Online Resources - e-Journals and Digital Libraries
Many professional and academic journals are now published in electronic
form.
These have the advantage of being searchable. Additionally they may be
used by any number of simultaneous users and cannot be lost or damaged.
Institutions generally purchase a subscription providing password authenticated
access and/or access by IP address, this means resources may be accessed
from particular computers or networks.
To gain an idea of the quantity of journals available in electronic form
peruse the list of Electronic
Journals offered by the University of British Columbia Library.
Digital libraries
The Internet and Web provide learners with access to vast quantities
of information from wherever they might happen to be. One of the greatest
strengths of the Web is the ease with which anyone may participate and
publish their own ideas. However, this is also one of its greatest weaknesses
from an educational perspective.
Because anyone can, and many people do, publish information on the Web
the content found there does not carry the same authority as, say, papers
published in a peer reviewed journal. It is much harder to validate the
integrity of information found on the Web, especially for learners - for
the very reason that they are (by definition) non-expert in the subjects
they are studying.
Digital libraries provide a collection of quality assured (ie by subject
experts) resources which may be searched and/or categorized. Resources
can be internal documents (eg course notes, research), e-journals and
generally available Web sites. Content need not be restrices to textual
documents and may include interactive and mulimedia resources.
For examples of Web-wide digital libraries see The
Perseus Digital Library and The
Internet Public Library.
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