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Full-text capabilities and coverage have evolved rapidly over the last few years.
in order to better indicate capabilities new graphics will be used to denote types of full-text. databases with no graphic
indicators are primarily (90%+) indexes or abstracting services. Currently, nearly all databases with full-text materials contain
a mixture of material types--ascii full-text, full-text+graphics, full-image.
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The electronic content of databases tends to fall into these three basic types of electronic delivery.
1. ascii full-text has typewriter like text and no graphics. the best of this type have place-holders
or indicators which allow the reader to "see" where graphical materials would appear. many scholarly journals are text
only and lose little content value in an ascii full-text format.
2. The term full-text has come to mean text with some type of graphics content added by the aggregator
and/or vendor. such formats are often proprietary but do allow the vendor to offer most of the content of an article,
though sometimes rather awkwardly. many vendors have come to adopt pdf output as the solution to serving graphics
and content on the web. pdf files are generated by using adobe acrobat and require that adobe acrobat reader (a free program)
be housed on the receiving workstation. all library work stations have adobe acrobat reader already loaded.
3. The term full-image has come to be used to indicate computer files which replicate print publications'
content, including graphics, footnotes, and other scholarly publishing apparatus as closely as possible. again pdf is a format
often adopted, but the very best full-image databases like jstor and project muse add value by careful and complete
high-level indexing and proof reading.
again, all general purpose or aggregated databases provide a mix of all of these types of full-text electronic delivery
in the same database. at utpb, most FirstSearch, ProQuest, Galenet and Ebscohost databases, as well as Academic OneFile
deliver full-text materials in a combination of these formats.
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This icon indicates a resource which (1) has less than 50% full-text; (2) most of these full-text materials
are in ascii format--no graphics, typewriter like text; and (3) a resource which functions primarily as an indexing or abstracting tool.
be aware that an abstract is also a citeable source.
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A blue icon indicates databases whose full-text contents are 50% or more either full-text + graphics or pdf files.
such databases may nevertheless contain elements of indexes and full-text ascii materials. |
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A red star indicates that 90%+ of the content is available
as full image material. |
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A pale gray triangle indicates firstsearch databases. be aware that fs now
offers active linking to a variety of full-text materials, internet resources, and netlibrary. |
