Free Information Sources and Services on Internet for Libraries: a Selective Compilation
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DESIDOC Bulletin of Information Technology , Vol. 24, No. 4, July 2004, pp. 13-18 © 2004, DESIDOC 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.