Understanding Electronic Holdings & Availability
As electronic resources of all kinds–books,
journals, Internet resources—become
increasingly “available”,
it is sometimes challenging to remain
aware of the extent of actual availability
of the different journal resources.
Adding to the challenge is the fact
that the world of electronic availability
is in a state of flux right now as
more and more resources become digitized.
As publishers see the increasing
availability and popularity of electronic
resources, many different types of
efforts are underway to ensure that
each gets a piece of the pie. Some
publishers are offering different
types of “subscriptions”
to their electronic resources to supplement
the more traditional hard copy resources.
While some are a part of the traditional
hard copy subscription and need only
to be “turned on” to make
them available electronically, many
other arrangements currently exist
and continue to change frequently.
That is exactly the reason why a specific
resource may be “here” today
and “gone” tomorrow. Libraries
often cannot control these changes.
The end result will probably mean
increasing costs for electronic resources,
something libraries are already seeing.
To help in the challenge of understanding
availability better, the Library has
prepared the following short list
of the types of statements one might
see on the Homepage indicating how
much of a journal resource is available
online and through what service. Availabilities
are varied because publishers are
at different stages in digitizing
past journal years and also because
different costing structures by the
publisher make different years available.
- Dates Indicated (19xx-Present):
The journal is available from January
of the first year noted through
the most current issue made available
electronically.
- Current X Months Only:
The journal is available only for
the most recent number of months
indicated. When a new month’s
issue is added, the oldest month’s
issue is removed.
- Archival: The journal
is available from first date noted
to last date noted.
Currently, Himmelfarb uses the following
services to provide access to journals
online:
- Ovid
- Proquest
- Ingenta/Catchword
- MD Consult
- Lexis/Nexis
- Publisher
For the most part, the actual service
used may impact the user only if he/she
does not have access to that service
(such as MD Consult) or if a resource
is only available on-campus. It is
also possible to link directly to
some journal resources when doing
a search on an Ovid database. See
the Himmelfarb Homepage for more details
at http://www.gwumc.edu/library/.
Stay tuned for ongoing changes!!!
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