First, thanks to all those who responded to my initial inquiry/tale of woe
re : no longer receiving a print version of the index to Science for binding
purposes.
Respondents included Sarah Stevens-Rayburn, Space Telescope
Science Institute (Baltimore, MD); Bob Kowalski, Genetics Institute, who
articulated some important questions that I share below with all
SERIALSTers; Ingrid Moss, Peace College; Kimberly J. Laird, Quillen
College of Medicine, East Tennessee State University; Daphne
Greenwood, American Society for Microbiology; and John Sack,
HighWire Press, Stanford University.
Thanks to the initial help I received from those named above, I now have
my copy of the index, & I have only today contacted the American
Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) directly to express
my concerns. I still plan to share their reply later if I receive one & if it
seems appropriate. Meanwhile, here is what I have learned so far,
verbatim from those who sent answers (I've also included Daphne
Greenwood#s email address, in case others on the list want to respond
directly to her concerns):
We were led astray by their badly organized page initially too, but in
fact one can download/print the real volume index from
http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/aindex.shl
I got there from http://www.sciencemag.org/
choosing "Browse and search full text" there which led to
http://www.sciencemag.org/browse.shtml
and from there chose "Author index by volume" which led to the url.
---------------------
Thanks for the heads up on this future headache of an issue. There are
a couple of issues to address here : ~ What about those w/o internet
access? What about those who browse the shelves (either w/ or w/o
internet access.)
~ Will prices of the print be decreasing as a result of less value (a journal
with as many articles as Science really really needs an index--its like
telling someone new to a big city to find things without a map.)
~ Any chance of those requesting a print index receiving one? Or what
about making it available in print but with less (or more?) frequency ~ Is
this decision a cost / convenience issue? For what party's benefit?
I look forward to any replies that come your way, as well as to what the
AAS has to say about this. Again, thank you.
-----------------------
Maybe this answer is too simplistic, but can't you rely on a broader index
such as Medline or Biological Abstracts to handle the indexing for
Science? Science is indexed by so many different index titles-it would
seem like the patrons would use one or more of these broader indexes
rather than relying exclusively on the journal Science for indexing.
----------------------
Someone asked whether it was really worth worrying about the index
for Science... In my opinion it is and that's based on having to help a
student locate citations for a paper he had to write.
Admittedly, it was his fault that he was in a hurry & didn't have time to
formulate an adequate search, but the point is that the book chapter he
was using to find relevant citations from the bibliography had very badly
mangled citations. If it hadn't been for the indexes in the backs of the
journals, we would not have found what he needed, quickly. We
could've searched MEDLINE, but there's no guarantee that the titles of the
articles weren't equally badly mangled, as were the journal titles &
sources. (e.g Journal of Physiology instead of American Journal of
Physiology, wrong combinations of co-authors, etc. etc.>
Plus if you're trying to verify citations for someone, its always best to
use the actual piece, rather than relying on databases to do the work for
you. Using the journal's own index to look things up is far better than
browsing the table of contents for each issue....
---------------------------
I'd be interested in the responses that you receive to your e-mail. I
forwarded yours to HighWire, the producer of Science's on-line journal.
We are considering HighWire as a vendor to put our journals on-line in
1998, so I was interested to learn about their features from librarian's
perspective. Since we will be going on-line in 1998, I'm anxious to learn
as much as I can about what works or doesn't work for on-line journals.
Best,
Daphne Greenwood
Marketing Manager, Journals
American Society for Microbiology
dgreenwood@asmusa.org
-----------------------
A colleague passed your note on to me. You apparently didn't find your
way to the proper volume index, but found your way to the issue index.
The volume index is a PDF that is identical to what used to appear in
print. You can locate it by
going to the home page of Science Online click on Browse and Search
Full Text click on Author Index By Volume
or, you can click on "special features and data" from the home page,
too.
[and, in response to the further questions that I had once I had received
the above reply, I was told:]
Adobe Acrobat Reader is free, and is available online at
www.adobe.com
PDF is Portable Document Format.
----------------------
P.S. So I now have a copy of the index & can send my volume to the
bindery, but I first had to enlist the help of a generous person in our
hospital Info. Systems Dept. to download the Adobe Acrobat Reader &
then access it, so that I could actually see the needed PDF document (the
index) to print it. The whole process caused a time delay - my original
query was more than 2 weeks ago - & involved numerous additional
steps that were never necessary "in the good old days" (i.e., as recently
as last year), when I would simply receive the index in print in the final
issue of each volume.
Someone on this or another library list uses as part of her signature a
quotation that says "Technology is wonderful only when it works
correctly." To that I would offer a corollary : "and only when it helps us
be more, rather than less, productive and efficient in our work!"
Natalie L. Gorvine, Library Assistant
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Medical Library, Room 2180
34th Street and Civic Center Boulevard
Philadelphia, PA 19104-4399
(215) 590-2317 fax : (215) 590-1470 email : gorvine@email.chop.edu
