People who know libraries know of the huge costs for the services that we offer you, particularly in the sciences.  Administrators at SMU and other major universities have to scramble to fund products whose increasing costs far exceed normal inflationary costs.  Each year the increased amount we pay just for ongoing periodicals and databases approaches $200,000, and our total yearly cost for these products is over $2,000,000.

The rising costs are the bad news.  The good news is that we can provide an astounding amount of material for our money compared to, say, even five or six years ago.  Google Scholar, which we  cover below, is of course free.  The TexShare databases are underwritten by the State of Texas, so that we receive far more than we pay for.

We also are enjoying an immense increase in access to periodical articles from our “big deals.”  A big deal, for a slight surcharge above what the library has been paying, typically offers electronic access to all or most of a publisher’s periodicals.  From Wiley, one of our oldest big deals, we receive access to over 530 titles for the price of 45.  From Springer, in a newly expanded deal, we receive over 1500 titles for the price of 80.  In our newest deal, we will receive over 750 titles from Blackwell for the price of 150. 

Although prices are ascending rapidly, our rising expenditures support major gains in our access to knowledge and research. 

In late 2004, Google introduced Google Scholar.  Google Scholar uses the popular Google interface to search for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research.

SMU and Central University Libraries are participating in Google Scholar’s Library Links service.  The Libraries have provided Google details about our online subscriptions so that SMU-affiliated users can click through to access our resources from their Google Scholar search results.  No action is necessary to enable this searching from on-campus.  When searching from off-campus, users should add “Southern Methodist University” to their Google Scholar Preferences to enable this linking.  Look for buttons for “Full Text at SMU” and “Check at SMU” when searching in Google Scholar.

Google has not disclosed details about what is included in the searched content, but Google Scholar is known to search resources from a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories, and the open web.

Google Scholar’s coverage is more thorough in science than in other subject areas.  Content providers that are partially indexed include:  ACM, Blackwell, EBSCO, IEEE, Institute of Physics, Nature, Springer, and Wiley.  Search results include a variety of links to source material ranging from brief bibliographic information to full text freely available online,  and from links to library-subscribed full text to fee-based document delivery services.  Google Scholar’s ability to provide links for access from SMU Libraries depends not only on our subscriptions but on the level of information available about a particular resource.

Google describes development to be in “beta,” so future enhancements or improvements may be expected.  Google Scholar™ is a trademark of Google, Inc.

—Easy Access to additional reaction information

—Enhanced multi-step reaction display

—New quick look-up of research references

—Duplicate detection/removal...and much more

SMU Libraries provide campus wide access to an incredible range of online resources.  As of Fall 2006, they include:  

— 369 online databases, indexes and reference resources

— 23,197 electronic journals 

— 33,698 electronic books