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Linda A. Rich and Julie L. Rabine

Electronic journals have been available for a numberof years through a variety of electronic media. E-jour-nals can be narrowly defined as those produced, pub-lished, and distributed solely in an electronic format.Alternatively, they can be defined very broadly, en-compassing electronic versions of print journals andeven digital copies of full-text articles included in in-dexing services such as

Lexis-Nexis

and

SIRS Re-searcher.

They can be accessed via CD-ROM, onlineservices, e-mail, and the World Wide Web (WWW) inHTML or PDF format. For the purposes of this article,an electronic journal is defined as periodical literaturethat is made available as an individual title via an elec-tronic medium, typically the World Wide Web. Thisdefinition includes journals and magazines producedonly in electronic media, as well as those with printcounterparts. The terms

electronic journals, e-journals,electronic publications

, and

electronic serials

are usedinterchangeably throughout the article.

However narrowly or loosely they are defined,electronic journals continue to grow in number andacceptance. Pioneer titles such as

Psycoloquy, Post-modern Culture

, and

PACS Review

were alreadylisted in the 1997 edition of

Ulrich’s InternationalPeriodicals Directory

; the 1998 edition contains anentire section on e-journals. Long-standing schol-arly print journals are jumping into the game withtheir own electronic versions, and new electronic

Rich

is Reference Librarian, Jerome Library InformationServices, Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green,OH 43403; e-mail: lrich@bgnet.bgsu.edu; and

Rabine

isBibliographer, Jerome Library Information Services,Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH 43403;e-mail: jrabine@bgnet.bgsu.edu.

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journals are starting up on a daily basis. The annualgrowth in the size of the

ARL Directory of ElectronicJournals, Newsletters and Academic DiscussionLists

has become proverbial.

1,2,3

With this expansion in the number of electronic se-rials comes a host of management concerns for librar-ians. Selection criteria, archiving problems, and theconstruction and maintenance of a Web site are butsome of the issues confronting librarians dealing withelectronic journals. Unfortunately, a standard methodof managing and providing access to e-journals in li-braries has not yet been established.

Several subscription agents are developing e-journalaggregator services that would manage a library’ssubscriptions as well as maintain a searchable Website to provide access; examples include Blackwell’sElectronic Journal Navigator,

4

JournalsOnline

5

fromBath Information Data Service (BIDS), SwetsNet,

6

EBSCOhost, and Dawson Information Quest’s IQ.

7

While this type of service promises to relieve librari-ans of the routine and time-consuming chores associ-ated with maintaining an electronic journals Web site,full scale implementation of aggregator services re-mains in the future.

For the present, many librarians are handling the sit-uation by constructing their own electronic journal Websites. The Web sites represent each library’s effort to or-ganize its electronic journal collection to provide betteraccess for its users. Jerome Library at Bowling GreenState University was no different; the authors of this ar-ticle were assigned to build a collection of electronicjournals and design a Web site for them. After complet-ing the initial construction of the site, we began to won-der how other librarians were solving the problems wehad encountered. We planned a survey of academic li-brary electronic journal Web sites to discover whetherour e-journal collection was typical and to find ideas toimprove our own Web site. We hope that the informa-tion we collected will be useful to others who find them-selves in the same situation. This article:

• examines the content, organization, and featuresof academic library electronic journal Web pages;

• discusses the decisions and issues involved in cre-ating an e-journal home page;

• provides a summary of how the 114 Web sites theauthors reviewed handled these issues; and

• draws conclusions about typical e-journal Website organization and offers recommendations re-garding desirable characteristics for a model site.

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ITERATURE

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EVIEW

It is not our intention to reproduce the literature on thehistory and future of electronic journals here, as othershave already done an excellent job of telling the story.Sassé and Winkler

8

and Lancaster

9

reviewed the earlyhistory of electronic publishing, while Langschied,

10

Barschall,

11

and Stoller

12

described the first e-journalsin detail. Instead, in this section, the authors will re-view the literature discussing the ideas and efforts oflibrarians to provide access to electronic journals.

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EDIA

Since scholarly electronic journals first began to maketheir mark in the early 1990s, librarians have beenconcerned with how to manage them and how to makeboth current and back issues available to users. In 1991,Metz

13

expressed concern that e-journals be made avail-able to users in as “hospitable a home as possible.” Stol-ler,

14

writing in 1992, defined both “libraries” and “pro-viding access” as broadly as possible to encompasswhatever technology would become available for thispurpose. At that time, he saw three options: printingand binding the e-journals; downloading them to a per-sonal computer; or downloading them to a mainframecomputer and providing access through a local area net-work (the method he preferred).

