Walt at Random

That’s the name. Can anyone point me to a website or other information about the fine people/wonderful institution who/that put(s) out “Freely accessible social science journals”?

Back story: I wanted to reference a Wayne Wiegand article in the prologue I’m writing for the massive Library 2.0 and “Library 2.0” essay. I thought, “Wonder if Mountain View Public Library’s interface to its online databases has fixed the old problem–requring an explicit proxy setting that interfered with some other websites? And, if so, wonder whether American Libraries is in one of their databases?”

The answers were yes and yes: Now the interface works beautifully once given my library card number, and at least two of the databases (Expanded Academic Index ASAP and InfoTrac OneFile) include American Libraries. Within minutes, I’d verified the entry, cut-and-pasted (with modifications) the citation into the essay I was working on, and reread the article to refresh my memory.

So, what the heck, I did an ego search. Remarkable. With a straight author search, 230-odd in one, 240-odd in the other. Who woulda thought? (I tried an “about” search indirectly, first by doing a keyword search, yielding 400+ items, then by doing that keyword NOT that author. Which yielded, I think, 50 or so reviews of my books. Something wrong there, but not to worry.)

And, just for comparison, I searched Mountain View’s online catalog, since I thought the library had one or two of my books. Whoops: Zero result (I guess they must have weeded them)–but there’s the “Link+” button, to search that large and remarkable set of cooperating California public and academic libraries who will do fast loans to other libraries within the group. Wow: 19 items, admittedly with some repetition (I haven’t published 19 books); book covers for the three most recent (thanks, ALA Editions)…and, glory be, an entry for Cites & Insights

San Diego State has the ejournal in its online catalog (and thus in Link+, as do three other libraries in the group). “More information” shows that it’s available via “Freely Accessible Social Science Journals.”

So, I wonder, who produces that database or list? I owe them thanks, obviously, and I certainly appreciate their somewhat casual definition of “journal.”

But here’s the thing: neither Google nor Yahoo! nor MSN Search lead me to a website for whoever produces this particular directory. There are plenty of links, but they’re all either to journals that are linked to from places using the directory, or to sources such as SerialsSolutions’ RFQ, which includes that directory and several other “Freely accessible” directories within its set of options.

Anyone have a pointer? Or just know these folks and want to pass along my thanks?

This work by Walt Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2006 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Cites & Insights. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.