Research Tools - Fall 1995

Expanded Academic Index To Replace Periodical Abstracts

The Weinberg Memorial Library will be introducing a new index to general periodicals and newspapers this summer. Expanded Academic Index is a database which provides indexing and abstracting to over 1500 scholarly and general periodicals plus the most. current six months of the New York Times. Journal coverage for the current database subscription is three years plus the current year. A backfile database provides information extending back to 1990. This powerful comprehensive index covers all of the titles indexed in H.W Wilson's Humanities Index, Social Sciences Index, and General Science Index, and over 360 titles from PAIS. Citations can be accessed through a subject listing of assigned topics or through keyword searching with boolean operators. Unlimited access from the dumb terminals that also access our Online Public Catalog, the CD-ROM workstations in the newly enlarged lab on the second floor of the Library, or your home PC with a current U of S VAX account makes this new database a more flexible and timely way to find periodical articles on current topics. The database will replace the UMI Periodical Abstracts which limits access to eight simultaneous users and requires the searcher to perform individual searches in each of its five chronological disks.
 
Searchers will be pleased with the Expended Academic Index for several improvements over the previous options of Periodical Abstracts: timeliness (weekly updates rather than monthly); comprehensive indexing co academic rather than just popular titles; and accessibility from a variety of workstations (not just the CD-ROM lab).
 
Also changing will be the way we access business information in journals. A companion index to Expanded Academic Index called Business Index will replace the ABI-Inform. In addition to exhaustive indexing to 950 national and international business, management, and trade journals, the new system indexes the current edition of the Wall Street Journal, the business and finance sections of the New York Times, the Asian Wall Street Journal, and the Financial Tunes of Canada. The Business Index includes 100% of the core journals covered in ABI-Inform.
 
Finally, Predicast F&S Index, both U.S. and International. will appear on the new menu under Information Access Products. Prohibitive licensing fees required us to offer these two popular business databases in stand-alone format only this past semester, but IAC has now made the pricing more affordable through their package of databases. If you would like a demonstration of the new databases or have any questions about access, please calls the Reference Desk at 941-4000.
Betsey Moylan
Pride, Passion, Promise: Experience Our Jesuit Tradition