Free Information Sources and Services on Internet for Libraries: a Selective Compilation

Free Information Sources and Services on Internet for Libraries: A Selective Compilation

Subhash Khode & Divik Kumar

Abstract

Over the last few years, internet has revolutionised the ways by which librarians can provide information sources and services to their users. This paper describes how with the help of internet, librarians provide access to the various types of online information sources and services to their users, which are freely available on internet including e-journals, e-books, online databases, encyclopaedias, virtual libraries etc. The paper also contains various examples of these sources with their Universal Resource Locator (URLs).

1. INTRODUCTION for a fee or free, because studies have shown that online accessibility of articles have The use of internet in the libraries is dramatically increased their citation, rapidly increasing and is changing the increasing the journal’s impact factor and the traditional functions and services of the author’s prestige1. libraries as well as role of the librarians. Internet is also being used as a very Internet is being used as an efficient medium important tool to access free information for accessing, storing and disseminating of information worldwide. Internet also provides sources and services. Free online information sources and services can be access on worldwide access to various useful paid as internet without paying any subscription well as free information sources and services charges to the publishers and users do not such as online databases, library catalogue, need to have any membership in the publishers’ catalogues, electronic journals, online encyclopaedias, online dictionaries, organisation. Users can access and download required information available on e-books, e-conferences, virtual libraries, these sources in their computers and can use website of organisations, etc. With the advent for their academic and research purpose only. of computer, networking and internet, it is possible to access information sources from The selection of free websites as part of anywhere at anytime. Many digital libraries, collection development is activity practised by publishers and organisations provide access many librarians and is an important topic for to their online information sources 24 hours to discussion 3. With the introduction and global users on internet. Printed information popularity of internet, most of the commercial, sources are being replaced by electronic government, educational and research information sources and are available on organisations/bodies/institutions such as CD-ROMs, online databases, internet and banks, companies, universities, etc., have other networks due to developments in developed their own websites and provide information and communication technology. latest and useful information including data, Authors and publishers are also much in services, products, publications, programs favour of making available their articles online and changes related to their fields/subjects. DESIDOC Bulletin of Inf Technol, 2004, 24(4) 13 Therefore these websites can be useful for t Journal of Digital Information (JoDI) researchers who always require the latest http://jodi.ecs.soton.ac.uk/ information. t Journal of Economic Education http://www.indiana.edu/~econed/ 2. METHODOLOGY t Education Review Online information sources and services http://www.triangle.co.uk/index.htm have been identified using various search engines on internet. The search is limited to 3.2 Directories of E-Journals only free online information sources and There are many directories of e-journals services. The words ‘free online journal’, ‘free available on internet, in which some include online electronic encyclopaedia’, ‘free trial’, only free online e-journals and some include and ‘free dictionary’, etc., were used as both free and fee based. For example keywords for searching. The examples of free information sources and services given in this q DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals) paper are not limited to any specific http://www.doaj.org/ disciplines but includes various disciplines. This directory provides links to 550 free The free sources are not exhaustive but only online journals covering all subjects and examples because it is not possible to list out languages. all the information sources and services available on internet in this paper. 3.3 Free Online E-Books 3. FREE INFORMATION SOURCES E-books provide powerful search and retrieval facilities to the users. E-books are The internet provides following free available in two forms: information sources: (a) Electronic version of printed books 3.1 Free Online E-Journals (b) Published in only electronic form. Electronic journals (E-Journals) are Agee4 states that e-books and published in electronic format and distributed downloadable literature are becoming more to its users via internet or CD-ROM. E— popular. When the library users need good journals are also known as ‘Digital Journals’, literature in digital format, one of these three ‘Online Journals’, ‘Electronic Serials’ and outstanding internet sources can be tried for ‘Electronic Publications’. E—journals do not the download. In just a few keystrokes library require time consuming printing and mailing users can download an immense amount of process. Many publishers and organisations literature absolutely free: offer free access to their online journals. The t Project Gutenberg following are some examples of free online http://promo.net/pg/ electronic journals, which also maintain archives of their past issues: t The University of Virginia (USA) http://etext.lib.virgina.edu/books t Current Research In Social Psychology http://www.uiowa.edu/~grpproc/crisp/crisp. t Internet Public Library (IPL) html www.ipl.org. t Information Research: Electronic journal Many educational and research http://informationr.net/ organizations/institutions provide free access to their e-books collection or provide link to t Journal of Computer-Mediated Communi free e-books available on internet. For cation examples http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/ t http://www.free-ebooks.net/ t Advancing Women in Leadership http://www.advancingwomen.com/awl/awl. This site provides access to free fictions, html tutorials, marketing and business e-books as 14 DESIDOC Bulletin of Inf Technol, 2004, 24 (4) well as resources to aid in promoting e-books. 3.5 Free Newspapers E-books can be downloaded. The newspapers provide information about t http://www.free-books.org/ current events on various issues through This site includes more than 100,000 news, articles and advertisements. Many pages of free books and teaching materials. major newspapers are also offering free Over 20,000 pages of books and electronic access to their readers. Some commentaries by Carl Peterson and over popular titles are: 1000 classic books reformatted to Peterson t The Times of India e-writing styles are available. http://www.timesofindia.com t http://www.ebooks4free.net/ t The Hindu This site provides hundreds of links to www.hinduonnet.com e-books and manuscripts, historical t Korea Times documents and literature and much more. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr t www.ebrary.com t Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com This site now has over 20,000 e-book titles available. A Middle East collection of 3.6 Free Online Dictionaries approximately 100 full-text books and maps is There are many free online dictionaries now available for free online viewing. available on internet. Some of them are: 3.4 Free Conference Proceedings t Free On-line Dictionary of Computing Many full text conference proceedings are http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/index.html also available free of charge to all on internet. t Internet Picture Dictionary For examples: http://www.pdictionary.com/ t 6th Annual Defense Economics Conference t Online Dictionary of Library and Information OSD (PA&E)/Institute for Defense Analysis, Science September 28-29, 2000 http://www.wesu.edu/library/odlis.html http://www.economics.osd.mil/Complete_S ummary.pdf 3.7 Free Online Databases, Encyclopaedias t Informing Science + IT Education Conference, Finland, June 24-27, 2003 One of the major revolutions introduced by http://2003.InSITE.nu the internet is the vastly increased access to February 2003 issue of Infocus Newsletter online information made possible via the provides links to various full text papers of world wide web. The range of information conference proceedings in the area of library sources, in terms of both bibliographic and image databases and specialized websites on and information science at 6 http://www.infolibrarian.com/confpr.htm. Some all subjects is vast . There are many free of these are given below: online databases, encyclopaedias and dictionaries available on the web. For t Digital Libraries, 1995: The Second Annual example: Conference on the Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries, 1995. t US Patent Database http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/DL95/contents.ht http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html ml t ERIC Database http://askeric.org/Eric/ t Special Libraries Association Conference: Putting Knowledge to Work, 2002. ERIC is the world’s largest source of http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conferen education information, with more than one ce/2002annual/confpap2002/papers2002c million abstracts of documents and journal onf.cfm articles on education research and practice.

