Electronic journal library

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Electronic journal library
Electronic journal library (logo) .jpg
founding October 1997
Duration around 76,000 journal title records as of 2014
Library type Digital library
place regensburg
ISIL DE-606
operator Regensburg University Library
management Evelinde Hutzler,
Gerald Schupfner
Website ezb.uni-regensburg.de

The Electronic Journals Library ( EZB ) is one of the most comprehensive free accessible bibliographic databases on scientific electronic journals . In 2012 it had over 16 million title hits and is used and edited by almost all major libraries in the German-speaking area.

In 2014, the EZB offered its users the metadata (title, publisher, etc.) of more than 76,000 journals in as many data sets . In each of these journal data records there is also a hyperlink that leads directly to the website of the desired journal, where the full texts of the individual volumes can be read. Over 45,000 of the 76,000 journals are online and free to read journals . The full texts of the remaining 31,000 are available for a fee charged by the publishers - but also to users of a library that has licensed the desired journals for their users. At the end of 2012, the EZB was used by around 600 user libraries to link their websites to the websites of the journals.

The ECB is funded by taxpayers' money and is not commercially oriented. The EZB was developed in 1997 by the Regensburg University Library , from which it is still operated and developed today. The bibliographic records of the available journals and the links to them are created by all participating libraries and are constantly improved.

statistics

Increase in open access journals compared to fee-based journals offered by the ECB

Database

Applications for a journal to be included in the EZB can be submitted via the homepage. Criteria for inclusion are that it is a scientific journal (as opposed to popular science), that it can be accessed in full text (in contrast to journals that only offer tables of contents or abstracts ) and that the full texts are accessible via the World Wide Web .

In total, the EZB offers bibliographic records for more than 76,000 scientific electronic full-text journals in 2014; the numbers have been rising steadily since it was founded in 1997. This also applies in particular to the proportion of "free journals" ( open access journals ). The proportion of paid journals fell continuously from 82% in 2000 to only 43% in 2012. In the same year, over 10,500 of the journals (16%) were pure online journals , which means that they no longer appear in print parallel to the electronic edition . Their share is also increasing, in 2003 it was only 11% (2,012). The front runners among the subject areas in 2012 were economics with around 14,400 journals and medicine with around 11,700 journals . In addition to the EZB offer, the EZB also lists around 60,000 magazine titles from aggregators (such as EBSCO or ProQuest ) (as of 2010), which are managed as “local magazines”. These are titles for which the libraries have acquired access rights through aggregators. In 2014, the EZB lists around 45,000 free scientific journals, whereas the Swedish Directory of Open Access Journals only lists around 10,000. One reason is that the requirements for the quality of the journals in the ECB are lower.

Most of the paid journals listed in the EZB are licensed by at least one participant library and are therefore offered in full text. A report from 2002 shows, however, that at that time 9% of the paid journals were not licensed by any of the participating libraries.

The EZB lists entire magazines. Their articles are only partially recorded, so their titles can only be searched for in exceptional cases. E-books , newspapers , databases and gray literature are not listed in the ECB .

Access to bibliographic data at the ECB over time

Accesses

The annual reports of the ECB contain data on how often one of the available magazine titles is clicked on in a year. From 2000 to 2007, the number of clicks rose continuously from 2.5 to 16.9 million, with around 2 million more every year. In 2008, the number of hits rose sharply for the last time and climbed to the previous high of 22.4 million. In the two following years the numbers fell sharply by 2 million per year and then settled in the range of 16 to 17 million title clicks.

The ECB officials see the reason for the falling usage figures from 2009 onwards, among other things, in the fact that the full texts of electronic journals are more and more often also accessible through linking services (such as SFX or the EZB linking service).

Participant libraries (blue), including those in the German-speaking area (red)
Participants by state in 2012; The others include Italy, Croatia and the USA (with two participants each) as well as Poland, Japan and Romania (with one each)

Attendees

The ECB is used primarily by academic libraries , but also by consortia, research and other academic institutions such as hospitals. The EZB is also used in the German virtual specialist libraries and other specialist information services. The admission of foreign institutions is decided on a case-by-case basis.

The ECB went into operation in October 1997 and was the result of a project launched in April 1997 by the Regensburg University Library; The project partner in the implementation was the university library of the Technical University of Munich . Since 1998, it was primarily Bavarian participating libraries that joined, but soon non-Bavarian and foreign libraries too. In October 1999, the Thuringian University and State Library, the 50th institution, took part in May with the University Library of Vienna, the 100th. While two libraries were still involved in the service in 1997, in 2014 there were over 600 libraries and research institutions. Almost all important university and state libraries within the German-speaking area now take part; the American Library of Congress has been a prominent foreign member since 2003 .

