LOUIS E-Struction -- Ejournals E-MAIL ORIENTATION TO LIBRARY RESOURCES Oct. 29, 2001 LSU's Electronic Journal Collection Description: In addition to the databases offering full-text journal articles, LSU has access to thousands of journals in electronic format. Many of these are electronic counterparts of print journals to which the library subscribes. Others are journals available in electronic format only. Many of our print versions have been moved into compact shelving to create more shelf room in the library. Besides the convenience of desktop, 24-hour access, electronic journals sometimes provide users with specialized features like hyperlinks to cited sources or personalized archives. Be sure to explore the features available with your favorite journals. This message covers some of the major collections to which we subscribe. For a complete list of electronic journals, see the Ejournals link on the Libraries web site at http://www.lib.lsu.edu/epubs/ejournals.html. Here, the journals can be searched by title or listed by subject. This past summer, the Libraries began registering journal titles with publishers of journals we have in print, if we are able to get electronic access with a print subscription. If you run across any titles on the page mentioned above, and the links don't work, please let me know. Not all the title are registered yet, but I would like to know if links don't work in case there is another problem. *************************************** Access: The electronic journals, or ejournals, can be accessed from the Libraries' web site (http://www.lib.lsu.edu). Click on "Electronic Journals" under "Electronic Resources." Generally these journals are available from any computer on campus (with an i.p address beginning 130.39). Many of the electronic journals can also be accessed from off campus. A few of the publishers do not allow us to provide access to off campus users. *************************************** General Search Techniques: Unlike print counterparts of the journals, most of the electronic journals can be searched, as an individual journal and/or as part of a collection. In this way, the ejournals offer searching methods much like the databases covered in earlier email messages. Moreover, they provide the ability to browse, like print journals, through the tables of contents, issue-by-issue. Below are descriptions of seven ejournal collections to which LSU subscribes, with some very basic descriptions and searching tips. Because there are so many, I have not gone into depth. Please explore our web site or contact me if you have further questions. *************************************** 1. Accessible Archives http://www.lib.lsu.edu/databases/descriptions/accarchiv.html Offers full-text searching of African American Newspapers of the 19th Century, including Freedom's Journal, The Coloured American, The North Star, The National Era, Provincial Freeman, Frederick Douglass Paper, and The Christian Recorder. This database is available from off campus. *************************************** 2. American Chemical Society http://www.lib.lsu.edu/databases/descriptions/amerchem.html This database provides full text access to about thirty journals, with the ability to search all of The American Chemical Society journals, including the archives, which features access back to Vol. 1 of all their titles. *************************************** 3. American Institute of Physics http://www.lib.lsu.edu/databases/descriptions/AmerInsPhy.html Access to about eighty journals published by AIP including not only Physics but also Chemistry, Mathematics and Computer Science. Use SpinWeb to search the AIP database. Searches in SpinWeb will provide results from all journals within the SpinWeb database including those not subscribed to by LSU. Access to the full text will only be available for journals that the library subscribes to. There is currently no way to limit searching to journals with full text, but articles for which the full text is available are clearly marked with a "pdf" link, and you can search within a specific journal if you wish. You can access the individual titles from the ejournals web page, or the whole database of ejournals form the Indexes and Databases page. This collection is only available from on-campus. You will need the Adobe Reader to view pdf documents. The reader is available for free at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html *************************************** 4. JSTOR http://www.lib.lsu.edu/databases/descriptions/jstor.html JSTOR was developed as an electronic archive for scholarly journal literature, emphasizing the following academic areas: African American Studies, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Ecology, Economics, Education, Finance, History, Literature, Mathematics, Philosophy, Political Science, Population Studies, Sociology, and Statistics. Because JSTOR is an archive, it does not include current journal issues. The most current issues are two to five years old. To search JSTOR journals as a group, click on "Search JSTOR" from the initial web page. Enter keywords to be searched either in the title, author, abstract or full text of the article. Be sure to select at least one subject category from the foot of the page before clicking on the search button. When searching the full text of an article, JSTOR will tell you on which page(s) your search term can be found. To print from JSTOR, you must first download the entire article. Use Acrobat Reader. The Acrobat Reader is available for free at http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep.html Once you have downloaded the Adobe Reader you can print an article using the print button from the menu on the left. *************************************** 5. Project Muse http://www.lib.lsu.edu/databases/descriptions/projectmuse.html Project Muse currently includes electronic access to more than 225 journals, many published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Journals included are mainly in the fields of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Searching Project Muse is fairly simple, enter search terms with Boolean operators connecting keywords. Information about searching Muse using Boolean operators, truncators and specific fields can be found at http://www.press.jhu.edu:80/plweb/info/docs/operat.html If a simple search does not retrieve adequate results, "fuzzy" and "dictionary" searches can be used to increase your results. A "fuzzy" search will provide alternate spellings for the first word in your search. Muse suggests that these alternate spellings (and misspellings) can retrieve articles that contain spelling mistakes caused by OCR processing (scanning text). The "dictionary" search will scan the database to determine if the word you are searching for is included in the database and will provide a list of similar words that can be added to your search. Project Muse journals are available on and off campus to LSU students, faculty, and staff. *************************************** 6. Springer Verlag: Link http://www.lib.lsu.edu/databases/descriptions/springer.html Link is the electronic package from Springer Verlag. LSU has access to over 400 Link journals covering the sciences, particularly chemistry, biology, and mathematics. Searches in Link will provide results from all journals within the Link database including those not subscribed to by LSU. Access to the full text will only be available for journals that the library subscribes to. There is currently no way to limit searching to journals with full text, but "Power Search" allows you to specify which journal you wish to search. Springer Link journals are available on and off campus to LSU students, faculty, and staff. *************************************** If you encounter problems accessing an electronic journal, please contact me. As always, if you have questions about LSU's electronic journal collection, feel free to email or call me directly. Sigrid Kelsey