The Illinois Digital Academic Library (IDAL) has selected EBSCO Publishing to provide aggregated journal databases for over 150 public and private academic libraries in Illinois for the next three years. Through IDAL, students, faculty and staff at eligible institutions now have access to several EBSCO databases of academic and business periodicals, consumer health information and newspapers. Current service from EBSCO will be uninterrupted; however, the package of databases offered will be expanded and modified for Fall 2002. IDAL will continue to assume the entire cost of the EBSCO services for all colleges and universities in Illinois.

According to Thomas Dorst, director of the Illinois Digital Academic Library, IDAL libraries used EBSCOhostÒ over 2 million times last year. “We believe that the expanded suite of EBSCO databases will give students and faculty in IDAL participant schools a highly useful core resource to support instruction, study and research,” Dorst said. “We were particularly impressed with EBSCO’s development and shaping of its databases and to their commitment to adding important backfiles to the appropriate databases.”

“EBSCO Publishing has served the Illinois Digital Academic Library well since we began operations in 1999, and continuity is important,” Dorst continued. “The quality of the databases and the imminent release of an improved search interface were the determining factors in the award of the contract.”

The databases being provided under the new contract include:
Academic Search™ Elite contains full text for nearly 1,700 scholarly publications. The diverse content supports core curriculum degree requirements and elective classes and provides full text journal coverage for nearly all areas of academic study. Academic Search Elite contains PDF images for the great majority of these journals; many of these PDFs are native (searchable) or scanned-in-color. Due to EBSCO’s unprecedented backfile expansion project, this database now contains expanded full text backfiles for more than 100 top academic journals dating back to 1985.

Business Source® Elite offers full text for nearly 1,100 scholarly business publications covering accounting, banking, economics, finance, international business, management, marketing, sales, etc. The database also contains PDF images for the great majority of journals; many of these PDFs are native (searchable) or scanned-in-color. Business Source Elite contains expanded full text backfiles for more than 100 top scholarly business journals dating back to 1985. Business Source Elite will soon offer 5,000 detailed and continuously updated company profiles from Datamonitor.

ERIC^® The Educational Resource Information Center is a national information system supported by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Library of Education, and the Office of Educational Research and Improvement. It provides access to information from journals included in the Current Index of Journals in Education and Resources in Education Index. ERIC provides full text of more than 2,200 digests along with references for additional information and citations and abstracts from over 980 educational and education-related journals. Through EBSCOhost linking capabilities, users can seamlessly access full text for many of the journals indexed in ERIC by linking to the corresponding journal in other EBSCOhost full text databases such as Academic Search Elite.

Health Source^®: Consumer Edition provides access to nearly 200 full text consumer health periodicals dating back as far as 1985. Also included in this database is searchable full text for over 1,000 health-related pamphlets; 20 health reference books, including books published by the People’s Medical Society; 7,000 Clinical Reference Systems reports (in English and Spanish); full text drug information, and Stedman’s Medical Dictionary. This full text database covers topics such as AIDS, cancer, diabetes, drugs and alcohol, aging, fitness, nutrition and dietetics, children’s health, women’s health, etc.

Health Source®: Nursing/Academic Edition provides nearly 600 scholarly full text journals focusing on many medical disciplines. Coverage of nursing and allied health is particularly strong, including full text from Clinical Nursing Research, Creative Nursing, Issues in Comprehensive Pediatric Nursing, Issues in Mental Health Nursing, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Journal of Child & Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, Journal of Clinical Nursing, Journal of Community Health Nursing, Journal of Family Nursing, Journal of Nursing Management, Journal of the Society of Pediatric Nurses, Nurse Practitioner, Nursing, Nursing Diagnosis, Nursing Ethics, Nursing Forum, Nursing Inquiry, Nursing Management, Patient Care for the Nurse Practitioner, Western Journal of Nursing Research and many more.

MAS Ultra™ - School Edition, designed specifically for high school libraries, is a comprehensive reference database that offers full text for nearly 500 important periodicals going back as far as 1975. This is a quality resource for academic libraries that offer teaching programs, MLS programs and other areas of study appropriate for high school research. Full text coverage also includes 150 reference books including the World Almanac and Book of Facts and the CIA World Fact Book, 88,000 biographies, more than 60,000 full text primary source documents and an image collection of over 91,000 photos, maps and flags. Reading level indicators (Lexiles) are also included for all full text articles, and EBSCO has recently expanded full text backfiles to 1975 for key magazines.

Military FullTEXT™ is designed to offer current news pertaining to all branches of the military. This database contains a thorough collection of military titles, trade publications and newsweeklies. Military FullTEXT™ includes abstracts and indexing for nearly 400 titles providing cover-to-cover full text for nearly 350. The database also includes full text for 245 pamphlets.

Newspaper Source™ provides selected full text coverage for 245 newspapers, newswires and other sources. This collection includes cover-to-cover full text for the Christian Science Monitor, The Los Angeles Times and USA Today as well as selected full text from hundreds of regional newspapers. International newspaper coverage includes cover-to-cover full text for The Times (London), The Toronto Star, The Australian and more. Newswire coverage includes AP Online (Associated Press), Asia Pulse, Canadian Press Wire, World Stream Newswires and others.

Illinois newspaper coverage includes full text articles from the business section of the Journal Star (Peoria) and The News-Gazette (Champaign-Urbana). Additionally, the database includes full text articles from the business section and national news articles from the Belleville News-Democrat and the Chicago Tribune.

Primary Search^®, designed specifically for elementary school libraries and children’s reading rooms, is a valuable resource for any academic institution offering courses in children’s education, library studies, etc. This database contains full text for more than 50 popular, elementary school magazines. All full text articles are assigned a reading level indicator (Lexiles). Full text is also available for over 100 student pamphlets. Additionally, Primary Search includes the Encyclopedia of Animals^TM and features the Funk & Wagnall's New Encyclopedia, which provides students with easy-to-read encyclopedic entries written specifically for kids. This database also provides the American Heritage^® Children’s Dictionary, 3rd Edition from Houghton Mifflin, and an Image Collection of 91,000 photos, maps and flags.

Professional Development Collection™ provides a highly specialized collection of electronic information especially for professional educators, professional librarians and education researchers. This collection offers information on everything from children’s health and development to cutting-edge pedagogical theory from a total of over 500 education and library science journals. This database also provides full text for more than 165 education pamphlets and will soon contain full text for scholarly monographs.

For further information regarding these databases and other EBSCO services, visit: . For additional information regarding IDAL, visit www.idal.illinois.edu.

Released: June 15, 2002