DESIDOC Bulletin of Inf Technol, 2004, 24(4) 15 t Conservation Database journals on their websites. Librarians and http://www.wcmc.org.uk/cis/index.html researchers can use these online sample t Encyclopedia.com copies before subscribing to them. For It is internet’s premiere free encyclopaedia, example : that provides users with more than 57,000 q Sage Publications has launched an online frequently updated articles from the sample copy service for all visitors to their Columbia Encyclopaedia, Ed. 6. Each article website: is enhanced with links to articles of www.sagepub.co.uk. newspapers and magazines, pictures and Taylor & Francis Group provides a sample maps. q copy of all its journal published at t Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopaedia http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/listings/t.ht http://www.wikipedia.org/ ml Wikipedia is a multilingual project to create Some publishers and organisations a complete and accurate free content provide a facility to fill-up a form on their encyclopaedia. It was started in January 2001 website to get free sample copy of their and are currently working on 168375 articles printed journal. A sample copy of following in the English version. journals can be get to fill-up a form available 3.8 Free Virtual Libraries on their website: Virtual Libraries offer a universe of t MIT Sloan Management Review information to the users 24 hours. The few http://mit-smr.com/freeissue.html virtual libraries are: t Learned Publishing t Free Management Library http://www.alpsp.org/form/lpsamfm.htm http://www.managementhelp.org/ t Managing Information t Environmental Virtual Library http://www.managinginformation.com/subs http://earthsystems.org/virtuallibrary/vho criptions.htm me.html 4.2 Free Tables of Contents t Virtual Library of Energy http://www/crest.org/index.html Service t Virtual Library: Business and Economics Many leading publishers and organisations http://vlib.org/BusinessEconomics.html do not provide sample copies of their journals t Marketing Virtual Library but they provide table of contents of their journal/s on their website. For example: http://www.knowthis.com/ t Education Virtual Library q Elsevier Journals http://www.byu.edu/ipt/vlibrary/ www.elsevier.com/locate/contentsdirect q Blackwell Journals 4. FREE ONLINE SERVICES http://select.blackwellpublishers.co.uk Following types of services are available free to the internet users: 4.3 Free Abstracts Services 4.1 Free Online Sample Copies Some of the publishers provide abstracts of the articles of their journals. For examples: Traditionally some publishers and q Kluwer organisations provide sample copies of their journals for business promotion but it is not http://www.wkap.nl/kaphtml.htm/TOCSEA RCH possible for any publisher to provide free sample copy of their printed journals to all the Kluwer online search function allows libraries. With the advent of internet many searching of tables of contents and abstracts publishers and organisations are making of articles contained in the Kluwer Online available the free sample copy of their collection of over 250 journals. 16 DESIDOC Bulletin of Inf Technol, 2004, 24 (4) 4.4 Journal of the Week Service newsletters and news bulletins to inform about their services, products and In addition to these free online e-journals, publications. Libraries can also send list of Journal of the Week is a wonderful service new arrivals to their users and can receive available on internet for librarians, recommendations for purchase from them. researchers and teachers offered by Emerald. E-mail can be used for sending orders and This service provides free full text access to reminders of books and journals. Librarians the current and past volumes of two different can join/subscribe various online listservs, journals every week. These two journals are discussion lists and newsgroups available on available to access at internet to discuss on related topics, query or http://www.emeraldinsight.com/jotw/ for the problems with other library professionals in all period of one week from the given date. The over world and exchange of information, journals which are available to free access via experiences, sources, and services. this service, cannot refer as free e-journals because they are available to access for a 5. FREE TRIAL OF ONLINE week only. Users who are interested to know SOURCES titles of other forthcoming free full text journals, can click on ‘forthcoming journals’ Several publishers and organizations offer and get list of journals with date of access. free access to their online sources on trial Users can also get details of each month’s basis for a limited period via internet. Libraries selected journals of the week via e-mail to join can avail this opportunity to enhance library ‘e-mail updated’ list. and information services, and take decision whether these sources are useful or not for 4.5 Free Online Catalogues their users. For example

