[WEB4LIB] Re: web searchable full text journal list database

[Jian Liu]

Dear all,

I have received quite a few inquiries since I posted the following message
to this list. Most are interested in how it was done, others ask about
management issues, such as updates. Based on what I read, this might be a
topic of general interest. So I decided to post the reply here to reach a
broader audience. If you have further questions, I'll be glad to answer
them.

First of all, our library has been interested in something like this for
quite some time now. We even had some meetings about how and who to do it.
Everybody agrees that it has great use, not only to patrons, but also to 
librarians, to Reference, to Interlibrary Loan, etc. But the stopper is,
again, how and who.

Remember Peter Scott's post about his Electronic Journals Resource
Directory about 2 or 3 months ago? I started playing with Links after
that. Thank you, Peter. This program is best suited for maintaining an
internet resources page. It allows for quick and easy addition/deletion,
modification and verification of links. 

I first built our Internet Quick Reference with it, at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/internet/ and it has been maintained by a
colleague of mine here since then. I began to realize that this program
can do a lot of similiar things. So I made some modifications to the codes
and came up with The Parliament of Australia: A Bibliography, at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/bib/australia_parliament/ and another
colleague here took it over and has been maintaining/updating it. You can
see big differences between the two, and the major difference is that it
has no external links. From there to the current Locating Online Fulltext
Journals and Newspapers at http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/fulltext/ was
just a small step. 

More about Links: it is not a database program. It stores data in a flat
ascii file, and it builds static html pages, as you can see from the
browsing part of the page, which no longer needs the program after it is
built. Only the searching part is dynamic, which is slow, as you have
experienced. The number of records (over 11,000) is probably close to
its upper limits now. 

The most tricky part of the project is data collection and update. I'll
come back to it next time.

Best,

Jian Liu
Indiana University Libraries

> 
> We just finished one very similar to your description, at:
> http://www.indiana.edu/~librcsd/fulltext/
> 
> Jian
> Indiana University Libraries
> 
> > 
> > 
> > In order to provide better access to our increasing collection of
> > electronic journal resources (Academic Universe, SearchBank, Proquest,
> > Project Muse, JStor, etc.) we are considering creating a web-searchable
> > database of all the full text journals titles we have access to.  The
> > database would include the titles and, if available, the dates of full
> > text coverage. Patrons could perform a title search and, if we have
> > e-access, get a display with the title, dates of full text coverage and
> > a hot link to the vendor's database from which we access the journal. 
> > 
> > Although we catalog in our OPAC journals we access from smaller full
> > text collections like JStor and Project Muse, it is not practical in
> > many instances to have bib records in our OPAC for journals from larger
> > collections. Issues of staff time and the stability of journal
> > availability tend to prohibit such projects.
> > 
> > Our database would likely be built from the journal lists that the
> > various vendors provide from their sites. The biggest problem I can
> > foresee would be extracting the information we want from each of the
> > vendors individually formatted journal lists. Of course maintaining the
> > currency of the database will be a chore as well. I'm sure this isn't an
> > original idea, but I'm wondering if anyone else has attempted this and
> > what the outcome was? 
> > 
> > Thanks
> > -- 
> > David Vose
> > Binghamton University Libraries
> > (607) 777-4907
> > 
>