From 2003 the EZB was integrated into the specialist portals and virtual specialist libraries that were developed in the Vascoda network , which was discontinued in 2011 .

Processes and functionality

use

The traffic light symbols using the example of the University of Salzburg

The electronic journals can usually not be found by library users in the library's OPAC . Therefore links lead from the homepages to the EZB, where you can search for the licensed journals. An exception is, for example, the Gateway Bayern union catalog , which offers the user a link from the catalog to the EZB data set for each electronic journal. In addition to general links to the home page of the ECB, there are also special links to certain data sets of the ECB. Links are offered via link resolvers that lead directly from catalogs in catalogs and databases to the desired ECB data record. The link in the EZB catalog to the journal's website also works via link resolver.

In principle, all journals listed in the EZB can be accessed online in full text. The EZB visually shows its users whether they also have the option of free access to the full texts. All magazines are assigned one of four possible traffic light symbols. If the traffic light is green, the relevant magazine can be accessed by anyone without any conditions. If the traffic light is yellow, the respective journal can be read by the user because the library or the institution through which he uses the EZB has purchased a license for this journal. If the traffic light is yellow and red at the same time, this means that the magazine has only been licensed in parts and not all volumes are accessible (for example with moving walls and embargoes ). If the traffic light is red, the full text of the journal is not accessible for the user concerned (the user's library does not have the required license). Library users can access the journals licensed by their library (yellow and yellow-red traffic lights) either on computers within the library or via a virtual private network (VPN). For access via VPN, the user only needs Internet access and the access data provided by the library (user name and password).

The user is shown the journals in alphabetical order, but he can also restrict the display to one of around 40 subject areas (e.g. biological journals). In addition to a quick search and an extended search option, the user can also view the journals that have been newly added to the EZB. Additional filters can only be used to call up the journals licensed by a specific library or the open access journals.

A data record for a journal primarily contains bibliographic information, such as the title, the URL of the journal, the ISSN , a subject allocation, the linked ZDB number, the price type (free or paid) and the publisher. Keywords appear in some, but not all, data sets.

Since June 2013 the user also developed by the Regensburg University Library is Android - app for tablets and smartphones available. In April 2002, an English-language user interface went into operation in addition to the German one, not least with regard to foreign-language participant libraries.

As part of a project with students from the University of Regensburg, the ECB was revised in terms of its accessibility at the end of 2014 . The site was redesigned so that it is accessible for people with physical disabilities and suitable for alternative forms of interaction. In addition, the compatibility with common assistance software (e.g. screen reader ) has been significantly improved. The revisions were carried out under the design for all paradigm and in the interests of inclusion, all users can now use the same website, regardless of whether they are restricted or not.

administration

A significant saving of effort for the libraries results from the fact that all participant libraries can create, improve and update bibliographic records. If, for example, a magazine changes its Internet address, it is sufficient for one of the 600 libraries to enter the new address in the ECB catalog. With many tens of thousands of magazines, joint management is clearly important. So although division of labor is practiced, in practice it is the case that the large libraries, due to their higher capacities, also make a greater contribution to the development and maintenance of the title inventory. According to his own statement, the joint maintenance leads to a high quality and topicality of the data.

The traffic light symbols green, yellow, yellow-red and red are not generated automatically, they have to be set to one of the variants by employees of the respective library. For example, if the library pays license fees for all volumes of a paid e-magazine, it turns its traffic light to yellow. If another library does not have the required license, it turns red for its users. If several libraries jointly acquire licenses as part of an acquisition cooperation, there is also the option of centrally managing the licensed titles and setting the traffic light symbol for all cooperation participants at once (consortium management). In 2008 the ECB managed 14 large consortia with numerous sub-consortia. Since 2007 functions for the administration of national licenses have also been available. The library manages the license entries that conduct the negotiations; the license data are then automatically imported for all other registered libraries. A simple management option has also been created for various types of license.

Since there are no extensive standardized sets of rules, the creation of a data record is far less complicated than, for example, the creation of a bibliographic data record based on the RAK-WB or the RDA .

Networking with other digital offers

The networking promoted by the ECB and other services is primarily used to pass on information. For example, the EZB passes on information about which library has licensed which journals and receives information from other providers, for example about the open access policies of the journal publishers.

XML output formats

Thanks to XML output formats, portals and libraries can integrate ECB offers on their websites. For example, the Virtual Specialized Library for German Studies offers such a surface on its website. A list of Germanistic journals can be called up there, from which links lead to the catalogs of the journals, where there is a link to the journal as well as possible access rights indicated by the traffic light signals. The journal catalogs can be found on the pages of the Virtual Library for German Studies, but their data come from the EZB.

