North American Sport Library Network (NASLIN)

Online Newsletter of the North American Sport Library Network is published biannually.

News from Sports Organizations

NASLIN Activities
Announcing the Joint Conference of  IASMHF and NASLIN
The Executive Boards of the International Association of Sports Museums and Halls of Fame and the North American Sport Library Network want to announce a joint conference to be held October 27-30, 1999 in Lake Placid, New York.

The main sessions of the conference will be on October 28-30 with all participants invited to attend all the sessions on those three days.

The Conference Planning Committee will coordinate the whole conference and consists of: IASMHF: Diane Imrie, President; Teri Cober, Assoc. Administrator; Karen Goddy, Board Liaison; and Jacqueline Baker, Director, Lake Placid Olympic Museum NASLIN: Gretchen Ghent, Chair; James Gates, National Baseball Hall of Fame; Henriette Heiny, University of Oregon; Linda Wheeler, Sport Information Resource Centre Accommodation and Transportation: Air service has improved to Lake Placid with US Airways flying into Saranac Lake from the larger centers of Burlington, VT or Albany, NY and Montreal. The Lake Placid Hilton is the conference hotel and rooms have been reserved for conference participants.

Further information about the conference will be forthcoming in late fall. The Conference Planning Committee would like to know if enough rooms have been set aside and we ask that you please send a short email message if there is a likelihood that you will be able to attend. Send the message to Gretchen Ghent.

Distribution of the Nasline Online
As reported in February 1998 issue of Nasline, the paper edition of our newsletter has been discontinued in favor of an online version. In order to assure a wider distribution, a survey was conducted to seek out the kinesiology/PE/sport sciences librarians at US/Canadian colleges and universities where master's and Ph.D. programs are offered in this subject area. The list of institutions was drawn up utilizing information in Peterson's Guide to Graduate Studies. Approximately 304 US colleges/universities and 28 Canadian universities were identified with Master's or Ph.D. programs in sport management, exercise and human performance, sport sciences or physical education.

To date 24 academic US librarians are already on the NASLIN mailing list and 280 US college/university library administrators have been queried or letters written asking whether there is a PE/Kinesiology/Human Performance/Sport Sciences librarian. To date over 100 additional librarians have been identified.

For the Canadian universities, 10 librarians are already on the NASLIN list and an additional 12 are now on the Naslin mailing list.

If readers of Nasline know of other individuals from the academic world or sport organizations who would like to receive an online copy of the newsletter, please notify the editor at gghent@ucalgary.ca.


Sport Information Resource Centre
In the past few months there have been many staffing changes at SIRC. Gilles Chiasson, whose vision and dedication brought the organization from its infancy in the 1970's to the sport information powerhouse it is today, has stepped down as President and is now the Chief Information Officer. His most challenging task at present is the implementation of a new inhouse computer system. SIRC will be migrating from Minisis and implementing a more powerful, inhouse, computer system called Cuadra STAR. It is expected that the file conversion will be complete by the end of September or early October. Debra Gassewitz, who was brought on board last year as Vice-President has been appointed President of SIRC. In addition, Jean-Michel Johnson has been named Director of Reference and Indexing, upon the resignation of Marion Fournier who contributed 15 devoted years at SIRC.

The implementation of Cuadra STAR will give SIRC the capacity to fulfil their goals of furnishing users with many enhanced services reflective of state-of-the-art computer-based era. Cuadra Associates in Los Angeles markets STAR for institutions requiring multi-user, multi-purpose software to manage information collections of all types. Cuadra Associates already provides services to specialized libraries, museums and archives including LC's Congressional Research Service, National Archives and Records Administration and ERIC (for further information see their website, www.cuadra.com)

Included in the SIRC package slated for implementation or enhancement in October is SIRCDetective. SIRC will be making SPORTDiscus available for use by subscribers via the internet. For a long time there have been individuals and small organizations who do not have convenient access to the database as does the university/college or large organizational subscribers. Through a monthly subscription fee of $49.95US these monthly subscribers can search the database to their hearts content. Monthly renewal can be made any number of times. Payment can be made through checks or credit card. When the searcher goes to SIRC's SPORTquest website and clicks on SIRCDetective, the researcher is taken to the OVID system, where the database can be utilized on the OVID web-based server.

SPORTUpdate
In the past an individual researcher could lodge custom-made search profile with a vendor (e.g.BRS, a now defunct vendor) in order to have delivery of those citations which meet the search profile specifications. With the SPORT Update service, patrons can establish a search profile which reflects the individual research subject, adjust it once, and have the monthly citations delivered via paper or email. This service will cost $99US/year.

Fulltext Journals
If you have surfed the SIRC website recently www.sportquest.com you will note that a new journal has been announced; Journal of Excellence (2 issues per year), edited by Terry Orlick. Do note the cost of the subscription both in fulltext and paper format ($34.95US and $50US respectively). In fact, the database indexers have now begun to index other online, fulltext journal articles and it is expected that in the Oct. 98 database update, you will see the articles which are published in the Journal of Excellence in the SPORTDiscus database.

