CCL-EAR Chair's Report
By Steve Hunt, CCL-EAR Committee Chair
As we near the end of the Fall semester and approach the holiday season I hope you’re all thinking of gifts for your students from the databases and services that we offer for libraries, most with substantial discounts. It’s a year-round Black Friday sale for all your electronic resource needs thanks to your consortium.
Recently published reviews by our committee include PowerNotes, which is a subscription-based, browser extension that students and faculty can use to easily manage sources, notes, and create annotations. We also have a review of Cochrane Library from Wiley, a collection of databases in medicine and other healthcare specialties. We are currently working on reviews of Nexis Uni, EZProxy, and Leganto among other products. Please don’t miss the fascinating article on adds and drops from Ebsco databases in the current issue of this newsletter, written by EAR member (and Sac City librarian) Jeff Karlsen. You can find a list of all of our reviews on the CCL website.
Many of you are familiar with the Cambridge Companions monographic series. They are a series of authoritative guides, written by leading experts, offering accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods. These titles are now available as e-books in a subscription model. These are great books for community college students, and at an attractive price. The Cambridge Histories series is also available. Please look at our current offers and consider them for your students.
We discussed doing another weeding project for our shared e-book collection but decided to hold off until after the LSP migration. In Alma and Primo it will be easier to add and delete electronic resources like the shared e-book collection, and we were concerned about getting volunteers to work on this project given all the energy devoted to the LSP project.
CCL-EAR is looking for a librarian, Dean or director from the Southwest Bay region to join the Committee. This is a great chance to help select electronic resources for all California community colleges and to network with your colleagues from across the state. Please contact CCL President Doug Achterman if you would be interested in serving on this important committee. The Southwest Bay region includes the following colleges: Cabrillo, Cañada, De Anza, Evergreen Valley, Foothill, Gavilan, Hartnell, Mission, Monterey Peninsula, San Jose City, San Mateo, Skyline and West Valley.
The EAR Committee will be having a teleconference next week, Friday, Dec. 7th using Zoom. We welcome anyone from a California Community College Library to be a guest to our meetings. An email will be sent out to the CCC-Lib listserv with login instructions for those interested.