The ECB Linking Service

In order to better network the online services of libraries, the EZB Linking Service went into operation in 2004, which offers another possibility of linking. If the websites of portals or libraries offer the EZB linking service, their users can go from the hit list of a search carried out or the catalogers via a link directly to the EZB catalog from where the journal can be reached. The links show with a traffic light symbol whether the user has access rights to the full text of the magazine or not. In 2010 the ECB linking service was integrated into around 40 services (such as ReDI, DigiBib and Medpilot ).

JOP

Another linking service has existed since 2009, which is offered jointly by the ECB and the ZDB. The "Journals Online & Print" (JOP) offers its user libraries links that already indicate whether the specific user has access rights to a journal. Not only is the possible access to online full texts checked (via the EZB), but also whether the library of the user has printed stocks of the journals (via the ZDB). The link can be used to go to the journal's homepage or to find out where the printed versions are. The linking service JOP is also used by the ECB itself to display local stock information.

Data delivery for other services

For a joint data delivery service of the ZDB and the EZB, the EZB delivers license data from magazines to the ZDB, which makes them available for online catalogs together with the ZDB catalog data. But data is also supplied to other service providers. User libraries can generate lists of the journals they have licensed and use them in other services in the background to control the display of EZB links and links to journal content. This offer is used by Google Scholar and the link resolver SFX.

Interface to Sherpa RoMEO

The Sherpa RoMEO database records the open access policies of various publishers. In order to make these easily accessible to the EZB users, there are links to these policies at Sherpa RoMEO in the EZB catalogs of the journals. The networking with Sherpa RoMEO was financed by a DFG project, and the new function went into operation in 2009.

Pay-per-view

On the website of the EZB there is a list of magazines that can be read for a fee ( pay-per-view ). Since 2008, § 53a of German copyright law has stipulated that end customers should obviously be able to buy magazines. Publishers have been able to offer their magazines for sale via the list since 2009. The document delivery service subito uses this online interface to check the publishers' pay-per-view offers and also to determine the delivery conditions. In 2010 over 5,000 journals from 25 publishers were available in the directory.

technology

The Regensburg University Library is responsible for technical support and further development. The data is also stored centrally in a database in Regensburg, but can be edited by all participant libraries (central database, but decentralized data entry).

The database is a relational database . The bibliographic records are entered and changed via a WWW - interface to the database. In practice this means that the participating institutions enter the metadata of the journals into a web form and then save their entries.

The pages displayed to the user are generated on-the-fly from the database. The hardware on which the ECB is running, consists of a database server (a Dell PowerEdge 2950 with two 3 GHz - Xeon -Vierkernprozessoren) and a virtual machine as a web frontend (with two virtual CPUs ). The operating system and software are implemented with various open source program packages , for example with Debian GNU / Linux , MySQL , Apache 2 and PHP .

Organization and financing

The University Library of Regensburg as the place where the ECB is organized (2007)

The ECB is organized by the Regensburg University Library. The ECB is not commercially oriented and committed to its public mandate. According to this, it is their task to improve the supply of literature and information in the academic field and to adapt it to new requirements.

Funding organizations have always borne the main financial burden for the technical implementation and development of the ECB. The original project was financially supported by the Bavarian State Ministry for Science, Research and Art for two years from 1997 . Other donors were or are the German Research Foundation and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research . For example, the DFG project “IBS - EZB, Integrated User Service in the Electronic Journals Library” ran until August 2002, and until the end of 2004 the EZB was part of the “Information Networks Working Group” project, which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Since May 5, 2011 there has been a scientific advisory board that advises the University Library of Regensburg on the further development of the ECB.

To improve the ECB, the Regensburg University Library operates an exchange of information with the participating libraries. For this purpose there is, for example, a website that is only accessible to the user libraries and a closed mailing list through which practical problems in the daily use of the ECB are discussed. In addition, an ECB user meeting takes place once a year and user training courses take place several times a year at various locations.

literature

  • Bruno Bauer: EZB, Electronic Journal Library. 10 questions from Bruno Bauer to Evelinde Hutzler, project manager for the ECB at the University Library of Regensburg . In: Medicine - Library - Information , Volume 2, Issue 3, 2002, pp. 26–30 ( PDF; 72 kB )
  • Evelinde Hutzler: 10 years of the electronic journal library . Continuity and change in a cooperative service . In: Library Service , Volume 42, Issue 2, 2008, pp. 169–181 ( online )
  • Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service by networking services using the example of electronic magazines and databases . In: Ute Bergner, Erhard Göbel (Ed.): The ne (x) t generation. The offer of the libraries , Neugebauer, Graz-Feldkirch 2010, pp. 188–195
  • Evelinde Hutzler: Electronic Journal Library . Development, status and prospects . In: Journal for Libraries and Bibliography , Volume 47, Issue 6, 2000, pp. 571-587
  • Evelinde Hutzler: Electronic journals as a service for libraries. Experience from the practice of the electronic journal library . In: BuB , Volume 53, Issue 3, 2001, pp. 150–155
  • Evelinde Hutzler: Electronic journals in academic libraries . In: Beate Tröger (Ed.): Wissenschaft Online , Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main 2000, pp. 37–66 (= Journal for Libraries and Bibliography , Special Issue 80)
  • Evelinde Hutzler, Albert Schröder, Gabriele Schweikl: On the way to the digital library. Local, regional and national digital services of the Regensburg University Library . In: Evelinde Hutzler, Albert Schröder, Gabriele Schweikl (eds.): Libraries shape the future. Cooperative ways to the digital library , Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2008, pp. 83-100
  • Evelinde Hutzler, Martin Scheuplein, Petra Schröder: The quick way to full text. Deployment and use of the linking service of the electronic journal library . In: Library Service , Volume 40, Issue 3, 2006, pp. 306-313

