[Web4lib] Peter's Digital Reference Shelf - October 2006

[Lois Kiehl]

Peter's Digital Reference Shelf - October 2006

The October edition of Peter's Digital Reference Shelf has been
posted on the Gale Group website. This column is available free of
charge to all users at:
	http://www.gale.com/reference/peter/index.htm

Peter Jacso is a faculty member at the University of Hawaii School of
Library and Information Science. His in-depth reviews are illustrated with
dozens of screenshots and provide a multi-linked virtual walk-through of
the databases he evaluates. Jacso was the 1998 recipient of the Louis
Shores-Oryx Press Award of the Reference and User Services Association for
his discerning database reviews.

This month Peter reviews:

[1] Aardvark
The smartest and most comprehensive Web portal on the library and
information science and technology scene in and about Asia and the Pacific
region. It offers current news about databases, information services,
digital journals, search software developments, library schools and movers
and shakers in the region (and beyond, as they relate to Asia and the
Pacific and Oceania).

[2] Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts (LISTA)
This may be the best gift that library and information professionals ever
received from commercial information services. LISTA is an open-access
mega indexing/abstracting database on its own. Depending on the context
and mix of the other (subscription-based) databases of EBSCO in which the
LISTA database is invoked, it also offers seamless links to 552,560
full-text documents, as well as a swift pathfinder to full-text documents
of library and information science and technology literature in the
digital archives of publishers to which a library subscribes. (This is not
to be confused with the subscription-based database known as LISTA with
Full Text). Some of the software features need improvement but you can
look this gift horse in the mouth and be delighted.

If you missed the September Reviews you can still catch them at the same
URL.

[1] Annual Reviews Archive
Annual Reviews form an exceptionally high impact publication series in
about 30 disciplines, providing excellent literature reviews on the most
current issues in the subject fields. The full text of more than 20,000
reviews are freely searchable. The full text itself is not open access but
the documents from the "Annual Review of ..." series are very reasonably
priced for instant download.

[2] ScienceDirect
The largest of the scholarly publishers digital archives now has nearly 8
million full-text searchable journal articles and as many open access
bibliographic records (about 75% of them with open access abstracts,
according to my test searches). ScienceDirect sports a rejuvenated,
swifter, and breezier software, which nevertheless needs correction in the
algorithm of matching cited and citing items.

See the Archives on the Gale site for 145 databases previously reviewed.

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