About the Libraries
Related Links
Quick Links
The "Scholar's Workstation" Gets Real:
Full-Text Information at Your Fingertips
Scott Kennedy
Head, Research & Information Services
One reason for the popularity of the LEXIS-NEXIS online service is that, in addition to providing up-to-the-minute references to news articles and features, it supplies the complete text of those articles. It is a genuine one-stop service: the desired text can be viewed, printed, or downloaded without further effort. The Web also offers a host of full-text resources, and most of us are quickly captivated by its kaleidoscope of instant information. Having experienced the ease of retrieval in this virtual world, we have grown less patient with the traditional leg work of library research (poring over volumes of printed indexes, meticulously transcribing pertinent citations, verifying periodical holdings in the library catalog, tracking down materials in the periodical stacks, lining up to photocopy relevant passages, praying that the coin box is in order). We prefer to spend our research time focused on the subject matter itself, rather than on the process of locating materials.
Some years ago, when the computer age began to seem real, librarians liked to fantasize about an ideal bibliographic research station--a single work space that would serve both as a place of composition and as a direct gateway to a host of important and respected research tools. This idea came to be called the "scholar's workstation," but it was, at that time, so far out of reach that it remained only a rhetorical ideal.
Now, a decade later, the University Libraries are providing system-wide access to hundreds of research databases that are beginning to make real the notion of the scholar's workstation at the University of Connecticut. Such tools are still very much in the formative stage; however, they are beginning to appear on our desktops, and they are already creating new opportunities for both research and instruction. All of the following resources are available within the UConn domain via the Libraries' Home Page (www.lib.uconn.edu) from the "A-Z Information Resources" list that can be found there.
Britannica Online
Britannica Online, the most comprehensive electronic encyclopedia
currently available, offers more than articles and features from
the Encyclopedia Britannica. It provides new and updated
information on a daily basis, hypertext links to related
information and multimedia resources within the Britannica
database, and links to external websites that offer relevant
information to the topic at hand. In the article on Bill
Clinton, for example, one can find a section labeled
"Related Internet Resources" with links to the first
Inaugural Address (1993) and the White House Home
Page.
INFOTRAC Searchbank
Infotrac's Expanded Academic Index is the premier index
to periodicals for basic undergraduate research. While not as
comprehensive as the Libraries' own customized JREF index,
Infotrac offers a more intuitive search engine and focuses, quite
handily, upon the most current publications. Infotrac has taken
database searching a giant leap forward by supplying, in addition
to abstracts and indexing, the actual text of the
articles--including images and graphics--for over 500 of the
journals it indexes (1994 - present). A search in the larger
Infotrac database can easily be limited to full-text only, and
once a full-text article has been retrieved, it can be printed,
downloaded, or sent to an email account with a simple point and
click.
GPO Access
GPO Access provides the full text of several important federal
government publications, including the Federal Register,
the Congressional Record, Congressional Bills, United States
Code, Economic Indicators, Commerce Business Daily, and
GAO Reports. Each of the publications is searchable and
the results are easily screened and sifted. Connect to GPO Access
from www.lib.uconn.edu/government.html.
GALENET
Galenet provides web-based access to the electronic versions of
several reference collection mainstays, including the
Encyclopedia of Associations and Contemporary
Authors. Galenet products are listed on the Libraries'
networked A-Z Information
Resources list under the following headings:
- Associations Unlimited
Information on 440,000 U.S. national, regional, state, local, and international non-profit organizations in all fields
- Biography and Genealogy Master
Index
A comprehensive index to over 10,000 biographical sketches located in over 1,000 different sources
- Contemporary Authors
A bio-bibliographical guide to over 90,000 current authors in the U.S. and around the world
- Gale Database of Publications and Broadcast
Media
Descriptive information on more than 64,000 newspapers, periodicals, newsletters, directories, television and radio stations, and cable television companies in the U.S. and Canada
- Gale Directory of Databases
Detailed descriptions of more than 11,000 publicly available databases
- Research Centers and Services
Directory
Detailed descriptions of more than 30,000 U.S., Canadian, and international university-related and other nonprofit research centers
JSTOR
The Journal Storage Project, JSTOR (Jay-Store), initiated by the
Mellon Foundation, has as its goal the provision of electronic
access to the central scholarly journal literature of the 19th
and 20th centuries. Unlike electronic journals, JSTOR's intent is
to provide facsimile access to journals which first appeared in
print, and unlike most full-text products, JSTOR reproduces the
exact images of each journal page so that non-text material such
as photographs, charts, and formulae are displayed with near 100%
accuracy. Currently 15 titles are available, including
Ecology, The American Economic Review, The American
Historical Review, Speculum, and the American Political
Science Review. Files date from their incipience to the late
1980s or early 1990s. Access to these and other JSTOR journals
will be announced shortly on the Libraries Home
Page.
The necessity of coming to the library to do in-depth bibliographic research is still very much a fact of academic life. But already, teachers can print comprehensive bibliographies of relevant articles directly from their desktop workstations. They can sit together with their students and perform exploratory bibliographic research and discuss that research together without delay. They can gather ready reference information; database citations; encyclopedia entries; basic statistical data; law, government, or corporate reports; even retrieve classic scholarly journal articles directly from their desktop workstation. And, what is equally noteworthy, these fundamental informational resources are retrieved in formats that are more convenient, more functional, more up-to-date, and more flexible than their paper equivalents ever were. The University Libraries have made the development of the scholar's workstation a high priority and are striving to make this ideal a part of everyday academic life.
Back to the Table of Contents
This page is maintained by Suzanne Zack