as that of ResearchPort. The new login can save you a step if you want to log into the catalog from ResearchPort or vice versa. The integration of the logins is not quite seamless, but you should not have to type in your library account number more than once.

The new catalog has the potential to generate a list of new books that match the result of a search, but that piece of the catalog has not yet been implemented. We hope to be able to use this feature to generate new books lists by topic in the future. Still, you may notice at the top of the catalog screen a search option that says "new books". This will allow you to search through just our newest items.

Labels: langsdale

From July 4 - August 4, the World E-Book fair is providing free access to 750,000 e-books for free. A number of items in this collection are available for free year round (books to which the copyright has expired, government publications, etc.), but some are from publishers making their collections available at no cost for this month only. If nothing else, the site provides a way to search through the content of thousands of e-books.

Additional e-books are available in several of Langsdale's online databases such as Netlibrary and Creedo Reference.