Manoff

et al

15

reported in 1993 on efforts at MITto use WAIS as a delivery mechanism for e-journals.The MIT group ultimately decided that Gopher—thenthe newest technology—would be a better deliverysystem because it could link to other Internet re-sources. Woodward and McKnight

16

described the stateof CD-ROM, networked (via gopher or World WideWeb), and online (via Dialog or BRS) electronic jour-nals available in 1995. At that time, they noted that“many . . . libraries are now beginning to add e-journalsto their collections.” They also observed that publish-ers were migrating some journals to the World WideWeb (WWW) for online access.

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ANAGEMENT

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SSUES

Bibliographic control, archiving and storing, and se-lection of e-journals are the predominant issues re-lated to the management of electronic journals. Wood-ward and McKnight

17

provided a good overview of thebibliographic control of e-journals. More preciselythey discussed learning which e-journals are available,obtaining publication data, dealing with cataloging

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issues, and the scarcity of indexing for e-journals.Neavill and Sheblé

18

addressed issues related to ar-chiving and storing electronic journals. These includedthe permanent availability of electronic archives, thepreservation of digital media, problems with obsoletehardware, and the authentication of records and ver-sions. Nisonger

19

provided a thorough discussion of theselection of e-journals, covering personnel and selec-tion criteria and procedures; he also included evaluat-ing the e-journal collection and writing an e-journalpolicy as part of the selection process. The paperended with a lengthy selected bibliography on elec-tronic journals that covered articles through 1995.

In the last couple of years, a new wrinkle in the man-agement of electronic journals has been the appearanceof commercially produced e-journal aggregator ser-vices provided by subscription agents. Henley andThompson

20

described several such services availablein 1997. Machovec

21

provided an excellent and com-plete overview of the electronic journal market in 1997.He discussed at length the individual publishers,projects, commercial management services, and non-commercial sites involved with electronic journals.

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Although the World Wide Web has emerged as the cur-rent medium of choice for distributing and accessingelectronic journals, the literature discussing the use oflibrary home pages devoted to them has been ratherlimited. Jones

22

shared the findings and recommenda-tions of the Electronic Journal Task Force establishedat the University of Denver. The Task Force made rec-ommendations touching on personnel, the catalogingof e-journals, selection criteria, and Web page design.Moothart

23

looked at four different e-journal homepages and offered practical suggestions and ideas forbuilding and maintaining an effective e-journal homepage. Cameron

24

offered his

Directory of ComputingJournals

as a prototype for making journals accessiblethrough the Web. In this ambitious project, he envi-sioned a directory of serials that would be comprehen-sive within a given discipline and would include bothelectronic and print journals. He discussed criteria forWeb page design as well as maintenance issues.

Library consortia have also concerned themselveswith providing Web-based access to electronic jour-nals for their members. Cochenour and Jurries

25

dis-cussed the building of the Colorado Alliance of Re-search Libraries (CARL) electronic journals Webpages. The e-journal annotations and archiving pro-

vided by CARL’s Web site were especially notable.Allen

26

presented the Committee on Institutional Co-operation’s (CIC) consortial electronic journal Website as a model for the management of free-accesse-journals. The CIC is the academic equivalent to theBig Ten athletic conference plus the University of Chi-cago. While its member institutions have extensivefunding and other resources, some of the characteris-tics and features of their e-journal collection can beapplied to individual libraries with less funding. TheCIC site also serves as a comprehensive collection towhich individual libraries can link.

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Once a library has decided to build an electronic journalsWeb site and has assigned the project to a committee, de-partment, or individual, numerous issues and consider-ations remain. Personal experience, study of the avail-able literature, and an examination of 114 academic sitesled the authors to identify the following basic issues toconsider when creating an e-journal home page.

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COPE

As with any academic journal collection, the scope ofthe e-journal Web site will depend in part on who willbe using it and for what purposes. A library which sup-ports graduate and faculty level research may want toselect only scholarly electronic journals in all the sub-ject areas studied on campus. Special libraries at an in-stitution might plan a comprehensive site within a nar-row subject area. Libraries serving large undergraduatepopulations or sizable segments of a community maydecide to include magazines, newspapers, and newslet-ters, as well as scholarly publications.

