The Illinois Digital Academic Library (IDAL) is now ready for use! This package of full-text journals and other resources from EBSCO Publishing will provide indexing to a broad range of journal articles as well as the full text of many of those articles. (The percentage of full text varies from database to database.)
here to try IDAL. You will be connected to an EBSCO page where you are given three options. The first one, EBSCOhost, provides links to all the IDAL resources, including::

• Academic Search Elite: Provides full text for nearly 1,250 journals covering the social sciences, humanities, general science, multi-cultural studies, and education. 
• Business Source Elite: Provides full text for nearly 960 journals covering business, management, economics, finance, banking, and accounting. 
• Newspaper Source: Provides selected full text articles from 143 U.S. and international newspapers. 

The three medical resources, Clinical Reference Systems (over 7,000 reports, in every-day language, describing symptoms, treatments, risks and after-effects of a vast array of medical topics and conditions), Health Source Plus (full text for over 280 health periodicals, over 1,000 health pamphlets, and 23 health reference books), and USP DI Volume II, Advice for the Patient, can be searched together directly under the third option, Health Source Plus.

This main page also provides links to detailed descriptions of the databases (first link on the left) and to help (top right).

This resource is as new to the library staff as it is to you, so we would value your feedback on what you think! Through our library home page, we will provide you with more information as we have it.
We have discovered another source of some full-text information, this one from IBIS. Here, short (one to three pages) ERIC documents will display in full, rather than as just a citation. (Note that this does not happen in an ERIC search on FirstSearch.) The never-ending surprises of technology.
We have just installed a public work station just for CD-ROM's.  The purpose of this workstation is to provide students with a location dedicated to use the CD-ROMs (non-music CD's) available in the library, including Reserve materials such as CollegeSource and several science titles. (The six disks of CollegeSource  provides access to 3,600 college catalogs.) 
Yet another enhancement to our online catalog is that now you can do a Millkin-specific keyword search in addition to the author, title, and subject browse search. As with a browse search, you can refine a keyword search by date, by language, and by material type. I believe that you will be quite pleased by this enhancement.
A new page on the library's Web site deals with copyright issues as these apply within the academic environment.  "Wondering what your rights are when duplicating information for a class?  Want to know if you can make a copy of a piece of music to perform?  How is information on the Internet protected by copyright?" The page consists primarily of annotated links to sites at other (mostly academic) institutions that have already dealt with these kinds of questions in some depth. (We are working on a companion print handout on the same topic.)
Have you noticed that every so often now, there is a new topical link featured on the library's home page? Some of these will last only a few days (such as for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's birthday on January 30th), while others may be featured for longer (such as the Encyclopaedia Britannica Guide to Black History link in place as I write this). These spotlights are the work of Susan Avery, Reference Librarian.
The Encyclopedia Britannica link (above) is an example of the richness of that ongoing electronic library resource. In addition all the information which is also in the print version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, in the online version you get audio and video clips, as well as links to other carefully selected Web sites related to each topic. If you have not already tried this resource, do so now!