The game's afoot with the BHCTI Catalog

Closing in at last on the proposed BHCTI Library Catalog through American Biblical Higher Education's ABHE Solutions, though I've yet to have a clickable link for the stinker; The first iteration will feature individual links to all the items in both of our affliated GoogleBook libraries, BHCTILibrary 'Proper,' and BHCTILibraryToo, as well as Logos Bible Software's stand-alone website of full text ebooks at Books.Logos.com, and in addition all the content of ebook vendor Questia (and not only the 5,000 or so free full text items).

Those who recall our long relationship at BHCTI with Questia will remember that though the company sells individual accounts, Carroll has set these up for our students through student fees. The catalog will still require an individual login for any Questia content outside their 5,000 freebies; but Carroll students will know their accounts, or can ask...

A part of our 20,000 or so print collection (approximately 4,000 MARC records) will also be included. I hope in time to coordinate those catalog records with my available print items.

All in all, having author, title, and subject access to 75% or so of our items across vendors and platforms is a serious improvement, and (with apologies to Samurai Jack) 'an historic victory most worthy of our logs.' Or blogs. We should have the bugbots dispensed with before the month is out, so keep watching this space (and my wiki)...

Print also progresses

One benefit of being out to hear Dr. Hargraves at our Summer Colloquy has been the opportunity (in the interstices) to unpack boxes of books to arrange on the inviting shelfspace provided in the new Carroll Digs. So the number of items whose physical location I can vouch for gained slightly, up 66 from 135 to 202 as of June. The revised list is at a special page here on my wiki for the curious....

Read Dr. Hargraves for the Spring Colloquy

If you're coming to our Summer Colloquy, you'll know we're hosting Christian psychotherapist Dr. Terry D. Hargrave of Fuller Seminary. Read up a bit on him in NexLearn; Questia makes his book (with Franz Pfitzer) The New Contextual Therapy available full text; there are articles by Dr. Hargraves there, and more in Wilson Select Full Text (currently available in OCLC FirstSearch). And current carroll Students can ask me about interlibrary loan (ILL). You can always visit my wiki if you need help navigating the library block in NexLearn. Hope to see you there...

New ways to squirrel away

If you're a BHCTI Student, you may have seen this message:

You will notice that some of the resources and links in Carroll Institute's website have been combined or shifted to other menu sections. These modifications are in preparation for our transition to a new administrative interface -- ABHE Solutions. ABHE Solutions is the new platform for student records and class registration. Current students will soon be receiving more information and specific instructions related to class registration for the Summer term.

A catalog to centralize our collection of data and serve as a multiplier of access points has been an ongoing need at Carroll; and through ABHE, we soon ought to have one. Watch this space for updates- and on a faster basis than in the last 6 months, guaranteed....

Google ebooks

Value added by the folks at Google to our BHCTILibrary "Proper" and BHCTILibraryToo Google Book collections include links from any individual ebook the those Carroll Library collections of free full view items to the Google ebook page, where you can download copies to your computer. That will also serve to advertise their service for Google e-books that are fee based; more on the purchase of suchlike as they develop the resources. Meantime, give them at http://books.google.com/ebooks for your own individual purchasing...

How to use the Google Libraries

Those of you using BHCTILibrary and BHCTILibraryToo may find the quantity a bit overwhelming; I'm going to suggest some searching strategies to make your time more fruitful:

• Choose a 'bookshelf' related to a Carroll 'area of concentration', for instance, 'Foundations of Education.'
• Or, type in a search (like Martin Luther) in the search box under my name.

Slow build

Development of my wiki (focused mostly on Library Instruction and expanding web site listings) and the reigns of teaching BHCTI 5000 (Gateway) for BHCTI has not stopped me entirely on my quest to place 10K or so full-view ebooks I'd discovered into Google Book libraries where they can be found easily and sorted by Library of Congress letter ranges, BHCTI areas of concentration, and suchlike 'bookshelves;' but it has sure slowed me down. We hit 1,600 'reviewed' items in the second collection, BHCTILibraryToo ('Too' for short) today; that makes our combined take about 4,100 items in both current collections (the other is located at the first BHCTILibrary, the BHCTILibrary proper, so to speak; therefore, 'Proper' for short). If Google retains its current ceilings of 2.5K titles per collection, I've got about 1.4K left to add to 'Too' before I create a third Googlebook library; I'm going to try speeding that process up with weekly adds there, and updates here. It's been my hope for a while now; and like Bilbo hoping for his eggs and toast in the Hobbit, 'not for the last time.' Stay tuned...