Librarians have opportunity to access free q Wilson Full Text online catalogues of publishers, suppliers and http://www.hwwilson.com/frtrials.htm other libraries which greatly help in their q Macmillan Online Publishing acquisition process. Book selection can be http://www.macmillanonline.net/trials/in enhanced by the ability to check online dex.htm bibliographic databases. Now most of the publishers have online catalogues of their 5.1 Electronic Encyclopaedias publications on their own website and some The following electronic encyclopaedias publishers also provide the facilities for online ordering of the publication. are available for a free trial on their websites: t Amazon.com - Online Book Supplier t Encyclopaedia Britannica www.amazon.com http://www.eb.com/ t Library of Congress - Library t Groliers Encyclopaedia http://catalog.loc.gov/ http://gme.grolier.com/ t Prentice Hall of India Pvt. Ltd.- Publisher t World Book Encyclopaedia www.phindia.com http://www.worldbook.com/ t Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Company Ltd. - 5.2 Emerald Journals Publisher www.tatamcgrawhill.com Emerald (http://www.emeraldinsight.com) publishes over 100 leading journals. Its 4.6 Free Electronic Notification electronic collection of journals is designed to Service by E-mail meet the increasing demands for electronic access, particularly amongst academic Internet is also being used as an effective libraries. Emerald offers following database: and fast medium of communication. Many publishers and organisations provide facilities (a) Emerald Full Text to sign up for free e-mail notice; free (b) Emerald Management Reviews DESIDOC Bulletin of Inf Technol, 2004, 24(4) 17 (c) Emerald Abstracts information sources, which are freely (d) Emerald Journals available on the internet in the library to save space and money of the library and time of Emerald offers free 30 days trial via their users in searching the information. internet for all their online journals and databases. REFERENCES CONCLUSION 1. Jasco, Peter. Savvy searching. Online Information Review, 2002, 26 (5), 345-47. When the costs of the books, journals and other reading materials are rapidly increasing 2. http://www.emeraldinsight.com and budgets are reducing in the libraries, 3. McGuigan, Glenn. Invisible business internet is becoming a useful tool for information: The selection of invisible accessing free information sources. Librarians web sites in constructing subject pages should continue to discover free information for business. Collection Building, 2003, sources and services using various search 22(2), 68-74. engines. There are many search engines and 4. Agee, Jim. Selecting materials: A review directories available to search information on of print and online resources. Collection internet such as Info seek (http://infoseek. Building, 2003, 22(3), 137-40. Go.com), Yahoo (www.yahoo.com), Hotbot (http://www.hotbot.com), Excite (http://www. 5. http://www.infolibrarian.com/confpr.htm excite.com/), AltaVista (http://www.altavista. 6. Moore, Nick. The internet and library. digital.com/), etc. Library Review, 2000, 49(9), 422-28. Librarians should maintain an index of 7. http://askeric.org/Eric/ online e-journals, magazines and other 8. http://www.wikipedia.org/

Contributors: Sh Subhash Khode, Deputy Librarian, Prestige Institute of Management and Research, 2 Education and Health Sector, Scheme 54, Indore, M.P. – 452010 e-mail: [email protected] Sh Divik Kumar, Student, BE IInd year, Shri Vaisnav Institute of Technology and Science, Indore.

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