Jean Michel Johnson reports that they have also just indexed, Lecturas: educacion fisica y deportes, revista digital, which is archived on the SPORTQuest site. There are two new fields added to the document record to accommodate indexing of articles housed on websites: URLADD - the exact website URL address is shown in this field (field tag number U560) and AUEMAL - this field contains the email address of the author of the article (field tag number U550)

As October is Women's studies month, Jean Michel's indexers have also indexed the Canadian Association for Women in Sport and Physical Education's newsletter called Action. For instance an article entitled: "What one sport is doing for women" in the Winter 1998 issue, www.sportquest.com/women/481435.html. The number 481435 is also the Accession Number. This is a really exciting enhancement to the database.


News of NASLIN Members
Over the past six months we have had contact with a number of sport information specialists (in addition to the kinesiology/sport sciences university/college librarians) and want to welcome everyone to NASLIN. Below are some additional members: Rafael Lind, Director, Inst. for Sport Development, Puerto Rico Dept of Sports and Recreation has re-established contact. He reports that the Government of Puerto Rico has implemented a new communication network, thus he was incommunicado for a long time. Note his new email address ralind@prtc.net. He can still be reached by snail mail at:
PO Box 3207,
San Juan, Puerto Rico 00902
Tel: 809-721-2739 FAX: 809-724-4224

We also welcome Tanya C. Gray, Coordinator, Media Assets, United States Golf Association. She can be reached at:
Golf House,
PO Box 708, Liberty Corner Rd.,
Far Hills, NJ 07931-0708,
Tel: 908-781-1053 FAX: 908-234-1472
tgray@usga.org

Doug Stark, the new archivist/librarian at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, MA is busy assisting in the planning for a new Hall of Fame, working on organizing the NBHF archives/library and answering the many reference questions posed to him by researchers. He mentioned that the collection is open to researchers, but by appointment only. NMBHF offers reproduction services for the photographic, film and video collections. The "Hoop Hall" recently unveiled a special exhibit of women's professional basketball. Doug does not have an email address as yet (he'll have one when the new building is built - hopefully by fall of 2000), but he can be reached in the traditional way at:
PO Box 179,
Springfield, MA
01101-0179
Tel: 413-781-6500 Ext 112

Henriette Heiny, Director of the International Institute for Sport and Human Performance and Microform Publications at the University of Oregon reports that a new librarian is on board who will be cataloguing the theses for the Microform Publications, be involved in collection development and see to the acquisition of theses for the project. Anne Miller was most recently employed at the library of the Bastyr University in Seattle. Anne can be reached via email at micrpubs@oregon.uoregon.edu or by telephone at 541-346-0932


Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles Website Update
AAFLA is continuing on its way to provide sport researchers with a plethora of services and since our last newsletter issue, the Library's catalogue is available for searching on their website www.aafla.org. The search engine allows author/title/subject searching. Do note, however, when using LC subject headings to put two dashes between the subject words (e.g. baseball -- history).

Other exciting news from Wayne Wilson is that the International Olympic Committee has given AAFLA permission to convert 100 years (1894-1994) of the Olympic Review to digital format for publication on the AAFLA website. Both the French and English editions will be scanned and made available in PDF format.

As mentioned earlier, the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games Official Reports are available at the AAFLA website, but now 1896 is available as is St. Moritz 1928 and Lake Placid 1932. The Official Report for Paris 1924 should be available by the end of October.


National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Researchers who have recently gone to the NBHFM website have noticed the archival information and other baseball research which is available. James Gates, Librarian at the NBHFM, is busy implementing a new library system, INNOPAC, contracted through Innovative Interfaces. He and his staff are also in the process of raising funds for the required hardware and software so that the catalogue will eventually be accessible via the internet.


The Sporting News Library
Jim Meier, librarian at The Sporting News is busy reconverting and reorganizing the book collection utilizing the records in OCLC's WorldCat database. He has found matches to 6,000 books and has added The Sporting News (non-circulating) to the records already in WorldCat. There are still over 500 books that OCLC does not have and he will have to do original cataloguing for these in the future. The next step though, is networking their database to the many editors and sportswriters at The Sporting News. This latter activity is planned for 1999.


National College Athletic Association Update
As reported earlier, NCAA headquarters will be making a move to Indianapolis, Indiana in summer 1999 into a renovated floor mill, built in 1872 and which is in the Indiana Register of Historic Places. Mary Johnston, Librarian, also mentioned that the library and archives will undergo many changes as they are in the midst of selecting a computer system for all NCAA records. First priority is to scan and index all agendas, supplements and minutes of NCAA committee meetings from 1950's forward and then to ensure storage and retrieval of all electronic, paper, film and tape records for, initially, NCAA staff and members, and, eventually, to the public.

Visit their website for major publications available recently www.ncaa.org. Other publications available free of charge are:

  • Characteristics of NCAA Division I recruits in the 1994- 1995 Initial-Eligibility Clearinghouse, 1997, 25p. (NCAA research report; 96-03).
  • Drug-testing program, 1997-98. 1997 12p.
  • Race demographics of NCAA member institutions' athletics personel. 1998, 111p. (chiefly tables)