The extent of resources committed to the projectwill also affect scope, including both financial re-sources allocated for the purchase of e-materials andstaff time devoted to the selection and maintenanceof a collection. If financial resources are scarce, selec-tors will find that there are many quality free-accesse-journals with which to develop an e-journal collec-tion. Individual and package subscriptions are avail-able for libraries whose budgets permit the acquisitionof paid titles. Many respected publishers and profes-sional societies such as Academic Press, Reed Elsevier,and the American Chemical Society now offer theirprint journals in electronic format.

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Staff time factors involved in supporting an e-journal’sWeb site can be considerable and should not be ig-nored. The initial design and development of the ac-tual Web pages, as well as the selection of e-journaltitles, will obviously require a significant amount ofstaff time. However, it is site maintenance—checkingand updating links, reviewing new titles, writing an-notations, keeping track of changing access technol-ogy and license agreements—that constitutes a seri-ous ongoing time commitment. Libraries with staffshortages or conflicting priorities may have to build asite that provides links to the electronic journal collec-tions of other institutions. Libraries with sufficientstaffing might have time to take great care in searchingfor and selecting individual titles for inclusion in ane-journal collection.

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RITERIA

If individual e-journal titles are to be selected and in-cluded on a site, appropriate staff must create selectioncriteria. In addition to such traditional criteria as au-thority, cost-effectiveness, and appropriateness of sub-ject, the following criteria merit consideration in theselection of electronic publications:

• Coverage of the periodical. Publishers offer full textof entire publications, abstracts only, tables of con-tents only, or some combination of these options. Li-brary staff must decide whether it is worthwhile tocreate and maintain links offering minimal access.

• Archives. Are back issues of offered titles avail-able, and will they continue to be available?

• Indexing. Are the journals indexed—either by astandard index or by a publisher’s on-site searchengine?

• Print equivalents. When titles held in print formatoffer online access, should these journals automat-ically be added to the Web site?

• Cost issues. Does the library have funds availableto purchase new subscriptions? Should selectioncriteria be relaxed when the e-format is free?

• Trial Subscriptions. Will access be provided tosubscriptions that are available free of charge for alimited time only, recognizing that this creates anadditional maintenance workload?

• Viewing software. Some e-journals use text for-mats that require specific readers, java enabledbrowsers, or software to display non-Roman al-

phabets. Should e-journals with special softwarerequirements be included?

ORGANIZATION

The organization of a site is critical to user acceptance.Web site managers need to consider who will be usingan e-journal collection and how they will approach it.For instance, e-journals could be simply listed alpha-betically by title; alternatively, they could be arrangedby subject or even by publisher. A Web site need notbe limited to one arrangement, however, as some re-search requires subject access and other researchlends itself to browsing a specific title. Inclusion of asearch engine to allow patrons to quickly locate desirede-journals is also an organizational consideration.

FEATURES

There are innumerable special features that could beadded to enhance an electronic journal home page.Annotations for each e-journal can provide assistancefor users and key words for a search engine. The Webpage creators must determine what information willbe included in the annotations and whether each anno-tation warrants a page of its own. Links to the local li-brary catalog or to other library e-journal pages canalso be helpful. A fuller discussion of features is in-cluded in the “Discussion and Analysis” section below.

METHODOLOGY

As noted in the introduction, after the authors’ Web sitewas functional, we decided to survey other libraries to seehow they had tackled issues with which we had beendealing. Our study involved an exploratory content anal-ysis of academic library e-journal Web sites at selectedNorth American universities. We gathered the sample ofWeb sites using two different methods. First, a messagesent to reference listserv LIBREF-L requesting URLs forlocal e-journal sites generated only seven responses. Sec-ond, a search of over 250 academic library home pageslisted in the Yahoo! Internet Directory (http://www.yahoo.com/Reference/Libraries/Academic_Libraries)identified an additional 107 e-journal Web sites. This re-sulted in a total sample size of 114 sites.

In order to consistently analyze the Web sites, the au-thors created a checklist on which to record informationabout the sites (see Figure 1). The checklist includedquestions about characteristics and features that we

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Figure 1Survey Checklist

40 SERIALS REVIEW – LINDA A. RICH AND JULIE L. RABINE –

had previously encountered on other library e-journalWeb pages. Using the checklist as a guide, we visitedand analyzed the 114 sites between October 1, 1997and January 2, 1998. As planned, we also made noteof interesting features or characteristics that were notspecified on the checklist. We gathered all informa-tion directly from the Web sites, and at no time did weseek answers to questions from those maintaining thesites. Therefore, we were unable to study such issuesas the type or number of library personnel responsi-ble for the Web site or the amount of time devoted tosite maintenance.

DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS

SCOPE OF E-JOURNAL COLLECTIONS

One goal of our study was to determine the scope ofexisting electronic journal collections. Sixteen of the114 sites reviewed (14 percent) were aggregations oflinks to other institutions’ e-journal collections andthus could not be included in most of the analysis be-low. However, most library e-journal sites (86 percent)had assembled their own collections of at least a fewindividual titles. Although we excluded consortialsites from this study, we noted that some consortia aresetting up electronic journals collections for theirmembers. These may include package subscriptiondeals or comprehensive collections of free-access titles.Notable examples are OhioLINK, CARL, and theCIC. Interestingly, some consortium members did nothave links to their own consortium’s page from eitherlocal e-journals pages or from anywhere else on theirlibraries’ Web pages.

Libraries can choose to include either free- orrestricted-access electronic journals, or both, on aWeb site. The authors defined free-access journals aselectronic-only journals available free of charge withno access restrictions imposed. Restricted-accessjournals require payment for access, thus restrictinguse to subscribing institutions, to departments, or evento a specific IP address. As shown in Table 1, the ma-jority of the home pages surveyed included a combi-nation of free-access and subscription journals; how-ever, some collections contained as few as two or threetitles of one type or the other.

Electronic versions of established print journals donot always mirror the information in the print version.They may include only selected articles, abstracts, ortables of contents. We identified at least twenty-seven

sites that linked to journals offering less than full text.It is likely that many more linked to tables-of-contentsor abstracts-only but did not label them as such. A fewlibraries specifically stated that they included onlyjournals with full text online. In addition, we identifiedseventeen libraries that specifically listed some jour-nals as “trial subscriptions.” Again, some librariesmay have linked to trials without labeling them.

SELECTION CRITERIA

Only fifteen of the surveyed sites stated specific selec-tion criteria on the site. A few libraries’ criteria con-sisted of little more than a brief statement that the titleslisted are the electronic journals to which the librarysubscribes. For examples of more fully articulated se-lection criteria, see the University of Waterloo’s Engi-neering, Mathematics and Science e-journals page(http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/journals/EMSfulltext/guidelines.html, accessed 9/24/98) and their Environ-mental Studies, Humanities & Social Science e-jour-nals page (http://library.uwaterloo.ca/criteria.html,9/24/98). Those of the fifteen which listed guidelinestypically included such criteria as:

• full text (7);

• available via the Internet/WWW (6);

• peer-reviewed/scholarly (6);

• of interest to the local campus community (6); and

• no additional cost to the library (5).

Less commonly cited were:

• quality/value (4);

• comes with print subscription (2);

• English language (2); and

• covers a specific subject (2).

Even when no specific guidelines were given, wecould often infer selection criteria by examining whatwas actually in the collection. We also noted that some-

Table 1Free- or Restricted-Access E-journals

Type of AccessNumber ofLibraries

Restricted-access e-journals only 21 (21%)Free-access e-journals only 14 (14%)Both restricted- and free-access e-journals 65 (65%)

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times collections had grown beyond stated selection cri-teria. For example, a library with no funds to acquire paidelectronic journals may have stated that the collectionconsisted only of free-access titles, when in fact, suchlibraries ended up with many restricted-access titles thatcame “free” with print subscriptions. These “bargain”subscription deals probably accounted for the seeminglyrandom nature of many electronic journal collections.

ORGANIZATION

E-journal Location

Almost all the library sites we reviewed had a sepa-rate section or page devoted to electronic journals,sometimes in conjunction with a section of other full-text electronic resources. Some libraries includedgovernment documents or indexing services withtheir e-journals, while a few used a subject-orientedapproach that linked to electronic journals and otherInternet-based resources. The University of Arkan-sas Libraries at Fayetteville’s Web page (http://www.uark.edu/libinfo/journals.html, accessed 9/24/98) is one example of a site that intermingles links tovarious kinds of electronic resources.

Arrangement

An important consideration in designing an elec-tronic journals page is how the journals will be ar-

ranged to provide access. Our survey found themost popular categories were: alphabetical by title;grouped by publisher; and arranged by either narrowsubject (such as astronomy or literature) or broadsubject (such as sciences or humanities) (see Figure2). Most libraries offered more than one arrange-ment, for example, alphabetical by title and broadsubject categories.

