Web of Science

[David Goodman]

Princeton University decided to get Web of Science from ISI, and we have
been using it since the middle of December. Although certainly
expensive, we consider it justified because:

1. It is of value to all the subject specialties in the library,
including difficult to cover inter-disciplinary fields, and including
areas for which there is no satisfactory index, or none at least that we
have available. The fact that all 3 pts can be searched together is very
much appreciated for eg. neuroscience, history ^& philosophy  of science,
etc. 
 2. It provides unique searching capabilities (Citation Searching,
implied citations, etc.)
3. Items appear as rapidly as the online version of Current
Contents.(typically 4 to 6 weeks after publication)
This is much faster than the CDs. 
4. The capability for multi-year combined searching and for searching
all cited authors not just first authors are very major improvements, not
available on the CDs.
5. The ability to access the system easily on the web anywhere on
campus, not just the machines in
the library is very important. 

The interface, in the ISI tradition, is unfortunately still somewhat
confusing. My help page is at:
http://www.princeton.edu/~biolib/instruct/SCI.html

We were able to afford it because:
1. We canceled our subscription  to the Current Contents CDs
2. We already were subscribing to the multi-user version on the Science
Citation Index (and also SSCI and AHCI) annual CDs
3. We received a large credit for our currently held ISI products
4. We received a consortium discount through NERL

The annual cost after the discounts was not much more than we had been
paying for the CC + SCI + SSCI + AHCI CDs. The one-time database cost
after the credits was low enough that we were able to find one-time
funds to cover it. We now have 1983 + for all 3 indexes. We currently
have subscribed for 5 simultaneous users, and are committed to
increasing the number as needed. We are beginning a systematic program
of user instruction with the help of ISI; they have excellent instructors.

Other libraries I have heard from are also very happy with it. The key
advantages over the disks are:


David Goodman, Princeton University Biology Library				
dgoodman at pucc.princeton.edu            609-258-3235