Maximising access to electronic journals
The Library has an Online Catalogue Group (OCG) which oversees developments to the Library catalogue. The OCG is continually looking for ways to improve the Library catalogue, and access to the millions of items in the Library's collection.
Over the past 5 years, the number of electronic journals that the Library subscribes to has risen from hundreds to over 10,000.
Ejournals are listed in the Library catalogue, and have also been output to static pages on the Library web site, arranged by subject and alphabetically. These lists are not comprehensive.
The OCG has developed a plan to provide improved access to electronic journals by title and by subject. The plan addresses the ability to browse for electronic journals, and to search for specific electronic journals based on title or subject.
Wherever possible, electronic journals are listed in the Library catalogue, and this should be the preferred place to look for ejournals.
Scoping
The Library has implemented a new feature of the catalogue called scoping. This allows you to do a search which searches only the electronic resources, or only the electronic journals.
Access to electronic journals by title
The alphabetical lists of electronic journals are to be maintained on a weekly basis.
In some cases, we get electronic access to a journal from multiple web sites, which are all listed in the catalogue, but are not all listed in the static lists. As a result, work is being done on the lists so that they include all locations for a title.
The pages will be broken into lists of approx 200 titles, so that the pages are quicker to load.
Access to electronic journal by subject
The most effective way to find electronic journals covering a particular subject is to search the catalogue.
The keyword search function allows you to search journal title, subject (separately or together) and choose electronic journals from the collection drop-box.
The new scoping option makes these searches even simpler.
The subject lists of electronic journals are no longer being updated, and will be phased out when scoping is implemented.
Other new features of the catalogue will allow you to save searches and be notified when new titles are added matching your criteria. The Online Catalogue Group will announce these new features when they are available.
Please note that the catalogue does not enable you to search for particular articles within the electronic journals, but the Library does have many other databases that can assist you in this task.
Go to Library databases
Comments and questions
The Online Catalogue Group welcomes comments about this plan and access to Library resources through the catalogue.
Email the Online Catalogue Group