From conversations with colleagues at various con-ferences, we discovered that some librarians believethat a list of e-journal titles on the Web page is unnec-essary if they are listed in the OPAC. Others believethat e-journals should be made available as many waysas possible until their use becomes commonplace. Wediscovered that most libraries have chosen to includean alphabetical title list on their Web pages, and thatthe title list was not only the most popular arrange-ment, it was also the only arrangement for twenty-eight of the Web sites surveyed.

A few libraries categorized their e-journal collec-tions in other ways. For example, two libraries dividedtheir e-journals into subscription and non-subscriptionlists; two had a category for e-journals produced ontheir own campuses; and two had specifically labeledlists of scholarly and non-scholarly publications. Onelibrary included a list of e-journals in call numberorder (presumably these were also included in the cat-alog), and one offered a search engine as the onlymeans to retrieve e-journals.

Figure 2Web Site Arrangement of E-journals

42 SERIALS REVIEW – LINDA A. RICH AND JULIE L. RABINE –

Accessibility from Library Home Page

Ease of access to e-journal Web pages was an issue westudied closely. The overwhelming majority of sitessurveyed (91.7 percent) placed their e-journal pagesonly one or two clicks away from the library’s homepage. However, two sites buried their e-journal pagesas many as four or five clicks away from the library’shome page (see Table 2).

Another consideration in making the e-journal pageaccessible from the library’s home page is what thelibraries named the intervening links. As might beexpected, most libraries called the final link to thee-journals page either “E-journals” or “Electronic Jour-nals.” Libraries that placed the e-journals page two ormore clicks from the home page usually used somevariation on the theme of “Electronic Resources,” in-cluding “Internet Resources,” “Full Text Resources,”and “Online Resources,” as an intervening link. Somelink names, however, were obscure and could lead toconfusion for those using the site: “Library Services,”“Gateway to the Internet,” and “Search [OPAC name]and other Databases” are a few examples. Table 3 liststhe link names leading to the e-journals page for librar-ies with two or three links.

FEATURES

Annotations

The amount of information provided in an annotationabout each individual e-journal in a collection variedgreatly among sites and even within many sites. Asshown in Table 4, three-fourths of the surveyed sites(not including those which contained only links toother collections) had some type of annotation for atleast a few of their e-journals, usually on the samepage as the list of titles.

The annotations ranged in size from a few words tofull separate pages for each title. Many libraries which

subscribe to Project Muse use the full page annota-tions provided by the Project. Some libraries offericons, some of which were hot-linked, to indicate use

Table 2Distance from Library Home Page

to E-journal Page

Distance AwayNumber ofLibraries

One click 53 (49%)Two clicks 47 (43%)Three clicks 7 (6%)Four clicks 1 (1%)Five clicks 1 (1%)

Table 3Names of Links Preceding Final Link

to E-journal Page

Additional Internet ResourcesCatalogs, Indexes, & Internet ResourcesCollectionsCollections & Internet Resources by DisciplineCollections & ResourcesDatabasesDatabases & IndexesDigital Library CollectionsElectronic Information ResourcesElectronic Journals & TextsElectronic Library SourcesElectronic PeriodicalsElectronic Reading RoomElectronic Resources (4)Electronic Resources & Web ResourcesElectronic Resources CollectionsElectronic ServicesElectronic SubscriptionsElectronic Texts & ImagesFull Text ArticlesFull Text ResourcesFull TextsFull-text PublicationsGateway to the InternetIndexes to ArticlesInternetInternet Resources (3)Internet Resources by SubjectJournals & PeriodicalsLibrary Electronic ResourcesLibrary ServicesLibrary Systems/Article DatabasesLink to Other Internet Reference SourcesLinks to ResourcesMagazines, News, Broadcast MediaOnline Resources (2)Reference & ResourcesResearch & Reference ResourcesResearch ResourcesResearch ToolsResources (2)Search IUCAT & Other DatabasesTable of ContentsThe Virtual LibraryTWU Library ResourcesVirtual Collection

Note: Numerals in parentheses represent number of li-braries using this link name.

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restrictions or to give quick insight into some aspect ofthe e-journal. (See Purdue University’s table of iconsat http://thorplus.lib.purdue.edu/vlibrary/journals/index.html, accessed 9/24/98.)

