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8 Control full-text access

Control full-text access through your database and journal orders

Through your FirstSearch database orders and Electronic Collections Online (ECO) journal subscriptions, you control:

  • Which FirstSearch databases containing full text to include in your FirstSearch account
  • Which billing methods to use to purchase the full text in those databases
  • Which Electronic Collections Online (ECO) journal subscriptions to include in your FirstSearch account

Information describing which databases contain full text and which databases contain links to full text in other databases is available from the OCLC FirstSearch Service Databases in Brief.

For many FirstSearch databases, information about the journals indexed in the database and the availability of full text for those journals is included in Available Periodical Titles in OCLC FirstSearch, which also provides a complete list of Electronic Collections Online journals.

Note: Some FirstSearch databases contain both citations and full text for indexed journal articles, while other databases contain only citations. To improve access to full text, FirstSearch links the full text for journal articles to the citations for those articles in other databases. Although this linking of full text and citations cannot be done for every database, it is done for those databases containing sufficient information to make the links. As a result, users searching any of the linked databases that you make available to them can view the full text of journal articles they find even if it comes from another database available to them.

Control full-text access through the administrative module

The following screens in the administrative module provide features that let you control access to full text in your FirstSearch account:

  • The Database Access screen under Authentication/Access lets you specify whether or not users can view the full text contained in individual full-text databases.
  • The General screen under Authentication/Access lets you specify whether users can view or print full text in FirstSearch and also send full text in e-mail messages, or whether they can send full text in e-mail messages only.
  • The Passwords screen under Authentication/Access lets you specify whether or not users must enter a password to view full text from some or all full-text databases.
  • The Journal Settings screen under the Per-Article Purchase menu of Resource Sharing section lets you specify whether or not users can view the full text of articles in individual journals.

For more information about the full-text features available in the administrative module, see Customize databases and full text.

Example of full-text access

While searching the MEDLINE database, a user finds a citation for an article she wants to read. The citation contains a link to the full text of the article in Electronic Collections Online. She clicks the link and views the article.

She is able to do this because:

  • The full text of the article is available through the Electronic Collections Online database.
  • Her library subscribes to the Electronic Collections Online journal containing the article.
  • Her library has turned on access to the full text in Electronic Collections Online.

Even though her library's FirstSearch account provides access to the WilsonSelect and Periodical Abstracts databases in addition to Electronic Collections Online, FirstSearch provided her with a link to the full text from the Electronic Collections Online journal only.

This is because:

  • The full text from the Electronic Collections Online journal is covered by a subscription and available to the library at no additional charge (if another database for which the library had a subscription also contained the full text of the article, FirstSearch would have provided a second link to that full text if the library had turned on access to full text in that database).
  • The library is billed monthly for any WilsonSelect full text accessed by its users. Because the full text was available at no additional charge through Electronic Collections Online, FirstSearch provided a link to the no-charge version of the article only (if no full text covered by a subscription was available for the article, FirstSearch would have displayed a link to the full text in WilsonSelect).
  • The library has not ordered the full text available in Periodical Abstracts.