I hope there will be fewer problems with the other Glasgow based universities.
The University of Strathclyde Library website has a list of Electronic Databases, and each database has a helpful description. The list includes Zetoc, but not JournalTOCs. You can search what I think is the University website from the Library homepage, rather than the Library website (no indication is given of what is being searched). When I searched for ‘journaltocs’ this is what happened:
Do people really also search for , , ? I don’t think so.
Anyway, of the three results, two don’t mention journaltocs, so I don’t know why they appeared in the results. The other one, however, is a good: Where do I start – Keeping up-to-date with research leaflet, which does include information about JournalTOCs, and there are links to this leaflet from Library Support for Researchers, and some of the LibGuides (e.g. Library resources for Computer and Information Sciences), but not others. No consistency, then.
If you search the University of Glasgow website for ‘zetoc’ you get three results. None of these three are to this page, which is the University of Glasgow Library record for Zetoc and should surely be part of the website search. I found that page by following the link from Information types–which one and how to evaluate, which I found from the main university website search. There are zero results when you search for ‘journaltocs’.
There’s a Keeping up to date guide, and despite it’s opening statement that, “It is important that you stay up to date with new developments in your subject” the guide is so basic, and has no links, that it is not very helpful. Some of the Subject Guides link to Zetoc, but many don’t. That’s about it, although there may be information in their moodles, to which I don’t have access, and which may not be indexed by the site search.
Search the Glasgow Caledonian University website for ‘journaltocs’ and you get two results. Both results are to exactly the same page, and if you keep going, you get to this page about alerting services. Zetoc, but not JournalTOCs, is mentioned on a Searching for RSS feeds, which is part of a PILOT (Post doc Information Literacy Online Tutorial). I also found this out of date page by searching the GCU site for ‘Zetoc’ and once again getting duplicate results. JournalTOCs is included in the Database A-Z, as is Zetoc. The various subject guides have lists of all relevant databases, e.g. All Databases for Psychology and All Databases for Health but many of these don’t include Zetoc.
After a fair bit of rummaging around the Robert Gordon University website, I found a mention of JournalTOCs and Zetoc on the library’s Training (CM) (RefWorks and Literature Searching – PH4014) page. Zetoc is included in the A-Z of databases, but JournalTOCs is not. Zetoc, which includes 52 million article citations and conference papers, isn’t included in many of the lists of databases by subject. They did have Researcher workshop on keeping current in March, and again in July of this year. That’s about all I could find.
With respect to the University of the Highlands and Islands, which is the last of the universities in my reviews, what is the name of their library search service?
Is it Multi-search, or Multisearch?
And is Multi-search / Multisearch different to MultiSearch (with a capital ‘S’) or MultiSearch Plus? Strewth! Four names for what I think is the same thing (their Summon database from Serials Solutions). Actually, maybe not.
When I search MultiSearch from this page:
I get 611 results. But when I search Multisearch from this page:
I get 613 results! This is intriguing, because when I search again, I get 611 results.
What IS going on? Anyway, I know fine well that this is searching for articles, rather than what I’m actually looking for – I simply thought I’d give it a go to see what happened. I wish I hadn’t bothered with Multi-search / Multisearch / MultiSearch / MultiSearch Plus.
Zetoc is listed in their A-Z. JournalTOCs isn”t. I can’t see any advice on keeping current, apart from a brief mention about Zetoc Alert in the A-Z, the link to which is, unfortunately, 404 Not Found.