Bel jour: A discipline-specific portal to periodicals

Abstract

Convenient, subject-based access to current periodicals can be difficult to achieve in today's mixed and changing journals environment. This paper describes the creation of a Web-accessible database of journals in business and economics, using Microsoft Access and ColdFusion. The Business and Economics Locator for Journals at Rutgers (Bel Jour), provides value-added descriptive information about a specific subject-based journal collection along with convenient access to content from this collection. Although the actual journal collection is dispersed among many physical and online locations, Bel Jour provides a single, virtual point of access for researchers in the discipline. ********** Printed lists of journals in a particular subject area or academic discipline were once a common sight in libraries, filed along with pathfinders and other handouts that have now migrated to the Web. These lists were quite popular with patrons who wanted a convenient way to survey resources in their field. Although libraries now provide lists of e-journals alongside subject-specific indexes and databases, few of these services give a complete picture of the library's holdings in the current environment of mixed online and print resources. Furthermore, it is difficult to extract a complete list of journals in a particular discipline from the online catalog, given the complexities of the subject headings assigned to journals. Providing institution-specific information about the full spectrum of journals available in print, online from the publisher, or available through an electronic aggregator is difficult. The Business and Economics Locator for Journals at Rutgers (Bel Jour) is a project designed to overcome these difficulties and provide a useful tool for researchers in the fields of business and economics. (1) It attempts to provide a complete listing of the journal holdings available to Rutgers patrons within its subject area, along with other descriptive data that add value beyond the online catalog record. Bel Jour is a virtual space that defines a coherent collection of sources that are physically and electronically dispersed among many locations. Many libraries have integrated their e-journal holdings into their online catalogs, providing a necessary point of entry to these resources. However, catalogs have some disadvantages as quick-finding aids for journals. The catalog serves as a detailed record of all of the library's holdings. A search for an individual journal title frequently does not point to a single record, but to multiple records referring to variant titles, alternative formats, and differing holdings among branch libraries. While this level of detail is necessary for definitively describing the library's collection, it is often superfluous for someone who is seeking the most convenient way to retrieve a known item from a 1999 issue of the Review of Economic Studies. Bel Jour abbreviates the catalog record so that only the most frequently used information is reported. Bound by the MARC format, flexible as it is, the catalog lacks detail in some areas that are useful to researchers. When links to e-journals exist, dates of online holdings are often lacking. Without clicking through several links, it is difficult to determine whether a particular issue of a journal is available online or not. Also, descriptive information about the journal is based on historical cataloging. Most notably, the publisher of a journal may have changed several times since the catalog record for the journal was created. Information about where the journal is indexed and descriptions of its editorial practices are available elsewhere on the Web, but not within the catalog record. Bel Jour adds this information to the journal descriptions in order to increase its utility to researchers. Libraries have often produced lengthy lists of e-journals to create a more convenient way to access a known title. …