The electronic journal has "come of age". Spurred by the increasing
sophistication of Web technology, and an exponential increase in the
use of the Internet, "e-journals" are experiencing phenomenal growth.
The number of titles appearing in electronic form is advancing so quickly
that no reliable count of the total is available. The last edition (1996-97)
of the Association of Research Libraries' Directory of Electronic Journals
listed more than 7,000, but there are well over 20,000 now.
What exactly is an electronic or online journal? A few years ago, a
journal available via CD-ROM, ftp, telnet, e-mail or a listserv would
qualify. While that is still technically true, the modern definition
generally refers to a journal available on the Internet. These are,
in many cases, electronic, full-text versions of the print copy, but,
increasingly, journals are appearing in electronic form alone. They
carry enormous potential: speedy delivery, availability unlimited by
time and geography, and expanded search capability. E-journals can include
links to other articles, to images, and even to multimedia. Understandably,
they have taken off in the scientific disciplines first, where currency
of information and speed of delivery are so important, but the humanities
and social sciences are steadily making up for lost ground.
E-journals are accessible from anywhere on the Brown campus: offices,
dorm rooms, as well as the Library. Access is governed by license agreements
between Brown and the journal publishers which limit use to "authorized"
Brown users, which includes primarily faculty, staff, and students.
With a valid net-ID, e-journals and other electronic resources are also
available from off-campus via an Internet service provider (ISP), utilizing
the University's proxy server, described on the LibraryÍs Research Center
page.
At Brown, growth in the number of e-journals closely mirrors the growth
on the larger stage. At the close of the 1998/99 academic year, the
Library had established access to about 250 electronic journals. In
the course of the last 18 months, however, that number has soared with
the addition of more than 1800 new online titles. The large majority
of these new titles were not even available in print at Brown previously,
which greatly expands our holdings, particularly in the scientific,
technical, and medical areas. Alphabetical and broad subject lists of
the e-journals are located on the LibraryÍs Web page. E-journals also
appear in Josiah, our online catalog, with notations of the actual extent
of our holdings. The Web version of Josiah provides direct links to
the electronic texts. Some of the major e-journal collections are described
below.
Newly acquired Science Direct provides access to the full-text of some
1,100 key scientific journals, containing 500,000 articles, published
by Elsevier Science and its affiliates. You can browse journals by title
and subject, and tables of contents; search by title, author or keyword;
set limits by date against all or a subset of a journal; or go directly
to a full-text. 700 of the titles are not currently received here in
print form. JSTOR, Journal Storage, from an independent, not-for-profit
organization created by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, helps the scholarly
community to take advantage of information technology to save shelf
space in libraries. The retrospective collection--in many cases providing
decades of coverage„is comprised of 117 core titles in 15 different
disciplines in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Phase II will
add 9 journal titles in the general sciences. The texts are fully searchable.
Project Muse is a collaborative project of the Johns Hopkins University
Press and the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, offering the full-text of
over 100 scholarly journals in the fields of literature and criticism,
history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education,
political science, gender studies, and many others. Springer-Verlag
provides over 400 full-text journals, 300 of which are new to Brown,
in life sciences, chemistry, geoscience, computer science, mathematics,
medicine, physics and astronomy, engineering, environment, and economics.
The number of e-journals available at Brown will continue to grow in
the coming months. As titles are added, they will be included in Josiah
and on our Web listings. If you know of a title or titles available
electronically that you believe the Library should link, or if you have
any questions or problems accessing e-journals, please contact
steven_thompson@brown.edu
(x 3-2976)
---Steven E. Thompson, Head of Serials