The kind of information provided in the annotationsalso varied (Table 5). The most frequent type of anno-tation was a statement that access to the journal waslimited to users from that campus. Descriptions of jour-nal content, including the subjects covered by a givenjournal and whether it offers full text, were also com-monly found. The University Libraries of Notre Damee-journals Web page (http://www.nd.edu/,serials/ej.htm, accessed 9/24/98) gives detailed annotations formany of their titles; select Algebra Universalis toview an example. Some less common features foundin annotations, which could prove to be very useful toe-journal readers, were: printing and downloading

instructions; links to the OPAC record; and datedstatements of the last time a particular e-journal washaving connectivity problems.

Some libraries were consistent from title to titleabout the kind of information provided in the annota-tions, while others were very inconsistent. For example,one title might have a lengthy annotation that provideda description of the e-journal’s subject content, pub-lisher, and volumes available electronically. The nexttitle might offer only a statement of access restriction,and the title after that might have no annotation at all.

Other Features

Library electronic journal sites consisting of morethan links to other sites typically had other features inaddition to a list of e-journal titles, whether annotatedor not. Sixty-two percent included links to other li-brary or institutional collections. Some frequently en-countered links included E-Journal (E-DOC’s elec-tronic journal database), NewJour Electronic Journalsand Newsletters, CIC-Electronic Journals Collection,and other consortial links. URLs are included in Table6. About a third of the sites surveyed had links to theirOPAC (39 percent) and/or electronic databases to whichthey subscribed (35 percent). We expected to find theselast two features more frequently, as they seem likenatural companions to an electronic journals page.The small number of libraries with these links mayhave been indicative of the limited number of librarieswith Web-based OPACs and databases.

Search engines to explore a library’s Web site wereanother feature we encountered; however, the precisenumber of sites with search engines was difficult to de-termine. Sometimes search engines were linked di-rectly to an e-journals page, while other times they werelinked to a library’s home page. Some search engineswould not actually search for an e-journal title, whetherlinked to the e-journals page or the home page. Still,about a third of the library Web sites had some type oflink to a site search engine.

Some features were found less frequently but arestill worth noting. For example, one site contained in-formation on how to cite e-journals and links to obtainsuch viewer software as Adobe Acrobat. Table 7 listsall the features we discovered in our survey.

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Many attractive, well-organized e-journal sites are beingcreated by academic librarians throughout North Amer-

Table 4Sites Including Annotations for E-journal Titles

Annotation AvailabilityNumber ofLibraries

Annotations on same page as e-journal list 68 (69%)Each annotation on separate page 7 (7%)No annotation available 23 (24%)

Table 5Information Items Included

in E-journal Annotations

Access restriction statementDescription of subject contentIndication of less than full text coverageOnline holdings availabilityPublisherPrint holdings in libraryPublishing frequencyElectronic file format (PDF, HTML, etc.)ISSNRefereed statusSubject headingsCall number for print holdingsIndexing available at libraryMirror sitesE-mail subscription informationURLLink to software sitesCD-ROM e-journalsJournal editor namesConnectivity status (“unable to connect 10/2/97”)Link to library subject specialist’s pagePrinting and downloading instructions

44 SERIALS REVIEW – LINDA A. RICH AND JULIE L. RABINE –

ica. While there is no standard or favorite model for ane-journal Web collection, there are trends to include spe-cific characteristics. E-journal Web sites typically:

• offer access only one or two “clicks” away fromthe library home page (92 percent);

• offer annotative information for individual titles(77 percent);

• list individual titles alphabetically (74 percent);

• provide access to both free-access and restricted-access e-journals (65 percent); and

• provide links to other library/institutional e-jour-nal collections (62 percent).

Two general categories of e-journal pages alsoemerge. One category is a low-maintenance site thatusually includes many links to e-journal collectionsfrom other institutions or commercial enterprises and

very few, if any, links to individual titles. The secondcategory is a much higher maintenance site that offersa large collection of individually selected e-journals.

Libraries lacking sufficient staff time and other re-sources to devote to a collection of e-journals mayelect to build a “low-maintenance” style of e-journalspage, consisting of links to other institutional e-journalsites. Ashland University Library, for example, (http://www.ashland.edu/,bweiss/ejour.html, accessed 5/4/98)has a simple, low-maintenance electronic publicationpage containing only eight links. The selected links in-clude a variety of sites for accessing newspapers, mag-azines, and journals from both commercial and insti-tutional organizations. Recommended links to considerfor inclusion on a low-maintenance e-journal site arelisted in Table 6. These sites are large, established col-lections of electronic publications, including schol-arly journals, popular magazines and newspapers.

