Fulltext Sources Online (FSO) is a directory of over 18,000 publications: magazines, journals, newspapers, newsletters, newswires, and transcripts that are accessible online in full text from over 25 aggregator databases. Published and produced by Information Today, FSO is available for subscription in both print and Web‐based versions. The print directory is produced twice a year, in January and July, while the online version is updated weekly. Information Today offers many different subscription options for its online directory, as further detailed above. A site license is also available for in‐house use of an alternative product version called FSO/e. However, this is not a viable option for most libraries, since delivery of this is via e‐mail of zipped files in a comma‐delimited ASCII file format and requires import into spreadsheet or database management software.
FSO’s selection of aggregators and the publications it includes are primarily focused in the fields of science, technology, medicine, law, business and industry, and the popular press. Unfortunately, a list of databases included from each aggregator is not available from the FSO Web site, so it is difficult to tell specifically which databases from EBSCOhost, WilsonWeb, etc., are covered. Aggregators included are: DataStar, Dialog, DJI, EBSCOhost, Eureka, Europresse, Factiva, FirstSearch, GBI, Genios, Infomart, InfoTrac, InSite, Lexis, NewsBank, Newscan, NewsLibrary, Nexis, Nikkei, Ovid, Pressed, Profound, ProQuest, Questrel, Quicklaw, RBB, STN, Westlaw, and WilsonWeb. Absent from this list are more general collections such as Project Muse, JSTOR, Emerald, Hein Online, and other producers indexing journals in the social sciences and humanities.
For each publication title entry, FSO lists the aggregator and the databases containing full‐text for that periodical, the dates of full‐text coverage, the frequency of database updates, plus, if known, the ISSN, geographic location, language, and a URL for the publication. Special notations about frequency, coverage, and lag times for online availability of a title are also given.
FSO offers three different browse features and the ability to search by title words or ISSN. One can browse the alphabetical listing of publication titles or see which titles are included in 95 subject areas. By browsing FSO’s Internet archives, users can see a listing of all the publications having URL links and identify which publisher sites offer free access to selected full‐text article archives. However, links to journals hosted on publisher Web sites are only included if the journal is available from one of the aggregators covered by FSO. The FSO search engine supports Boolean operators, the use of proximity operators, wildcard symbols, and stemming. Users can also limit their searches by subject, language, geographic location, or by aggregator. Non‐subscribers are allowed to search or browse for free, but are denied access to any of the directory information contained in the record’s full display. This free browse and search feature does not really provide useful information and is probably meant only as a marketing tool to gain more subscriptions. Libraries looking for free access to cross‐referenced links to full‐text journals will be better served by jake (http://jake‐db.org) which offers more than 23,000 sources.
With the increasing availability of full‐text publications online, this site is useful to the information professional or researcher attempting to track down the availability of particular journal titles within certain commercial aggregator databases. Although the information provided is current and easy to use, FSO appears to have a fairly limited scope. Except for its Internet Archive feature that links out to publisher sites, this product appears to be simply an online version of its printed directory. Unlike jake or Serials Solutions (www.serialssolutions.com) which offers libraries a customized electronic journal management solutions package, FSO does not provide additional linking features such as gateway linking to databases or subject cross‐reference linking, nor does it have any customization features that would allow a library to indicate in the search results whether or not it has access to a specific journal title within a full‐text database. Still, their focused selection policy and subject collections do provide very useful information within a modest and flexible pricing structure for a more specialized community of users. Academic and public libraries may be better served by the functionality and databases covered in either jake, or Serials Solutions.
