Interlibrary loan

[lbowlds@geosociety.org (Larry Bowlds)]

Just a little information to add to what Phillip Bigelow has already
offered concerning CARL and UnCover:

Ten years ago, CARL (Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries) provided
access by modem to the card catalogs of six or seven research libraries
in Colorado. Today, the system includes more than 400 libraries from
coast to coast (and Hawaii). Any member library has access to the
catalogs of all other members. It's a great way to search for the
location of a book that isn't available locally.

For example, several people have recently mentioned "Fossil Record
2." I haven't seen this book, and I'd like to. About 10 days ago,
I went down to my little library in Louisville, sat down at a terminal,
and started searching for it. Ten minutes later I filled out an ILL
request and was able to tell the librarian that the closest circulating
copy of this book is at the Univ. of Wyoming (don't ask me what's
wrong with the libraries in Colorado). If I didn't want to leave home,
I could access CARL by telnet (pac.carl.org) or by modem (303-758-
1511). I believe local dial-up access is also available through many
member libraries, although not all.

I've not used UnCover. I contacted Brenda Bailey (bbailey@carl.org) at
UnCover a short time ago, gave her my fax number, and she sent me
about 10 pages of info. on this service. At $8.50 per article plus
copyright royalty fee, I don't expect to use this service to build
my personal library, but it does sound like a good way to find out
about new titles. Their info says they cover 20,000 journals.

Searching for titles of interest is free. However, a particularly
interesting feature of UnCover is the Reveal alert service. For
$20/year, users can receive the titles in the tables of contents
of 50 journals and the titles resulting from up to
25 search strategies. These titles are sent by E-mail as soon as
they are added to the database (I don't know how fast they really
are). I'm going to see if I can find out which journals they cover.
I'll post the relevant part of whatever I find out.

I have no connection with CARL, although my tax dollars helped
support them for years (before they became self-supporting). I hope
this info helps those who are interested in staying abreast of the
current literature.

Larry

-- 
*---------------------------------------------
*Larry S. Bowlds        lbowlds@geosociety.org
*Geological Society of America
*Bulletin Managing Editor
*(303) 447-2020, ext. 147        
*---------------------------------------------