For examples of high-maintenance sites that havean extensive listing of selected e-journal titles, see thecollections of the University of Pennsylvania andBowling Green State University. The University ofPennsylvania site (http://www.library.upenn.edu/resources/ej/ej.html, accessed 9/30/98) provideslinks to over 1,600 electronic journals. Their e-jour-nals are arranged both alphabetically and by a de-tailed subject tree. The authors’ site at Bowling GreenState University (http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/ejournals/ejhome.htm, accessed 9/30/98)also offers title and subject access to over 250 free-and restricted-access e-journals. In addition, oursite offers full-page annotations for many titles(Figure 3).

After visiting and analyzing the great variety ofe-journal Web collections in our survey and revisitingour own e-journal site, we felt we had made some

Table 6E-Journal Collections Recommended as Links

from Library E-journal Sites

Alliance Electronic Journal Access: Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries

http://www.coalliance.org/ejournal/

CIC Electronic Journals Collectionhttp://ejournals.cic.net/

E-Journal (E-DOC’s electronic journal database)http://www.edoc.com/ejournal/academic.html

Electronic Journals and Magazines (University of Georgia)http://www.libs.uga.edu/mainref/elecjour.html

Electronic Journals (University of Pennsylvania, Penn Library)

http://www.library.upenn.edu/resources/ej/ej.html

The Electronic Newsstandhttp://www.enews.com/

Magazines from Yahoohttp://www.yahoo/com/News/Magazines/

My Virtual Newspaperhttp://www.refdesk.com/paper.html

NewJour Electronic Journals and Newslettershttp://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/

University of Waterloo Electronic Library Scholary Societies Project

http://www.lib.uwaterloo.ca/society/full-text_soc.html

World-Wide Web Virtual Library: Social Sciences Electronic Journals

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/socsci/ejournal.html

Table 7Features Found on E-journal Sites in this Study

Links to other library or institutional sitesLink to the library catalogLinks to indexes or databasesOn-site search engineTrial subscriptionsLink to consortium siteLink to e-journal directoriesLink to bibliography on e-journalsLink to corresponding catalog record e-journalsLink to Adobe Acrobat siteInformation on how to cite electronic journals

– A SURVEY OF ACADEMIC LIBRARY WEB SITES – VOL. 25, NO. 2, 1999 45

good decisions and didn’t see a need for major re-vamping. We did, however, note several good ideas foradditions to our site, such as links to information onciting electronic publications and downloading viewersoftware. Currently, all changes to our site are on holdbecause our consortium, OhioLINK, is in the midst ofan extensive expansion and upgrading of their e-journalsite. We will likely alter our site from a high- to low-maintenance model, as we rely on OhioLINK to pro-vide a more comprehensive collection.

A few final recommendations, based both on theauthors’ firsthand experience and on issues raised bythe survey, follow:

• To increase patron access, it is advisable to linkto an e-journal site from more than one pagewithin the library’s site, especially if it isn’tlinked directly from the home page. The namesof the links should be clear, consistent, and de-

scriptive. While titles such as “Internet Re-sources” and “Collections” are not inaccurate,they are vague and ambiguous.

• Libraries that have a search engine on their Website should ensure that the search engine is capableof finding individual e-journal titles listed there.Although this seems obvious, in our survey a sur-prising number of search engines would not locateindividual titles on the sites.

• Uniformity among annotations is recommendedwhenever possible. For example, if issue availabil-ity (i.e., v.7 [1992]–present) is given for some titles,this information should be provided for all entries.We encountered many sites that offered an exten-sive annotation for one title and little informationfor the next. Uniformity adds to the credibility andusefulness of the site.

Figure 3Sample Full-Page Annotation

46 SERIALS REVIEW – LINDA A. RICH AND JULIE L. RABINE –

• Librarians are urged to create a manageable siteand to be sure that the individuals responsible forit have the resources to effectively maintain it. Asthere are several comprehensive collections offree-access electronic journals already availableon the Internet, most libraries would be wise toprovide links to the comprehensive collections andto focus their e-journal collections on titles thatwill best serve their primary clientele.