Web links

Commons : Electronic Journal Library  - collection of images, videos, and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Annual reports of the ECB 2004 and 2012 , accessed on April 21, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c d Bruno Bauer: EZB, Electronic Journal Library. 10 questions from Bruno Bauer to Evelinde Hutzler, project manager for the EZB at the University Library of Regensburg , 2002, p. 28.
  3. ↑ Annual Report of the ECB 2012, accessed on April 21, 2014.
  4. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service through networking of services using the example of electronic journals and databases , 2010, p. 188.
  5. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: 10 years of the electronic journal library . Continuity and change in a cooperative service , 2008, pp. 170 and 174.
  6. ↑ a b c Bruno Bauer: EZB, Electronic Journal Library. 10 questions from Bruno Bauer to Evelinde Hutzler, project manager for the ECB at the University Library of Regensburg , 2002, p. 29.
  7. ↑ Annual reports of the ECB 2005 , 2010 and 2012, accessed on April 21, 2014.
  8. ↑ a b c d About us , accessed on the ECB's homepage on May 24, 2014.
  9. ↑ Annual Report of the ECB 2010, accessed on May 24, 2014.
  10. ↑ Annual reports of the ECB 2003 , 2005, 2010 and 2012, accessed on April 21, 2014.
  11. ↑ Annual Report of the ECB 2012, accessed on April 25, 2014.
  12. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: 10 years of the electronic journal library . Continuity and change in a cooperative service , 2008, pp. 169–171.
  13. ↑ Participating institutions , accessed on the ECB website on January 5, 2014.
  14. ↑ Annual Report of the ECB 2003, accessed on April 25, 2014.
  15. ^ Library to take away ( memento of September 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) , accessed on the homepage of the University Library of Regensburg on May 25, 2014.
  16. ↑ a b Evelinde Hutzler: 10 years of the electronic journal library . Continuity and change in a cooperative service , 2008, p. 173 f.
  17. ↑ Bruno Bauer: EZB, Electronic Journal Library. 10 questions from Bruno Bauer to Evelinde Hutzler, project manager for the EZB at the University Library of Regensburg , 2002, p. 27.
  18. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: 10 years of the electronic journal library . Continuity and change in a cooperative service , 2008, p. 174 f.
  19. ↑ a b Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service through networking of services using the example of electronic journals and databases , 2010, p. 195.
  20. ↑ The integrated EZB on the pages of the Virtual Library of German Studies , accessed on June 22, 2014.
  21. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service through networking of services using the example of electronic journals and databases , 2010, pp. 189–191.
  22. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service through networking of services using the example of electronic journals and databases , 2010, p. 191 f.
  23. ↑ Information on Journals Online & Print on the ZDB website , accessed on June 22, 2014.
  24. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service through networking of services using the example of electronic journals and databases , 2010, pp. 192–194; Ulrike Junger, Reinhard Altenhöner: The ZDB on the way to new services. New developments in the journal database . In: Library Service , Volume 38, Issue 1, 2004.
  25. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service through networking of services using the example of electronic journals and databases , 2010, p. 194.
  26. ↑ Evelinde Hutzler: Improved service through networking of services using the example of electronic journals and databases , 2010, p. 194 f.
  27. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: 10 years of the electronic journal library . Continuity and change in a cooperative service , 2008, p. 172.
  28. ^ Evelinde Hutzler: 10 years of the electronic journal library . Continuity and change in a cooperative service , 2008, p. 169.
  29. ↑ Bruno Bauer: EZB, Electronic Journal Library. 10 questions from Bruno Bauer to Evelinde Hutzler, project manager for the EZB at the University Library of Regensburg , 2002, p. 30.
  30. ↑ Evelinde Hutzler: ECB Advisory Board begins its work . Posting. Mailing list InetBib . May 19, 2011 (there also further information on the composition of the committee).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on September 21, 2014 .