Spectrum - Volume 20 Issue 23 March 5, 1998 - University Libraries Subscribing to ISI Databases

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University Libraries Subscribing to ISI Databases

By Ginger Young,

Spectrum Volume 20 Issue 23 - March 5, 1998

college librarian for human resources

After receiving an enthusiastic response from the Virginia Tech academic community during a fall trial, Virginia Tech University Libraries is pleased to announce its subscription to the Internet version of Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Citation Databases.
Also known as the Web of Science, all three print indexes (Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences Citation Indexes) are included in the Internet product, and the Science database is expanded to cover 2,000 more journals than either the print or CD-ROM version.
Access to the ISI Citation Databases is through the Library Home Page (http://www.lib.vt.edu) , under the Databases pull-down menu. One of the advantages of the Internet database is that it allows concurrent searching of all three databases back to 1992. This gives the ability to cover a multi-disciplinary topic such as "Ethics of Genetic Engineering."
Quick Search allows searching by subject, author or author's location.
Full Search lets the searcher with a relevant citation extend the search forward in time to those papers citing the original article. Searchers can navigate backward in time, as all cited references are included in citation entries. Those citations within our subscription dates are hot-linked directly to the abstract. Using the Related Records button, a searcher can explore across time to identify papers that share at least one of the references cited in the original paper.
ISI uses a standard web-browser interface, indexes all of the journal, uses author's abstracts, and adds KeyWords to supplement author's keywords. Actual reproductions of music scores or artwork is indicated by "illus." ISI updates their databases weekly, so it may be used as a current awareness tool by setting the limit: "This week's update."
For further information, please contact either your college librarian or one of the following librarians: Arts and Humanities Citation Index: Anita Haney at aihaney@vt.edu; Science Citation Index Expanded: Ed Lener at lener@vt.edu; Social Sciences Citation Index: Ginger Young at gingery@vt.edu.