Positive Review of Library and Info Science Repository

Péter Jacsó, BOSS, E-LIS, and Haworth Press, Online Magazine (Information Today Inc), May/June 2008 (accessible only to subscribers). An OA copy of the part on E-LIS has been posted to the AmSci OA Forum. Excerpt:

The E-LIS database is close to my heart because it delivers for free what the publisher I pan later often does not deliver even for a fee –timely information about research in library and information science and technology. As of early 2008 it had 7,200 papers from about 700 journals.

As an open archive, it covers all fields of LIS from the theoretical to the highly practical, from school libraries to national libraries, from rare books to ebooks, all reflected in the excellent classified subject index. Sure, you can argue if there is a need for separate classes for use studies and for user studies, but the display of the number of postings for each class -to my delight- offers a rather convincing argument without saying a word.

Its coverage is highly international both in terms of the language and country of residence of the authors….

The strongest part of the software is its browsing feature, and E-LIS stands out with the number of indexes that can not only be searched but also browsed by subject, country, journal name, book name, author/editor name, and publication year. The only significant limitation is that there is no option to do exact phrase searching and differentiate between, say, information industry and industry information. For full-text databases this is important….

E-LIS is one of the many repositories that use the free and intuitive EPrint software, which is the brainchild of Stevan Harnad, the key figure of the open access movement. Harnad possesses an admirable combination of mental prowess and hyperactivity as the “archivengalist” of self-archiving who talks the talk and walks the walk tirelessly….

E-LIS is small, but it is growing. Its size doubled in the past 2 years; it could have tripled if we, the authors, would not just feel good after getting our papers published but would go that extra inch and legally deposit them in E-LIS, DLIST, and the slowly emerging institutional repositories, a process that takes just a few minutes.

Open Access News, May 27, 2008