The authors believe that a careful review of the basicconsiderations and suggestions discussed in this paperwill allow e-journal Web site administrators to create avaluable resource for their library despite the currentlack of a model. Library e-journal Web collections willcontinue to evolve and change as libraries turn to aggre-gator services or consortia to manage access to electronicjournals. What effect will these external services have onthe e-journal Web sites? Will they become more uniformand will accepted models emerge? Will e-journal Websites become unnecessary, or very different, as more li-braries have Web-based catalogs or as they access titlesthrough aggregators? Answers to these questions needto be examined in future research projects.

NOTES

1. Donnice Cochenour and Elaine Jurries, “An Idea WhoseTime Has Come: The Alliance Electronic Journal AccessWeb site,” Colorado Libraries 23 (Summer 1996): 15–19.

2. Thomas E. Nisonger, “Electronic Journal CollectionManagement Issues,” Collection Building 16, no. 2 (1997):58–65.

3. Linda Langschied, “Electronic Journal Forum: VPIEJ-L:An Online Discussion Group for Electronic Journal Pub-lishing Concerns,” Serials Review 20, no. 1 (1994): 89–94,80.

4. Tom Moothart, “Blackwell’s Periodicals Entry intoE-Journal Distribution,” Serials Review 22, no. 4 (1996):83–86.

5. Tom Moothart, “Journals Online Expands the Optionsfor E-Journal Search and Retrieval,” Serials Review 22, no.3 (1996): 127–30.

6. Albert Prior, “SwetsNet: Electronic Journals ServiceGoes Live; News on Developments at Swets,” IFLA Jour-nal 23, no. 4 (1997): 320–21.

7. “Dawson Information Quest Expands Sevices,” Infor-mation Today 15, no. 2 (1998): 4, 50.

8. Margo Sassé and B. Jean Winkler, “Electronic Jour-nals: A Formidable Challenge for Libraries,” Advances inLibrarianship 17 (1993): 149–73.

9. F. W. Lancaster, “The Evolution of Electronic Publish-ing,” Library Trends 43 (1995): 518–27.

10. Linda Langschied, “The Changing Shape of the Elec-tronic Journal,” Serials Review 17, no. 3 (1991): 7–14.

11. H. H. Barschall, “Electronic Version of Printed Jour-nals,” Serials Review 18, no. 1/2 (1992): 49–51.

12. Michael E. Stoller, “Electronic Journals in the Hu-manities: A Survey and Critique,” Library Trends 40(Spring 1992): 647–66.

13. Paul Metz, “Electronic Journals from a CollectionManager’s Point of View,” in Gail McMillan et al., “Elec-tronic Journals: Considerations for the Present and the Fu-ture at Virginia Polytechnic Institute,” Serials Review 17,no. 4 (1991): 77–86. Metz’ section is pp. 82–83.

14. Stoller, “Electronic Journals in the Humanities,” pp.647–66.

15. Marlene Manoff et al., “The MIT Libraries ElectronicJournals Project: Reports on Patron Access and TechnicalProcessing,” Serials Review 19, no. 3 (1993): 15–30.

16. Hazel Woodward and Cliff McKnight, “ElectronicJournals: Issues of Access and Bibliographic Control,” Se-rials Review 21, no. 2 (1995): 71–78.

17. Ibid.

18. Gordon B. Neavill and Mary Ann Sheblé, “ArchivingElectronic Journals,” Serials Review 21, no. 4 (1995): 13–21.

19. Nisonger, “Electronic Journal,” pp. 58–65.

20. Jane Henley and Sarah Thompson, “JournalsOnline:The Online Journal Solution,” Ariadne 12 (November1997); available from http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue12/cover/ [accessed 10 April 1998].

21. George S. Machovec, “Electronic Journal MarketOverview—1997,” Serials Review 23, no. 2 (1997): 31–44.

22. Lois M. Jones, “What to do about E-Journals: A PilotProject,” Colorado Libraries 21 (Fall 1995): 40–42.

23. Tom Moothart, “Providing Access to E-JournalsThrough Library Home Pages,” Serials Review 22, no. 2(1996): 71–77.

24. Robert D. Cameron, “Not Just E-Journals: Providingand Maintaining Access to Serials and Serial InformationThrough the World-Wide Web,” The Serials Librarian 29,no. 3/4 (1996): 209–22.

25. Cochenour and Jurries, “An Idea,” pp. 15–19.

26. Barbara McFadden Allen, “The CIC-EJC as a Modelfor Management of Internet-Accessible E-Journals,” Li-brary Hi-Tech 15, no. 3/4 (1997): 45–49.