There is much to like about H.W. Wilson's relatively new product, Science Full Text Select. The database has the enhancements of WilsonWeb 2.7 released in June 2006. All full text content from the Wilson databases Applied Science & Technology Index, Biological & Agricultural Index, and General Science Index is included. In addition some of the full text from the Readers' Guide and Wilson OmniFile is provided, giving about 320 journals covered from 1994 forward. Science Full Text Select is also a reasonably priced product for the target audience, high school, public, technical/vocational school, and community college libraries, which may not want to invest in online subscriptions to a large number of periodicals. However, when I compared the journals indexed in Wilson's General Science/Index/Abstracts/Full Text databases to those in Science Full Text Select, the latter came out wanting.
Science Full Text Select is presented in the standard and attractive WilsonWeb interface. The lighthouse icon comes from a Wilson building in the Bronx, built in 1929 by the company's founder. It represents the company's goal of shedding light on the process of research. WilsonWeb 2.7 exemplifies that goal. The default search screen is the Advanced search, which is laid out to direct the user quickly to the search box and to the possible limits: date, full text, PDF, peer reviewed and document type. Sort is set to default to Relevance, but it is easy to change to Date. Relevance is fully explained in the Help as ranking results by matches to subject (100 percent) on down to 60 percent for a match found in the citation or in the article itself. The Smart Search default is based on an algorithm, and will give broad results. The user can select an individual field from the menu of choices. The user can also choose to search within the full text, which increases results.
Results are presented in a brief format, each citation having an icon for full text, PDF and peer reviewed. Information presented visually in this way helps the user to quickly scan for a desired attribute. These are also limits that may be set from the results screen. An excellent feature of WilsonWeb 2.7 is the Subject Pathfinder at the top of the results list. For example, from the Advanced screen, I searched for “ethics in science”, retrieving 157 records. I next refined my search by clicking on one of the subjects in the Subject Pathfinder, “science and ethics”, giving 93 records. When I limited to PDF, the set was reduced to 46; an additional limit of peer reviewed brought the number down to 25. For many students, 25 focused full text articles will be a reasonable number with which to work.
A simple check of a box marks a record. The interface provides direct access to the browse function, search history, alerts, thesaurus, printing/e‐mailing/saving, and exporting/citing. Search history allows the user to combine sets easily and to rerun searches or set up an alert. Records can be automatically formatted in MLA and APA styles. Users can download to RefWorks and EndNote.
I tried a number of searches, including “salmon* and (dam or dams)”; “dams/fish problem” as a subject; “Pacific salmon” as a subject; “type 2 diabetes”; and “geographic information systems” as a subject. In every case, the database had material. And the indexing is excellent. Here, for example, are subjects retrieved by my general Katrina search: New Orleans La./Flood, 2005; Hurricane Katrina, 2005; Hurricane Katrina, 2005/Relief work; Hurricane Katrina, 2005/Environmental aspects; City planning/Louisiana/New Orleans; and Hurricane Katrina, 2005/Social aspects.
The issue with this database is that its content is not really broadly science, but more applied science, technology and some engineering. This is reflective naturally of its origins in the other Wilson databases. A compelling reason for smaller libraries to buy full text databases is to get broad coverage in disciplines not extensively collected by the library. A science database should include journals such as Ecology and the various Canadian Journals – of Botany and Zoology, for example. For Science Full Text Select to be a more attractive product to smaller school and academic libraries, more full text should be added from the many excellent journals covered by the General Science products.
