Thursday, March 27, 2008

Over 400 Full-Text Journals Now Available Through PubMed Central

PubMed Central is the U.S. National Institutes of Health free and open access digital archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature. Through voluntary participation by publishers, PubMed Central is building a major electronic depository for biomedical research literature. In addition to providing unrestricted access to current content, the National Library of Medicine, which manages PubMed Central, is digitizing earlier print issues of many of the journals already available in the database. The Cheng Library provides access to PubMed Central's journals through its online catalog, its periodicals diretory, and through its biomedical and health sciences databases, including MEDLINE, CINAHL, Health Reference Center Academic, and other resources.

New Reference Centers Make High-Quality Student Research Easier in History, Literature, and Current Issues

Three new full-text databases from EBSCO provide convenient starting points for student research in important subject areas. Each database draws together a vairety of different types of sources appropriate to its subject area:

History Reference Center - This reference database contains content from over 2,000 reference books, encyclopedias and non-fiction books from leading history publishers; articles from over 100 history periodicals; almost 60,000 primary source documents covering every era of world history; over 50,000 biographies; over 110,000 historical photos and maps; and over 80 hours of historical video.

Literary Reference Center - This reference database contains over 27,000 plot summaries, synopses and work overviews; nearly 100,000 articles/essays of literary criticism; over 140,000 author biographies; over 569,000 book reviews; the text of 57,000 classic/contemporary poems and 14,500 classic/contemporary short stories; 4,700 author interviews; and over 7,100 classic literary texts. The database also contains full-text reference content from a number of literature encyclopedias.

Points of View Reference Center - This database is designed to provide multiple perspectives on current controversial issues. The database currently offers materials on 200 topics, and each topic section features an overview along with point and counterpoint essays drawn from a variety of sources, plus supplementary information including primary source documents and guides to critical thinking.