EBSCO/AEA Release EconLit with Full Text

ALA Midwinter offerings also include Index Islamicus and Library Success volume

By Michael Rogers -- Library Journal, 3/1/2007

The recent American Library Association (ALA) Midwinter Meeting in Seattle generated big news in terms of hot databases, though ILS vendors hinted at new releases to come at the summer annual in Washington, DC. Many of the top content houses brought along goodies either rich with full text (these seem the most popular with librarians and end users) or indexes from the big players like Wilson, ProQuest, and others (see InfoTech, LJ 2/15/07, p. 23). Not to be outdone, EBSCO had a little bit of everything, plus a very pleasant surprise. On the full-text front, EBSCO has teamed with the American Economic Association (AEA) for EconLit with Full Text. EBSCO said that the database includes all of the bibliographic content in the EconLit index as well as the full text for more than 400 economics and finance journals, such as AEA’s American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, and Journal of Economic Perspectives. All titles include “deep back files and current issues” sans embargoes. Along with the AEA materials, the resource also has other full-text journals, books, monographs, and non-English-language items.

Additionally, EBSCO is now offering a very timely index: Index Islamicus is an international bibliography of publications in European languages covering Islam and Muslims produced by Brill Academic Publishers. Index Islamicus indexes materials on Muslim history, beliefs, societies, cultures, languages, and literature gleaned from 3470 titles dating back to 1906. The index is available on the company’s signature EBSCOhost interface.

With budgets tight, the challenge of Google, and the Patriot Act in full vigor, there’s been a fair amount of doom and gloom surrounding libraries in recent years, while Hurricane Katrina showed them to be more of a community pillar than ever. EBSCO is accentuating the positive by distributing copies of Library Success: A Celebration of Library Innovation, Adaptation, and Problem Solving. Edited by Leslie Edmonds Holt, Glen Holt, and Stratton Lloyd, the book features library success stories in technology, marketing, fundraising, partnering, performance management, and more.

Lloyd, EBSCO’s VP of customer satisfaction and medical market development, told LJthat, three years ago, EBSCO Publishing “launched an internal customer success initiative with the simple goal of developing free resources, tools, and services to assist librarians in being more successful. These [five] success stories demonstrate best practices that other librarians can adapt and implement to bring positive changes in their own organizations.”

The book’s full text is available electronically at www.ebscohost.com/customer_success; paper copies are available for a small fee by emailing a request to customersuccess@epnet.com.