This edition of Online Resources Newsletter features some databases that will be interesting to just about anybody who uses libraries.  Academic OneFile is an upgrade over our popular InfoTrac database.  It is geared more toward academic libraries than InfoTrac was.  Along with our EBSCO databases, Academic Search and Business Source Complete, which are also being upgraded, Academic OneFile offers a fantastic general introduction to many subjects.  The historical New York Times database also will be popular with users in almost every field of endeavor.  Our other two featured databases also are interdisciplinary.

People often ask how we select and finance our databases.  The four databases featured in this issue exemplify just a few of the many ways that we come to offer electronic products.  Academic OneFile is a major improvement for us over InfoTrac.  The publisher offered it to us for no additional cost as an introductory incentive.  The Temerlin Advertising Institute at SMU came to us asking for the MRI+ Mediamark University Internet Reporter.  In a joint purchase, we were able to add this product, which is a major improvement over the paper copies that we formerly collected sporadically.  The Cox School of Business generously offered to purchase the expanded access to Social Sciences Citation Index, which is valuable not only to them but to all of our community interested in the social sciences.  Our purchase of the historical New York Times simply was something that the scholarly community and our librarians have long wanted.  We finally were able to negotiate a satisfactory contract for it.

In our next Newsletter we will feature two databases that together make up the largest cooperative purchase of electronic material in our history.  We have not finalized the contracts as I write and therefore they are not yet represented in PONI.  They are Early American Imprints (Evans) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online.  Along with Early English Books Online, which we already own, they will offer our users electronic copies of virtually every publication of consequence written in English by 1800.  Cooperation among the English Department, Bridwell Library, and the Central University Libraries made the purchase of these collections possible.  These databases are already available to our users, even though we have not yet paid for them.  Please contact our electronic resources team (culert@list.smu.edu) if you have trouble accessing them before we represent them in our catalog.  

Academic OneFile provides coverage of more than 8,000 academic, peer-reviewed journals with topics from physical sciences, technology and medicine to social sciences and the arts.  The majority of the journals covered include full-text articles in HTML and PDF formats.  The resource provides the added value of hundreds of podcasts and transcripts from NPR, CNN, and the CBC, as well as full-text New York Times content from 1995 to present.  The Central University Libraries will also maintain our access to the popular and more general InfoTrac OneFile database.

With the generous cooperation of the Temerlin Advertising Institute for Education & Research, SMU Libraries now have access to the MRI+ Mediamark University Internet Reporter.  This database contains detailed consumer product data collected from a national sample of U.S. consumers. It provides information on demographics, lifestyles, product and brand usage and advertising media preferences.  Mediamark Research Inc. is the leading provider of magazine audience data to the advertising and marketing communities. The MRI+ database consolidates, in one convenient place, many of the resources databases used to evaluate magazines in seeking directory and editorial information.  It includes audience data, circulation data, editorial info, rates, subscriber studies, competitive analysis, contacts, advertising effectiveness, as well as industry studies.  Users can create magazine lists with audience and circulation rates. It has a powerful search and access capability, plus a cost-planning module.  Much of the data generated by MRI+ can be exported to spreadsheets or printed in the form of flowcharts and reports.  Registration using your SMU email address is required.