[OPLINLIST] EBSCOhost announces additions to Academic Search Premier

[Don Yarman]

EBSCOhost announces additions to Academic Search Premier


As of today, Academic Search Premier (ASP) contains 3,970 full text
journals.  As of January 1, 2004, ASP's product definition will jump to
4,406 full text serials, representing an 11% increase in the number full
text journals offered through the database.

In addition, EBSCO recently acquired Whitston Publishing, the publisher
of the secondary database: American Humanities Index (AHI).  This
abstract/index database is a valuable source of indexing for humanities
journals and has very little overlap with Academic Search Premier.  

For all of 2004, all current subscribers of Academic Search Premier
(including Ohio's public libraries) will receive American Humanities
Index (AHI) at no additional charge.

Further, for all of 2004, all current subscribers of Academic Search
Premier will receive an additional new database, Communication & Mass
Media Complete (CMMC), at no additional charge for one year.  (EBSCO has
not yet sent us incremental pricing for keeping CMMC among OPLIN's
resources after 2004).

Details from EBSCO's announcement are below.

                Regards,

                          Don Yarman
                          OPLIN Library Services Manager
                          yarmando@oplin.org

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CMMC will contain the entire Communication & Mass Media Index (CMMI),
plus the world's best collection of full text communication and mass
media journals.  CMMI is the definitive index of literature for these
disciplines and includes the following:

1.) All detailed bibliographic records from CommSearch, formerly
produced by the National Communication Association
2.) All detailed bibliographic records from Mass Media Articles Index,
formerly produced by Penn State University
3.) Indexing, abstracts and detailed bibliographic records for all major
communication and/or mass media journals that were not previously
covered by CommSearch or Mass Media Articles Index
4.) Vastly expanded backfiles of indexing, indicative abstracts and
detailed bibliographic records for major communication journals
5.) Extended informative abstracts for numerous top journals indexed in
the database from January 1, 2004 forward
6.) Searchable citations (A.K.A. linked cited references) beginning on
January 1, 2003 for all peer-reviewed journals covered as "core" in the
database [NOTE: EBSCO is processing backfiles of searchable citations
for some of the journals in CMMC.]
7.) Strong coverage of grey literature, including monographs, conference
proceedings, working papers, etc.

In total, more than 285 journals will be indexed and abstracted as
"core" in CMMI, while approximately 100 journals will be indexed as
"priority" titles. "Core" coverage refers to sources which will be
indexed and abstracted in their entirety (i.e. cover to cover), while
"priority" coverage refers to sources from which we will include only
those articles which are relevant to the field.   Priority sources often
contain a substantial amount of quality content relevant to the
subjects, but also contain a number of articles covering topics not
related to the field of study.   We will also be adding, in the future,
"selective" coverage of a large number of quality publications which
occasionally contain papers related to the discipline. Only those
articles that relate to communication and mass media will be selected
for the database.

In addition to containing everything in CMMI, CMMC will also contain
full text for more than 160 communication and mass media journals,
including most of the top journals in the field.  This database will be
the main source of communications full text available via EBSCOhost.
Historically, this has been the area of greatest weakness for EBSCO
databases and now it will clearly be a strength.  CMMC will include
PDFs, back to the first published issue for many journals that were
never before available as full text in any version of Academic Search,
including:

Communication Education
Communication Monographs
Critical Studies in Media Communication
International Journal of Corpus Linguistics
Journal of Applied Communication Research
Journal of the Association for Communication Administration Philosophy &
Rhetoric Quarterly Journal of Speech Sign Language & Linguistics Text &
Performance Quarterly

In addition, CMMC will eventually contain full text for dozens of
monographs; for example:

Between Communication & Information
Language & Communication in Israel
Media Literacy Around the World
Mediation, Information, & Communication 

Here is how this new product, along with a very successful licensing
campaign for journals in other disciplines, will affect the specific
database definitions for both versions of Academic Search:

Academic Search Premier (ASP)
*	532 full text journals added
*	96 full text journals moved to CMMC
*	Net gain of 436 full text journals

Academic Search Elite (ASE)
*	258 full text journals added
*	55 full text journals moved to CMMC
*	Net gain of 203 full text journals

The list of soon to be added full text titles is dominated by high
quality peer reviewed journals covering many disciplines.  Complete
lists of these publications, with coverage dates, will be available
within the next several weeks.  

In summary, the number of full text journals in each version of Academic
Search will be growing by 11% (in a single month), and customers of
Academic Search will also receive two new high-quality subject-specific
databases free of charge (for an entire year).


If you have any questions regarding any portion of this announcement,
please feel free to contact me directly.

Regards,

Scott Bernier
Communications Manager
800-653-2726 Ext. 278 (inside the U.S. & Canada)
978-356-2726 Ext. 278 (outside the U.S. & Canada)
Email: sbernier@epnet.com