After nearly a decade of budget cuts, the number of journals and periodicals that Meriam Library subscribed to was reduced from over 5,000 titles to only 2,600. Recent budgetary increases, the widespread availability of electronic journals, and savings attained through consortial purchasing with other CSU campuses has resulted in a journal collection of over 7,700 unique titles. Many general interest publications such as Time, Harper's, or Scientific American are included in several data bases, raising the total number of "subscriptions" to nearly 12,000.
Most of these data bases are in large collections featuring sophisticated on-line searching and easy access to the full text of articles. Academic Search, Academic Universe, Dow Jones, and Contemporary Women's Issues are good examples.
A major limitation of these data bases is that they were created recently, excluding articles published before 1990. But through a recently signed agreement by the CSU Chancellor's Office and JSTOR (journal storage), CSU, Chico and other CSUs will have access to a fully searchable electronic database. This will contain the full archives of at least 100 major research journals in a variety of academic disciplines, including some published for more than 100 years.
JSTOR allows users to use journals that may not be available in paper at their institution's library, and provides a high-resolution, scanned image of each journal page as it was originally designed, printed, and illustrated. Journals digitized by JSTOR include American Economic Review, American Historical Review, American Political Science Review, American Sociological Review, Econometrica, Journal of Political Economy, and the Journal of Asian Studies.
"Students and faculty will now be able to do direct, on-line research using many of the most important journals in the arts, humanities, sciences, and social sciences. JSTOR participation should also enable CSU, Chico to realize long-term savings in the storage of these journal materials," said Carolyn Dusenbury, director of Library Services.
The CSU joins the University of California, the University of Texas, and the State University of New York as state university systems that have signed on with JSTOR. Over 300 colleges and universities in the U.S. and Canada, as well as 20 in the United Kingdom have subscribed.
The library invites you to take advantage of around-the-clock access provided to faculty, staff, and students. Go to the Library ReSearch Station page http://library.csuchico.edu/ and select "Periodicals List" for a list of all titles. To use a specific database such as Academic Universe or JSTOR select "Resources by Name" from the ReSearch Station and scroll down to the desired resource.Jim Dwyer, Meriam Library Bibliographic Services